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I
need your help
It’s difficult for me to ask
other people for help, so please bear with me. If I am to continue to
provide, and improve upon, my present level of care, I must do
several things. I
need to keep up with technology; I need to keep taking
a lot of continuing education courses; I need to continue to
keep and reward my loyal and caring staff. To do these things for
your benefit---you are the reason my practice exists---my
practice needs to keep growing.
If you
are receiving this letter, it’s because we have a relationship
already. I would
like more patients like you in my practice, and nice people
seem to know other nice people; that’s how the world
works. Have I or
a staff member shown you special service, empathy, or kindness
sometime in the past?
The best way to say “thank you” is to refer your
friends, family, and co-workers. We promise
to treat them like family.
If you
refer someone who becomes a patient in this office, we’ll send
you your choice of thank-you: a $25 gift certificate
to Borders Books or the Outback, or $25 off a massage by our
hygienist Caroline-of-the-magic-hands (I’ll bet you didn’t
know that she was also a registered massage therapist). And, as always, you
have my deep appreciation for helping my practice grow over
the years.
Did
you see this?
A
recent issue of Reader’s
Digest had a front page article on identity theft of medical
information.
I want you to know that our office computer system has
been extensively modified to comply with HIPAA 2006. This second stage of
HIPAA regulations
was
designed to safeguard the electronic privacy of
patient medical and dental records. All of our computer
systems are password protected, and
passwords are rotated frequently for greater security.
Recent
courses
I was a very busy boy in October and November.
On
October 27 I took an all-day course on improving my technique
of taking impressions for crowns, veneers, and onlays. It is a constant and
lifelong goal to get as close to perfection as possible in
this area.
The evening of November 9 was spent at
an implant course.
November 17 was an all-day course on treatment of very
worn-down teeth.
This is a particularly difficult treatment problem for
dentists to handle---how do you rebuild teeth when someone has
worn them almost completely flat at an early age? What materials will
hold up best under this level of destructive chewing and
grinding forces?
What is in the patient’s best interests?
Much as a computer eventually scatters
bits of information around the hard drive, the human mind does
the same thing.
The wonderful thing about this course was the way the
speaker was able to reorganize years of information into a
cohesive whole.
My ambition, said somewhat
tongue-in-cheek, is to be the dentist equivalent of Francesco
Rinaldi. Remember
his spaghetti sauce commercials of a few years ago?---“As I
got older, I got better.”
Better
sealants?
For
many years I
have been recommending bonded sealants to protect the deep cavity-prone grooves
in 6-year and 12-year molars. The October Journal of the American
Dental Association had a study comparing the effectiveness
and longevity of sealants done using different
techniques. The
study confirmed that sealants fare better when the teeth are
first treated by air abrasion (a mixture of 1/1000 inch size
abrasive particles in compressed air). My office has been
using this method for the last eight or ten years.
There’s an old adage: “Anything worth doing
is worth doing well.”
We live in the information age, and it was gratifying
to see another study showing that my staff’s technique is
up-to-date.
“Make the Most
of What You Have”
On
November
18, 1995,
the violinist
Itzhak Perlman came on stage to do a concert at Avery Fisher
Hall at New
York’s
Lincoln Center.
If
you have ever been to a Perlman concert (editor’s note---I’ve
had that privilege), you know that it is no small achievement
for him to get on stage.
He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has
braces on both legs and he walks with the aid of two
crutches. To see
him walk across the stage one step at a time, slowly and
purposefully, is a poignant sight. When he reaches his
chair he sits down slowly, puts his crutches on the floor,
undoes the clasps on his leg braces, tucks one foot back and
extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and
picks up his violin, puts it under his chin, and proceeds to
play.
Perlman has been performing for many
years; by now,
his audiences are used to his ritual. They sit quietly while
he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently
silent while he undoes his leg braces. They wait for him to
play.
On this particular night, something
went wrong. Just
as he was finishing the first few bars of the piece, one of
the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it
snap---it went off like gunfire across the concert
hall.
Everyone knew what had to happen
next. Perlman
would stop, replace the string,
marshal together all his previous intensity,
and start the piece over again. But he didn’t
stop. Instead, he
waited for a brief moment, closed his eyes, and signaled for
the conductor to continue. He played from where
he had left off when the string broke, using a violin with
three strings. He
played with a passion
power, and
purity that people had never heard
before.
It seems impossible to
play a virtuoso piece written for a four-string instrument if
you have just three strings. You could see
Perlman re-composing the piece in his head as he played, so
that he could play all the notes on three strings. He changed all his
finger positions on the spot, like a jazz great on a long long
riff.
When he finished, there was an awed
silence in the room.
Then people rose and cheered. There was an
extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the
concert hall.
People were on their feet, screaming and cheering,
doing everything possible to show Perlman how much they
appreciated what he had created.
Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from
his brow, raised his violin bow to quiet the crowd, and then
said---not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent
tone: “You know,
sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music
you can still make with what you have
left.”
What an immensely profound
statement!
Perhaps that defines our lives---not just for artists
but for all of us.
Here is a man who had prepared all his life to make
music on a violin with four strings, who suddenly in the
middle of a concert finds himself with only three
strings. So
he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that
night was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable for his
special efforts.
Perhaps our task is to make the music
of our lives, at first with all that we have, and then, if
that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have
left.
Office
Hours
Mon 8:30 AM-1:00 PM
2:00
PM-6:00 PM
Tues 8:30 AM-12 NOON
2:00
PM-5:30 PM
Wed 7:30 AM-3 PM
Thu 7:30 AM-3 PM
Our
team
Gina Albert
EFDA
Peggy Carroll
treatment coordinator
Beth Davis
terrific temp assistant
Lynn James
chairside assistant
Debbie Marker
chairside assistant
Michelle McClain
dental hygienist
Lisa Murphy
treatment coordinator
Caroline Talarico
dental hygienist
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