Had a pretty interesting day today at the office. Morning was pretty normal, drill and fill, check hygiene, extract a tooth etc. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
Pretty normal lunch. Trolled around on CP, ate an apple and a handful of wheat thins.
Then the afternoon hit.
I see inmates from the county jail here in town if they have a tooth ache or something, sheriff or deputy will call up and bring them up in shackles and the whole bit. It's not big deal, most of them are just happy to get out of pain and it's not a problem. So dude comes in, my assistant goes in to ask the normal "which tooth is bothering you, let me get an xray, blah blah". I was in the lab doing something so I wasn't really paying attention. She comes in and says "doc, you will need to come look at something" to which I responded "he need a tooth out, which tooth is hurting"?
"All of them". Huh, ok, weird response but lets go check it out. Sure enough, continued meth use pretty much causes things to not go so well intraorally, so he was pretty much decayed out and most teeth were broken off to the gumline (google meth mouth if you want to see it, i'm not messing with photos). Asked if I could extract all 26 teeth he had left in the 30 minute block we had on the schedule for him.
I laughed, said "nah, which one hurts the worst, we'll take that out". He pointed to one, I numbed it up, used an elevator to take it out, about 30 seconds worth of pressure and it was pretty lose. 2 teeth next to it are super mobile and infected (which starts draining as I get this one out, that smelt nice) so I told him he was getting 2 free extractions since he was already numb in that area and they were loose and I was right there, no harm no foul.
It's always fun when we see the inmates, the Sheriff comes up and sits in the room with them all serious, then when I come in the room we talk about hunting or why the Chiefs always break hearts or something.
He breaks down and starts crying thanking me, that he already felt better (if you saw the amount of infection I drained, you'd see why) and asked if he could make an appointment for when he got out. "Sure, how long you think you'll be in this predicament".
"I figure 4 or 5 years, you scheduling ahead that far yet"? Told him nah, just take care of himself and come see me when he gets out.
Next patient is an amish guy (we have a fairly big amish community near us), super nice guy, needs a crown. Asks if he can barter instead of pay, I ask what is in it for me, said he'd bring me a dozen eggs every week for 6 months (they have chicken barns or something) or I could have a quarter of one of the cows they're butchering. Sold, eggs and beef for a crown, sign me up.
Only problem with that is he scheduled an appointment for himself, but brought 4 other family members who all needed work done.
So we had a waiting room full of inmates and Amish this afternoon. Thought that might be a good name of a band or something. [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
It's just part of the routine. Honestly.
I say the same 3 or 4 conversation starters to every patient. Then we talk about something else to pass a few seconds, then I check them out then off we go.
I had braces put on in my 40s, by an orthodontist with hundreds of pubescent patients.
"What are you doing for the summer" was his first question for me. [Reply]
Originally Posted by lewdog:
You should tell the story of how much student loan debt you have.
Yeah let’s keep this positive
I did get a bank to take it over and cut my interest rate in half.
5 years in I’ve cut it in half. Started at 307000 at 7.2% interest 5 years ago, down near 140 now. My goal is 2 years now with adding another practice to start throwing serious money at it and get it over with [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
Yeah let’s keep this positive
I did get a bank to take it over and cut my interest rate in half.
5 years in I’ve cut it in half. Started at 307000 at 7.2% interest 5 years ago, down near 140 now. My goal is 2 years now with adding another practice to start throwing serious money at it and get it over with
Originally Posted by OnTheWarpath15:
Holy fucking shit.
If the dude can hack $30K/yr in principal (w/ a 7.2% rate to boot) off his loan debt, let's not cry for him too much here...
He's just scraping shit out of the mouths of meth-heads while preying on the vanity of teenage girls and pretty boys like RunKC (so like I said, teenage girls).
Originally Posted by O.city:
Yeah let’s keep this positive
I did get a bank to take it over and cut my interest rate in half.
5 years in I’ve cut it in half. Started at 307000 at 7.2% interest 5 years ago, down near 140 now. My goal is 2 years now with adding another practice to start throwing serious money at it and get it over with
The days of grad loans at 2 percent are unfortunately over. I envy those people that have little incentive to pay off aggressively [Reply]
Originally Posted by SAUTO:
im alive. you know me, never a dull moment. i'll get you guys all caught up when it's all over with. it'll be entertaining.
i saw your chris jones thread yesterday but havent gotten to read it yet, i could still just see beuhler's head exploding though. :-)
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
If the dude can hack $30K/yr in principal (w/ a 7.2% rate to boot) off his loan debt, let's not cry for him too much here...
He's just scraping shit out of the mouths of meth-heads while preying on the vanity of teenage girls and pretty boys like RunKC (so like I said, teenage girls).
And he's a condescending dick.
Originally Posted by SupDock:
The days of grad loans at 2 percent are unfortunately over. I envy those people that have little incentive to pay off aggressively
Well, it’s not really all me. The wife brings in a nice chunk of income so that’s helped. Plus it wore on my having that kind of debt hanging over my head so I paid as much as I could to the detriment of some other things but that’s life.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
If the dude can hack $30K/yr in principal (w/ a 7.2% rate to boot) off his loan debt, let's not cry for him too much here...
He's just scraping shit out of the mouths of meth-heads while preying on the vanity of teenage girls and pretty boys like RunKC (so like I said, teenage girls).
And he's a condescending dick.
O.city seems like a good enough guy to me. :-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by Eleazar:
True story about my last visit a few weeks ago -
I'm in the chair and the hygenist is about to get to work. She introduces herself and then starts the small talk. Her opener was "Did you hear about that school shooting in California yesterday?"
She didn't just do a casual mention of it either, her idea for conversation was to discuss the whole event in detail.
I casually asked to schedule my next appt with a different one when I left :-)
And trying to carry on a conversation with your mouth open, full of water, cleaning your teeth. What a great time to have a conversation on that. [Reply]