AME: Different Sports

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[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_01] This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. Alan Mead is a dentist with too much time on his hands and too much recording equipment in his basement. Armed with an obsession to bring entertaining and informative content to the dental world in a way that's never been done before, I give you the Alan Mead Experience.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_00] Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Alan Mead Experience. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Mead. I'm a dentist, a podcaster, and quietly and stoically suffering through another suck-temper. I don't know if any of you listening to this can feel me. Maybe not. Maybe you guys are just killing it. Maybe you're hitting all of your goals, and not only hitting your goals, but blowing through them completely, having record week after week in September.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_00] I am not having that. But my September, long story, I was talking about this with Dr. Dawn Grimes earlier. September is always a terrible month for me. Clinically, I suppose it can have ups and downs. It's not as busy, and I will say this. I've talked to a lot of people. There's a lot of cancellations. I don't know if it's the economy, gas prices. I don't know what. A lot of cancellations.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_00] In hygiene, a few of mine. Maybe I'm just extra aware of it because it's September, and traditionally, in 30 years of practice, it seems like September always seems to be a downtime. Every year, September sort of sneaks up on me, which is funny because it shouldn't, but I always have taxes due. I have federal and state quarterlies due. Somehow, how can that sneak up on me? Yet here I am.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00] My property taxes. My office summer property taxes, which are the big one. They always surprise me. Every damn year, they always surprise me. My malpractice insurance comes due. Just freaking everything. September, and it's always the month that I'm cash-strapped. It's just a freaking mess. So, happy September, everyone. That's kind of where I am right now. I'm trying not to linger. I'm trying not to dwell on it.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00] But I've mostly made it. I've written the checks. The checks have been written, and they're gone. So, there's nothing more I can do about it. I just have to move on through the next thing. So, that's what's happening with me. It's actually okay. I just got back a couple hours ago from my annual Trek North, my study club that I've talked about on the podcast a bunch of times. The Francis B. Vetter Crown & Bridge Society of Prosthodontics. I did a podcast. You know what I'm going to do?

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00] I did a podcast for, I think, their 60-year anniversary, like a live podcast. It was actually kind of fun. That was some years ago, up in the same area. I'm going to put that in for tomorrow's episode, I think, just as a replay. But so, the Vetter Society is just a very short version. It is a study club, and it's not a study club where a few guys come around and bring cases.

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00] It's a big CE organization, essentially. We got 100 and some members, and it was originally based out of the University of Michigan. Francis B. Vetter was apparently a pros instructor at the University of Michigan in the 1950s. It was sort of named after him. And it literally has been a huge part of my continuing education journey in dentistry, because, like, I remember in 1997, I told this story literally a thousand times on this podcast.

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_00] So, for everyone who knows the story that's coming, I apologize. Fast forward 30 seconds. I graduated from dental school. I didn't even have my license yet. Like, my license was still in the mail. I couldn't practice dentistry until my license showed up. My dad brings me to this meeting that he's been going to for 100 years up north, and it's at a resort actually called the Shanty Creek Resort. And that's where we were this time again, too. It's almost always in Shanty Creek and Bel Air.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00] Sometimes it's at Boyne Mountain, which is a couple of 20 miles north of that, but it's all in this northwestern Michigan. And honestly, in the fall, it's gorgeous up there. It's always gorgeous up there. Like, a lot of, basically, it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Friday is all day. So, it's, you know, six hours of lecture, morning and afternoon. Then we have, there's always a lunch in the middle, and it's great. And then you can go out for dinner with your friends.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00] A lot of people see people that they, you know, my dad and his best friend from dental school, both who graduated from the University of Detroit in 1968, have been going to this thing forever. And that's who I went up with. I went up with my dad and Joe. And we, you know, we stay in a condo up there. We go out for dinner. And we, you know, this year, we saw some really good, some really good CE, some of the speakers. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about them. But so, we did the speakers.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_00] And then Friday afternoon, I decided, I decided I wanted more than anything to be able to go mountain biking. And I was pretty sure Saturday was going to be rainy. So, that was my chance. So, I snuck out right after the CE was over. And I went to Glacial Hills, which is a, it's like a, oh, it's a, it's an outdoor area outside of Bel Air. It's a, it's a mountain biking place. It's freaking unbelievably great trails.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00] So, I burned through about 15 miles of mountain biking. And I missed dinner because I was just, I didn't want to show up and wreck dinner because I was a sweaty, hot mess. So, I didn't, I didn't go. But so, on Friday, I did that. Saturday, we did half day. And then my dad and I actually drove over to my parents' cottage, which is on the northeast side of the state. It's funny, northern Michigan, there's no very quick, straight way to get across. So, a bunch of country roads. It was great. We still, dad and I had a good time. We got back in time to go out for dinner with Joe.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00] And then we went this morning for lecture. And it ends up being, you know, 13 hours of, something like that, 13 hours of CE. And they always get really good speakers. The very first time I went up there, 1997, a guy by the name of Frank Spear was presenting to the Francis B. Vetter Society. So, literally the very first CE I ever took was Frank Spear. And it was basically him doing a weekend version of the facially generated treatment planning.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00] It was frigging amazing. And that was the day, or that was the first CE that I realized that maybe the dentistry that I was going to be doing on a regular basis wasn't quite the same dentistry as what they were presenting in a continuing education class. The Veterans Society has been a great tradition for me, but it is also a tradition, in many cases, of people presenting about things that I'm never going to be doing in my practice,

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_00] or I would hardly ever be doing. So, we saw Dr. Mark Montana this last weekend, who was great. He's a prosthodontist in Tempe, Arizona. And he actually had a lab technician, too, by the name of Jack Marano. And he was very good, too. They both presented really well. They sort of tag-teamed it. It was kind of cool. So, we got a prosthodontist viewpoint, and we got a lab technician's viewpoint.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_00] And the Francis B. Veterans Society is made up of dentists and lab technicians. So, we kind of got a little of both. It was pretty great. A lot of what they were talking about was the first day, they did talk about some digital dentures, which was pretty good. A lot of what they talked about was engineering of all-on-four restorations, you know, different – all kinds of engineering concepts of these things. And so, one of the problems is, first off, Dr. Montana's a fantastic dentist.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_00] He was – and what's really cool, he wasn't necessarily the dentist who was only just going to show you, you know, nightmarish befores and perfect afters. He showed a lot of – he showed a lot of stuff. A lot of it was a lot of engineering principles. It was really good. You already know Crazy Dental has practically unbeatable prices on everyday dental supplies. But how do we make that deal even sweeter? Free shipping. Jump over to crazydentalprices.com, fill your cart, and enter promo code VERYSHIP, all one word, at checkout.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00] That's VERYSHIP, all one word, to wipe out shipping costs on every single order. Even better, using that code directly supports the Very Dental Podcast Network. Stock up, pocket the savings, get free delivery, and help back the show. Use VERYSHIP, all one word, today. Here's the thing. And actually – and the lab technician was – I mean, basically, he ran multiple labs over the years.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_00] He just – it was really some high-end lab technician in lab stuff going on there. And a lot of it was big PROS cases that – and that's what it is. It was a PROS Adonis there showed big PROS cases. And for years, I'd go to Vetter and I'd go, man, look at all this stuff. This isn't stuff that I'm doing on a regular basis. This is – I'm not – and I mean, I can always take something away from CE where it's like –

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00] the presenters really care and they have interesting ideas. And I mean, I can take away – but frankly, it's not the best maybe for Monday morning where I'm going to go back and be dealing with emergency patients and crown seats and stuff like that. You know, I'm a pretty much – I'm a general dentist doing a lot of bread and butter restorative, you know, in some – a little bit of surgery, taking some teeth out, doing some endo. I've always kind of been that way. And I try and optimize – I try and do that the best that I can. But that's more or less what my practice is like.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_00] And, you know, maybe that's not aspirational for most people. But I tend to think that it is – that's kind of what most dentists are doing. Maybe I'm wrong. I do think on some level, dentistry has missed the boat on specialization. Not actual specialties per se, but specialization. On some level, I think – well, here – let me just give you the analogy.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00] So I go to the Vetter Society meeting and always enjoy it. But a lot of times the people presenting there are doing stuff like they are sort of – they are sort of the Michael Jordan types. They are doing these amazing things. And I tend to think of myself as like maybe the kid who's hoping to get on to the high school basketball team when tryouts. And I try – I a lot of times will compare myself with, you know, these Michael Jordan performers that are presenting at the Vetter Society

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_00] and thinking how low on the totem pole I am. And I've come to realize that that is actually not – that's not the right analogy. The right analogy is that you're watching someone who's amazing in track and field. Like as far as what they're doing is they can run – they can run a quarter mile as fast as just about anyone out there.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00] And they can tell you all of their tips and tricks about how you can shave, you know, fractions of seconds off your time in the quarter mile. But I'm a hockey player. You get what I'm saying? And it's – we're talking about different sports here. When you have someone who's talking about the design parameters of their favorite way to do all-on-fourth multiple, you know, multiple implants and, you know, how they want to tilt the implants and where they want to – you know, how they want to do the lab work.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00] So much of it was – because the lab technician was there, so much of it was design stuff on the restoration, how to make a long-lasting restoration and how to avoid common failures, which was great. But literally the next all-on-four case or the next all-on-ex case I do will be the very first case I ever do. I've never done anything like that before. And I – so it's interesting to know it, but it's not super – it's not super useful for my day-to-day thing. They're like – they're like Carl Lewis in the long jump.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_00] They're at the pinnacle of what they do. And I'm like – I'm like a college hockey player. It's just – it's different sports, people. That's what we're talking about. And instead of feeling bad that I'm not, like, doing some kind of amazing all-on-four prosthodontic crazy stuff, I can be okay with the fact that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I need to be able to do that at the highest level that I can do.

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_00] Now, here's the story on this is likely that maybe the Francis B. Vetter Society isn't maybe the best choice of continuing education for me, knowing that they tend to get high-end prosthodontics and large case stuff. That said, you know that a lot of restorative dentistry, continuing education leans towards them. In other words, like, you're not kind of – you're not doing it right unless you're doing it big.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_00] Like, you know, you're not – I will say there are exceptions. There are exceptions to that rule. For instance, anything that Garrison is going to do is going to probably be talking about how doing regular bread-and-butter direct dentistry to do it better and more efficiently and higher quality. Same thing with BioClear. Now, BioClear talks about some bigger case stuff, but the reality is those folks are doing bonded composite restorations direct.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00] That's like a regular thing that I do a lot of that. I do a lot of that. I do a lot of crown and bridge. I do some single – restoring single implants. I don't even place implants. You know, everyone's kind of got their own mix of stuff. But for the most part, my thing is that if I were to attempt some of the stuff that I was seeing at the Vetter Society, I don't have the reps at that.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00] And so every time – honestly, I – for instance, I do so few complete dentures that doing complete dentures, I kind of have to relearn my technique like each time I do it a little bit. And frankly, enough times where I've been stymied by dentures and expectations and all that stuff. Mind you, I have a really good lab now. So I don't mind dropping the name of my removable lab. It's Patriot Dental Lab. They're up near West Branch, Michigan. They're freaking fantastic.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_00] And what I really like about them is how they can hold my hand through the digital aspects of removable. And I really like it more than I used to. But I don't do a lot of complete dentures. And so I kind of need – I almost relearn complete dentures each time I do it. I do a lot more partials, to be perfectly honest. And so, like, I have to relearn that stuff almost to get more reps in doing it. If I were going to be doing all-on-four restorations, guess what? I would need all the help in the world.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_00] And you're not going to get really proficient. And you're probably not going to make choices like these guys were talking about, you know, in the different materials and the different designs and all this stuff. When you've done – when you're doing one the first time, you're drowning. And all you're doing is you're hoping that someone's going to throw you like a life preserver, maybe a really good lab technician can help you walk through it, that sort of thing. You don't know. After you've done 25, 30, 40 of them, you might be able to get some of these nuances.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_00] But the reality is it takes reps to do all this stuff. I do plenty of endo, and I still struggle in cases. I've got a case right now of an upper first molar. I can't find the distal buckle canal. I know where it's supposed to be. I can't freaking find it. What is that all about? I've got a microscope. It's tough because I'm like, I can refer you to a specialist, but the reality is unless they have a CT scan, I've got all the tools they do. I still can't find the damn thing. It takes reps. It always takes reps.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_00] But also understand, for me, let's just be honest. Okay, talking about my root canal thing. I probably should spend some time in some really good endo CE to help me with some of these things. Mind you, I do pretty well with endo. It's just sometimes I get stuck. But with endo, at least I'm not reinventing the wheel every time I start it. I do enough of it that I've got enough reps that I have some confidence with it.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_00] But the reality is a lot of the CE that I'm taking, and frankly, a lot of the CE that is out there, are things that are hard to apply on Monday morning. And thus, they're maybe not the best choices of CE. Just remember that a lot of this stuff is different sports. It's not that all these high-end profs people are Michael Jordan and you're just a hopeful high school basketball player.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_00] We're literally talking about different sports. Regular quadrant dentistry, crowns, fillings, root canals, some extractions, that's a different sport than full archedentialism. You know, the other point I was talking about, I'm like, you know, I feel like in general dental offices, I think a lot of times because of the way the CE is oriented, we tend to kind of feel like what we're doing isn't good enough or what we're doing is, you know, it's all aspirational or what have you.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_00] But the reality is, is like, that's what most people need. Like, most people don't actually need them. Most people don't come to you a dentualist. Most people shouldn't be a dentualist. Like, in most cases, patients might need help with caries control. Patients need help with prevention. Patients most of the time do not need help being out of their teeth completely. Like, a dentualist cases, God help us, there should be less of them.

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_00] We should not be making more of them if we can avoid it. That's a judgment call on my part. But the reality is, these prosthodontists and the lab technicians that I saw were talking about cases where, you know where they don't talk a lot about prevention? In PROS offices. They really don't talk a lot about prevention because, you know what, in a PROS office for the cases I was seeing where they're doing these all on four, they're decades too late for prevention to make a damn difference at all. Nothing, right?

[00:18:34] [SPEAKER_00] Like, but it's all dentistry. Like, it's just different ends of the spectrum on some level. And so, it's okay. We don't all have to be doing everything the same way. We don't all have to be focusing on these kind of high-end cases. Frankly, I suspect that the prosthodontist like Dr. Montana is made of different kind of stuff than I am because he's got to deal with patients that have a lot different kind of expectations, understanding of their problem than my patients.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_00] You know, for the most part, I feel like my patients have a decent handle on what their problems are and how I can help them because I'm in, like, a general mom-and-pop restorative practice. And that is okay. That's my take-home message. It is not that there's anything wrong with taking CE like that. There's nothing wrong with me having a study club that I really like. I'm going to tell you that a lot of what I've seen at the Vetter Society was probably not that applicable to my day-to-day. It's aspirational, but also it's kind of cool to know what's out there.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_00] I mean, I'm sitting in the lecture hall with two guys who are – I mean, my dad just turned 84 years old. He hasn't practiced dentistry for, you know, a better part of a decade. Joe still teaches, actually, and works in a clinic up north, but he's still part-time. I mean, he sees patients, but not a lot. These guys are coming to the CE because they have a huge tradition of going to this place and seeing these people.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_00] And, yeah, a lot of the stuff that they saw this weekend probably is not super applicable to what they're doing, but they're sort of there for the love of the game. I'm also collecting hours because we're required to collect hours. Why not collect hours when I can sit there with my dad and his best friend and a bunch of people that we know really well because we've been sitting in these rooms for 30-plus years together in northern Michigan in the fall. Half of them after on Saturday, we're going to watch the Michigan game. The other half, we're going to go play golf or go mountain biking or go out to dinner with their friends.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00] It's a terrific tradition, and maybe the CE that we're watching isn't the most applicable, but it's all good. We just have to remember that we don't have to go back to our office and feel less than because, yeah, I'm not delivering. I'm not worried about the design of my all-on-X case that's coming in tomorrow. I'm more worried about making sure that I can, you know, I don't know. I focus a lot on prevention in my office.

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00] I focus a lot on bread and butter restorative, and I'm not going to be ashamed of that. And even though I could feel a little bad because of seeing what some of the great stuff at this continuing education, I don't have to feel bad about that. I am what I am. There's a tendency for you to look around and go, geez, are these other guys doing all this stuff? Do they understand that? And I don't need to do that anymore. I'm not. It's okay. I've been doing this long enough where I don't have to make excuses for the fact that I'm not a high-end prosthodontist. It's okay. And if you want to do that stuff, great.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_00] God only knows there's lots of places where you can go to learn that stuff and everything like that. But it's also okay if you don't. I will say that being born when I was born was very helpful because I was in a position to buy a regular practice when I was young. The debt that I have was not crippling where I feel like in a lot of cases some of the debt you might come out of dental school is crippling and it's going to make you make maybe different kind of decisions on how you practice dentistry. I hate that. I hate that for young people.

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_00] I wish that they had a position more like I did where I had options that weren't going to bankrupt me if I didn't make the right choices right off the bat. I had some flexibility. I do think having a study club or having some people that you go to continuing education with regularly is valuable. Literally, the whole concept of podcasting came to me with the discussions that I would have with these guys that I went to see with, whether it was classmates of mine from dental school or my dad's classmates.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_00] We'd go to Chicago Midwinter together and we'd all go our separate ways at the meeting and then we'd come back and we'd show up at Lowry's and have prime rib and talk about, you know, who saw what on the floor or what, who they saw in classes and, you know, what endophiles are going to try. Like, that's literally what I thought about doing a podcast for because it's regular dentists talking about the regular dentistry. I still think that's a great place to be. And I think for once I've come to realize that it's okay. Dentistry is such a wide place.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00] We're kind of playing different sports and it's okay. It's okay. And honestly, if you're really good at the one sport and you kind of want to let go, like a lot of us start out playing, playing a lot of sports sort of okay. And if you want to let go of some of that stuff, cause you're just not that into it or you really want to focus and you know, you want to become, you want to become great, great. But understand that we're all dentists. We're all doing dentistry. There's no less than or more than.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_00] And there's so many egos in this profession that it's easy to feel that way. I got to say this weekend, you know, I was pretty joyous for the fact that A, I got some good CE. I didn't pay too much to go see it. It's having a study club that I belong to. That's a relatively inexpensive gig going up north with my dad. It's just, the leaves are just starting to turn. It's just starting to get cool. I got 15 miles of unbelievable mountain biking in, and I got to go out to dinner and watch some football with my dad. It's pretty great. We had a freaking fantastic weekend.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_00] But also, I don't have to feel bad that I'm not doing all on fours all the time. I don't have to feel bad that, that I will say the lab, the lab technician was pretty great because I got to realize I work with a pretty great lab technician who's literally in the building with me. And that is like this. I didn't even realize what a superpower that is to have, to have Chad, Chad at Precision Dental, Precision Dental Lab. He doesn't, I'll put his link up, but you know what? It's great. He's great to work with.

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_00] But when you're not in the same building, he's a great lab tech, but he's also a lab tech that you're probably going to have to mail your stuff to, or he's going to have to mail it out even if you send it electronically where I get it. So he just, someone from the lab just carries it over and hands it to the front desk. You can't do it. It's a miracle. I've come to realize how grateful I am, how lucky I am to have that. What a great, my dad, my dad raved about that five different times. I can't believe how lucky you are to have a lab technician right next door. It's a great thing. It is great.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_00] I've lucked out. I've had a good, I've had a good career and I've just been sitting here feeling pretty grateful about it. And I, you know, part of it started with the fact that my dad started taking me to this, this club, this, you know, this study club years and years ago. And I became a member and I've been active and I show up and it's, we have some pretty great stuff. It's good time. So find yourself some people to be around, make sure you're accepting of, of what you're doing.

[00:25:01] [SPEAKER_00] And if you're, if you want to do something different, of course you can, but don't feel like you have to, because it looks like on Instagram, you're not doing as great as everyone else. Or you take a CE class and you're not doing everything as amazing as them. Cause you know what? We're all doing okay. We're all doing okay. Dentistry is a pretty good place to be. It can suck sometimes. Suck-tember sucks. Yes. Still pretty good place to be. I've, I've had jobs that, that were a lot harder and paid a lot worse. Let's just say, let's just say that I've had plenty of them. I've worked some construction jobs.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_00] I was a barista before being a barista was cool. um, they're fine, but, uh, dentistry is pretty good gig when, if you can get it. So if you have any questions or comments, or if you think I'm full of shit, I'd love to hear about it. Go to the very dental Facebook group. And if you're not a member join, uh, I'm going to ask you, all I do is you go to Facebook and look for very dental and it's going to ask you for one of the passwords.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_00] And I have about a thousand. And you think you, you want to be around some normal other people that might enjoy the podcast. Go join the very dental Facebook group. We'll start a, we'll start a pod. We'll start a discussion about this or anything else you might want to talk about. I actually started a thread about, uh, what cream cheese you're going to choose at the, when you have the bagel at the CE.

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00] Cause Vetter Society and Fall Vetter, man, we have bagels and you have to make the choice whether you're going to do butter or you're going to do like regular Philly cream cheese or like, like a, like a sweet strawberry or, or they had peanut butter. I was yelled at for the fact that they had peanut butter. So, you know, we, we talk about the important things on the very dental Facebook group. Hey, listen, I appreciate you listening to the episode. I appreciate you listening to the podcast. Tell a friend and know that you're doing okay. Uh, you're doing better than you're feeling.

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_00] Dentistry has a way to get us thinking real serious and really down about stuff. It's a pretty good place to be. And, uh, maybe next year, come join me at the Better Society. I'll give you plenty of, I'll give you plenty of, uh, heads up so you can try and see if you enjoy Northern Michigan. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you guys. And we'll talk to you later.