AME: The Absurdist Dentist

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[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00] and see what your practice could be saving. 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.

[00:02:17] [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 I think I'm an absurdist. I really do. I think I've found a philosophy that's going to work for me in this life. I'm going to talk a little bit about it today. I've had a week.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00] So on Thursday, I've had this long-term chronic wound on my foot. It has something to do with how orthopedically messed up my feet are. And it also has, it may have something to do with the fact that I'm a type 2 diabetic, but I'm very well controlled. So I don't think it's the diabetes that's doing it. I think literally I've got a hurt spot on my foot that's never really going to heal because my feet are so, I have such high arches and I have such messed up feet that I can't unweight

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00] it unless I'm like literally off my feet for weeks at a time. So it's been something I've been dealing with for a while. I've talked about it. And usually it doesn't really affect me very much. I won't be running any marathons, but I can still ride my bike, that sort of thing. But on Thursday, actually, I guess it was, I guess it was Wednesday night that I noticed it. I, I got, I took my shoes off and took my socks off getting ready for bed. My, my foot was sore, but to be

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00] honest, on and off, my foot gets sore. If I, if I kind of overdo it, I looked at my foot. It was very swollen. Like I've never seen my foot swollen quite like this. And actually wearing shoes in the afternoon had been, I had to wear really loose shoes because my foot was so swollen. And I'm like, okay. So just like, like a normal guy, uh, I said, okay, I'm going to go to bed and we'll see what it looks like in the morning. And I woke up and it was, it was similarly, similarly swollen in

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_00] the morning. And, uh, it was a little scary. Uh, you could see that, that, that, the, the wound itself was actually kind of, kind of fired up in. So I, I ended up, I, I got an emergency, uh, visit with my podiatrist, which was good. He's, he's been taking good care of me for quite some time now. And, uh, he was able to get me and I actually had to leave work early, which I don't know. I, if

[00:04:27] [SPEAKER_00] I like missing work, but I don't like missing work when, you know, when I only am in the office, a limited number of hours per month or per week or whatever. And it's just like, uh, I didn't love doing that, but I didn't miss too much. And, and I went in and, and lo and behold, it was, it was real fired up. I think he was pretty worried about it, to be honest. And he did essentially what, what, what you and I would do to a, an infected tooth. He sort of did an incise and drain on the thing. He numbed me up real good. And he, he rinsed it out. There was no,

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_00] the infection was clearly a cellulitis. There was no abscess. There was no drainage or anything like that per se, but he cleaned it out real good. And I'm on an antibiotic. I'm doing well. And honestly, it's Sunday morning right now. It's, it, it looks almost normal just over a matter of a couple of days and being on this antibiotic. So I'm, I'm pleased that that's going okay. Um, and Thursday night I had the, I had the chance to go see David Sedaris in person. And I,

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00] I, I've probably talked about David Sedaris on the podcast. He's, he's kind of a hero of mine. He's, he's a humorist, um, very funny guy, very funny guy. And he, he, he does readings essentially. He reads, he writes all the time. He writes journals. He writes, he writes stories. He writes pieces. You'll see him on, oh, I think he's on CBS Sunday morning. He records for the, he's, he's like, he's all over the place. You've never heard of him. You should look him up because he's really funny. And I, I've seen him, I've seen him live. I think this might be the fifth or sixth

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_00] time I've seen him live. And he was literally in my hometown at the center for the arts. And we got, I got great tickets back in June. I bought six great tickets. And as recently as this early this week, I didn't know who's going to go with my wife and I, I didn't know if we're going to be taking one of my kids, which it's not super, it's, it's a little adult maybe for my kids. I'm sure he would have enjoyed it. Uh, we ended up my next door neighbor and my parents went with us when we all had a great

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00] time. And one of the things that I like about David Sedaris is he, he's, he, uh, he observed the world very much as it is not how he might wish it were. Um, he's, he's in, in a lot of ways, he's very funny. He sees the funny side in almost anything, but he also, he's, he's very much interested in talking about reality. And, and, uh, I, I, I enjoyed that a lot in the same way that

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00] the fact of the matter is, is that this weekend, the reality for me has been that I've had to be off my foot. I've, I've, I've literally, I've literally done as little this weekend as I've done in probably years. I, I, it has been, it's, it's hard. First off, I live in a horse farm and most of the time, if I'm not at work, I'm, I'm probably out feeding horses or mowing lawns or, or doing something like that. And I have been able to do none of that this

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_00] weekend. And, and I want to, and actually I'm in a position where I have this goofy, you know, boot and I could, I could go out and do whatever, but I also am realizing like, look, I really kind of want this to be better as quickly as possible. So I'm actually, I'm not great at following instructions on this stuff, but I did this time. So following the instructions, uh,

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_00] I literally have spent a good portion of this weekend rewatching, uh, the, the legend of Vox Machina, which is, uh, um, it's an Amazon animated series. Basically it's like a Dungeons and Dragons show. Um, it's an animated version of a, of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that has been on YouTube for years and years. It's, it's hilarious. It's really funny. It's, it's, uh,

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_00] it's very adult, not something you watch with your little kids. It's, it's been fun. And I, I honestly, I'd never made it through the, uh, I don't think I ever made it through the second season and I made it through the second season. I'm, I'm well into the third season right now. And there's a fourth season that's out already. So I'm going to catch up with all of it. There's a fifth season, fifth and final season. I'm enjoying it. I generally don't have the attention span to watch television shows. I don't, I can't sit still long enough, but I'm, I'm literally

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_00] having to sit still because I really have to be, I have to be kind of putting my own kind of wellbeing, my health, uh, instead of ignoring that and just pushing through, which is, I don't say that as a hero. I say that as someone who's not very good at sitting still. Um, but I, I've been okay. I've been okay. I will say this, uh, Amazon is great because Amazon, this is embarrassing.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_00] Amazon allows you to watch, watch shows at, at a higher speed than, than one time, one times speed. I watch a lot of this at two times speed, which is chipmunk speed, but I just can't like, I got to have the story moving forward fast. I've, uh, I would say the internet has completely wrecked any, any sense of, uh, patience I've ever had for any kind of media. It's, it's ridiculous. I listened to podcasts at speed as well. I don't listen to them at two times. I listened to podcast

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00] at between 1.3 and 1.4 times, but I just don't have the patience for it. And I'm not saying that I think my, my brain moves that much faster than everyone else's. I just, I'm just a very impatient person. I just don't, in any case. So I'm moving through that pretty quick. Uh, and I've been relaxing quite a bit and, and actually I've got, I've had like, it was pretty painful when he, when he opened that foot up on Thursday, I didn't feel anything. So I was

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00] completely numb and I was appreciating the fact that, that, uh, you know, I saw what he was, I was watching him do it. It was interesting to watch him work on my foot. Uh, I didn't feel a thing. It wasn't gross. It wasn't creepy to look at that, but I realized about halfway through the David Sedaris thing that night. I'm like, Ooh, anesthesia is wearing off. And I, I've been, I've been really good about my, uh, you know, my ibuprofen and Tylenol. I've been on top of it.

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_00] Uh, I'm not overdoing it, but I've been on top of it. And it, that really helps control a lot of the soreness. You know, it's, it's funny. It's not sharp pain. It's, it's just like, Ooh, he got right in there and messed with it, but it's on its own. It's actually doing quite well. I'm able to keep it clean. I'm checking it, you know, a couple of times a day and everything. It's going well. Uh, but I realized, wow, you know, like as a patient and he didn't say anything

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_00] about what to expect for pain at all. He didn't mention it. I, I kind of knew I didn't ask him kind of knew. And I was right when I came out of the numb, it was sore. I did not want to be walking. I want to be doing it. So that, that, you know, basically gave me Friday and Saturday. Uh, I mean, I had a couple of things I had to do on Friday, but, but I was, I've been home most of the weekend. I'm a little bit bored, a little bit stir crazy. And I've been thinking about this. This,

[00:11:07] [SPEAKER_00] this is a, this, the topic that I want to kind of talk about today came up earlier this week. And it was, it was the, I just want you to imagine the two types of things that I see on social media that are dental related are, there's two different types. There's like the triumphalism of amazing dentistry delivered effortlessly, where you're seeing the, you're seeing the most beautiful cosmetic

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_00] rehabs, you know, under the dam and beautiful and perfectly polished and contours are wonderful or, or a full beautiful implant, uh, reconstruction on some wrecked dentition or whatever. And it's, it's, it is definitely highlight reels, but it's also like aspirational. This is the stuff that we should be trying to do. And then the other end of it, and there's been a lot of this on Facebook

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_00] lately, a high profile death in the social media dentist, I don't know, sphere happened this week. And, and a lot of people talking about, oh, mental health, a lot of people talking about, and so it's like, we got these two different polls that we're seeing of, we're on one end, we're seeing, we're seeing, you know, the, the, the amazing clinical cases and how, how you need to, how, how you need to be holding up this incredible, uh, standard. And if you're not, you're failing

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_00] your patients. And then on the other hand, you're like, oh, and also why in the world are dentists so burnt out and trying to leave in, in droves and can't, you know, we have mental health issues and we have the highest suicide rate and we have all this stuff. What like, and you're just looking at these and you're like, that's an interesting dichotomy of things that we're looking at. And, and, you know, on some level, one of those might be contributing or even creating the other one.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00] And cause the, here's the thing that I know for sure, the person doing that most amazing dentistry that they're showing just amazing dentistry. As soon as they take the rubber dam off, biology is jumping in biology. Like, like that, that work is, is starting to, that work is starting to break down the moment that you finish it. And whether that's the most amazing cosmetic dentist with all the right, with all the right techniques and all the right skillset

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_00] or my regular dentistry, uh, biology remains defeated. And the story is you are still building whatever it is that you're building in a mouth that pretty much is starting to break it down. As soon as you do it, biology remains undefeated. And so philosophically, what we see on a regular

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_00] daily basis in our practices, not when our cases are done and beautiful and we're photographing what we see on a regular daily basis are people who are falling apart slower, some slower, some faster, but there, but literally entropy is taking over. And, and we all know that's true. And I think one of the main issues that we have as dentists is believing that that is a personal failure of our own.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00] In other words, why is it that the crown that I placed, you know, 12 years ago on a patient, why are the margins breaking down? And there is always a small part of us, me perhaps that says, well, maybe if I'd done that a little bit better, uh, it wouldn't have done that. And who knows, right? But the reality is we're not doing this in laboratory conditions, folks. We are doing this. We are painting our houses in a fucking hurricane. That's what we're doing. And even, even if you have

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00] really great control over, over everything, you have perfect isolation, perfect techniques. You know what? You got to take the rubber dam off sometime folks. And here's the thing, your work is exposed to an environment that is not easy to survive in. And so I kind of this week decided that, that, uh, that I'm not going to worry about that as much anymore. I mean, patients are like,

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_00] can we educate patients to make that environment better? Yes. Can we treat patients with preventive care that might help them that way? Yes, we can. But, and this is a big, but biology never loses. Biology always wins. The best we can do is buy dignified time for these patients. And that's not to say that all, every patient, if, if they go long enough, it's going to lose their teeth. I don't,

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_00] that's not what I mean. But what I'm saying is in the same way that you cannot possibly expect to drive on the same tires for 300,000 miles on your car, because that's just not how entropy works. We are doing our best to buy dignified time for the work that we create. Everyone that listens to that understands the reality of it. But also I don't know that we listen to that as well as we should.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_00] And I don't know. I think a lot of times we feel that after we've seen some failure and we have to kind of convince ourselves that we're not horrible or we didn't do something like, I think the real move and the move that can make Instagram dentistry seem sort of silly and burnout also seem a little bit silly is to put this in the front of mind. We are fighting a battle that we can't really win.

[00:16:40] [SPEAKER_00] So if we look at this and go, each patient deserves our best care and each patient deserves a best shake, but we have to understand that we are fighting biology and biology is entropy and entropy means eventually stuff breaks down. So if we can understand ourselves and help patients understand that what we're doing is buying them dignified time, we don't know how much time in some people,

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_00] it may outlive them. Our work may very well outlive our patients. And that's the biggest hope, right? In some people it won't. But the ownership of what we do needs to be on the patient. In other words, we are doing our best to buy dignified time. We cannot cure their condition. If you do a root canal and it buys a tooth five years, should that patient be mad if they lose the tooth in five years?

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_00] I think no, because this is the patient situation. And I do believe that there's a radical amount of helping the patient understand that it's their responsibility. And I think there is a way to do this that doesn't come off as blaming them, but also doesn't have us take the blame. Because I think as a profession, whether we are conscious of it or not, we own stuff that we shouldn't own.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00] And it's one of the reasons that I think we feel so terrible about everything. Like, I think one of the things that we do is that we're asked kind of to do an unreasonable thing. And not only are we asked to do it perfectly, we're asked to do it and it's everything we're supposed to do is supposed to be immortal and last forever. I believe that there's plenty of people who think that's the expectation out there. Physicians don't seem to run into this. You'll never hear a joint surgeon talk about how this is going to last you the rest of your life, unless he knows you're going to live

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_00] like two years. They don't ever say that stuff. And car dealers don't ever say that either. Car dealers, they give you a warranty for a certain amount of time. I personally think we shouldn't probably warranty a darn thing because I don't know if that person is going to drink two liter of Mountain Dew as soon as they walk out to their car. In fact, maybe we need to assume that they're going to. But I do believe that there is a certain amount of what we're being asked to do is absurd.

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_00] What we are being asked to do is relatively impossible. There is no, there's no secret truth that I can learn by going to Spear or going to BioClear or going to Implant Pathway. It's good stuff, but there is no way to beat biology. And we, we as dentists need to learn this stuff and we have to get better. So one of the things that the absurdists talk about is the fact that they use the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is the Greek guy who's, who's basically cursed to push the boulder up

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_00] the hill, knowing that the boulder is going to roll back down. And so it's a, it's a never ending cycle of pushing the boulder up the hill and it rolling back down. Like there's a certain amount of pain and struggling that we do with the idea that Sisyphus is, is, is this tragic figure who is, who is basically doomed. He'll never reach the point where he can stop pushing the boulder up the hill.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_00] And I think when you take away from that myth, it's very tragic, but here's what the absurdists do. They ask you to imagine Sisyphus as happy. He knows he's going to have to push the boulder back up the hill and he's finding some joy in his ability, in the craft of pushing the boulder up the hill. In other

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_00] words, there is no bigger purpose. There is no finish line where we get to a point where we have a healthy patient and they're never going to have troubles. It's not, not happening. And the reality is, is it's not our responsibility to give a patient a trouble-free life. If we can be like Sisyphus and imagine ourselves as enjoying the struggle, enjoying the craft, learning how to do this as

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_00] best we can, knowing we're probably going to have to do it again and again and again, that's a big deal. That's very, to me, that's very freeing. The idea of looking at Sisyphus, who, when I've ever thought of it, it seemed like a curse, a never ending curse in a horrible situation. But imagine if Sisyphus was happy with it and he was okay with it and he, he learned to enjoy the struggle.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_00] We have knowledge that we can't actually beat biology. We can, we can try and change biology. We can help biology, but, but we can't defeat biology. We can buy some dignified time. And I think that's really, really helpful. I, and it, and it, it puts what I, what I see in social media, it puts it in a different light for me. And honestly, it makes me feel better. Maybe it's silly. Maybe it's literally just a, just a telling myself something dumb to make myself feel better.

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_00] But lately it really has been the idea that the idea that I, I'm taking care of myself this weekend, even though I know that I'm, it's probably going to be a problem for the rest of my life. I'm doing, I'm doing better. I'm doing better with it. And it's actually getting better. And there's, there's a certain amount of, of a sense of pride or a sense of accomplishment taking the fact that I'm actually not pushing this for once in my frigging life. I'm not pushing and I'm not pushing

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_00] away from the, the idea of, of taking care of myself. And I'm looking at this going, you know, maybe patient care that we know is eventually going to fail with biology. I'm not even talking about just heroic dentistry. I'm talking about the mouth is a really rough place. And in the past, people just assumed that they're going to lose all their teeth. And that was going to be that. And if we can slow that, even if we can just slow that over a period of years, that's worth something to us. It's worth something to the patients. And I think we need to look at it differently.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_00] I'm going to continue to explore this philosophy, if you will, of, of leading with the fact that everything we do is breaking down as soon as we do it, which sounds really negative. But the reality is, is that it sets a lot of expectations for me and for the patient. And it's, I don't know, man, it makes me feel better about dentistry lately, last week or so I felt a lot better about dentistry

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_00] because it's about doing what we can, understanding the limitations and not taking it personally. And I guess I need some of that, you know, almost 30 years in on this thing, I've, I might've finally come to a point where I feel, I feel like this is okay. So I'm, I'm taking a lot of ideas from the concept of absurdism, the philosophy of absurdism. I'll probably be talking about this more

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_00] in the future, but just lately I've kicked this around and it's made me feel a lot better. So I'm doing okay. If you get a chance to listen to some David Sedaris or go see him live, going to see him live was great. Just literally seeing him. I listened, I don't read his stuff. I listened to his stuff because he has a very distinctive voice and he's really, his delivery is just bulletproof. And I just, I was so glad to be able to share it with my parents and our next door neighbors. It's just, it's really good. We had a great time. He's kind of an absurdist too. Not going to lie to you. He's,

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_00] he can definitely see and appreciate the absurd parts of life and he's probably the best of anyone to talk about it. So I guess I, all these things that have happened in this last week have kind of inspired me to talk about this. So I hope you guys are enjoying the show. You should join the Very Dental Facebook group if you haven't yet. We've, uh, it's, it's a small group and it's, it's, it's a light group. We don't get too heavy duty and it's a safe place to ask questions and talk about stuff. You go to Facebook, look up Very Dental and I ask you to give me one password.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_00] I have about seven or eight or 10 or I don't know, but give me a, how about you give me password, uh, Lipscomb, Timmerman, Papa Randy, Frank, Gary, any of those Hornbrook, BioClear. There's a bunch of them. Give me any of those and I'll let you in. We have a, we have a good group over there. It's not super active, but it's also a safe place. So feel free to join, tell a friend about the podcast. That's really the best way to, to spread the podcast. Love is to, to tell a friend about it. If you have any questions or suggestions of people I should talk to or anything like that,

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_00] I would love to hear them. I'm always interested to hear what you guys think because basically the listeners are, are, you're the only reason I do this. So, uh, let me know what you'd like to hear from me and I will catch you next episode.