How did you choose dentistry as a career?
I grew up in a small North Dakota town. My Dad was a funeral director, and I swear he knew everyone in the state by their first name. A remarkable, sensitive, caring individual, he had given up his college savings during the Depression to help keep his family together. His dream was to be a physician, but with the Depression in full bloom, he instead chose mortuary science. It was a much shorter course of study, and it would allow him to get working on his career sooner.

Socially, my folks’ circle of friends included most of the local physicians in my town. This circle of friends would get together once a month in a rotation potluck kind of thing to socialize and break bread together. I would eagerly look forward to the times when my folks would host these gatherings. I had come to know all these wonderful small town physicians, and they all took an interest in me. I began to think about medicine as a life’s work, since these kindly physicians were just the kind of role models a young impressionable boy could greatly respect. (Besides, the leftovers from the potlucks were great!!)

What was remarkable to me, in observing those gatherings over the years, was that hardly a one of those physicians could make it through the social evening without being called out to see a patient at the hospital or their home. (In those days, they still made house calls.) That particular facet of their lives gave me pause. I gave thought to what kind of family life I would have in medicine. My conclusion was: not much of one!! But, I really enjoyed science and math and the investigative part of medicine, and I wanted to help people in a constructive, hands-on way. Dentistry was a way to both have a life and help people. Guess I fancied myself as the future “Marcus Welby” of dentistry.

Medicine still is gentle on my mind, so I’m curious about my patients’ total health, as the mouth is often the indicator of their general health. I voraciously read a lot of holistic health journals and newsletters for my own edification as well as my patients. It’s been my privilege to render early diagnoses of and qualified referrals for a number of my patients, intercepting some significant medical conditions. In doing my research, I’ve discovered it’s a whole lot easier to stay well, than it is to get well!! So you’ll find we stress prevention and personal responsibility a lot in this practice. Over the years, I’ve found there is nothing I can do, no service I can perform, no material I can use, no high tech gadget I can employ that will overcome what a patient will NOT do with diet and home care. On top of that, medicine and dentistry as they are currently practiced are far more attuned to treating illness and disease than reversing or curing it. That, unfortunately, is the unhappy truth.

Habits are hard to change—we get that. And many of the habits that contribute to dental disease have been developed throughout a person’s life. These are associated, quite often, with the best things in life—such as sitting with the family around a table full of “comfort food.” And, quickly brushing the teeth and dashing off to the next appointment, or hitting the sack at night without doing much of anything in terms of homecare. Our job, as we see it, is to provide some degree of accountability and encouragement on your path to health and a more predictable dental future. Simple, but not always easy!!