Never Meet Your Heroes
There is an old adage that states, “Never meet your heroes.” This statement assumes that our heroes will not live up to the character we have created for them in our imaginations. Therefore leaving us disappointed with reality. I imagine most of us have had the opportunity in our lives to meet a hero or two, and hopefully it went better than it did for the person who coined the phrase.
It’s easy to have heroes in this, the information age, the instant gratification age, the influencer age. We live in a time where young and old can make a living just for being cool on the internet.
Young children and teenagers undoubtedly each have their YouTube heroes that they love. The ladies follow their blogs and instagram gurus, whether it be for style, parenting, fitness & nutrition, homemaking, etc. The fellas will do the same with perhaps some professional athletes thrown in the mix. We consume carefully curated snapshots that are being presented to us as “reality.”
A hero does not necessarily have to be an individual. A big hero of mine throughout my early life into adulthood was Northwest Montana, & I consumed it much like we do today, in small idyllic doses. In other words, I spent a couple weeks here every summer for 20 years in a row without fail. Do any of you see the problem there, leaving Arizona only in the summer to come to Northwest Montana? I didn’t stand a chance, I was under the spell.
What happened after 20 years? Well, I made Northwest Montana my permanent residence. Like it or not, I was going to meet my hero. I was going to be introduced to the months of November & April (thank goodness for Big Mountain), the calendar equivalent of seeing Montana in the morning without her makeup on and then meeting her crazy family. But every relationship is like that right, you have to see the full reality and still be in love. As I still am with Montana, even more so today.
Where am I going with this? This is supposed to be about dentistry after all. Hopefully it’s like a Bob Ross painting and will work out beautifully in the end, happy trees and all.
Some years back in this same magazine I said that there “is nothing better than the real thing.” This still holds true still and will for years to come. And while I practice “Dentistry” another big word that is used to describe my profession is “Prosthodontics.” This is the combination of the words prosthetic and odontic. A prosthetic is something artificial that replaces something real or natural, and odontic simply means “related to the teeth.”
With that in mind, there are very few procedures I do that couldn’t be classified as a prosthodontic procedure. Fillings, Crowns/Bridges, and Implants are what we call a fixed prosthodontic, meaning it is a permanent fixture that is not removable which replaces teeth or portions of teeth. Dentures fall into the removable prosthodontic category. These are the options for replacing decayed, broken, or lost teeth and are very very rarely equal to your God given teeth in look, function and feel.
Everyday I have the opportunity to manage a patient’s expectations and discuss their dental “reality.” I have to introduce them to the Novembers and Aprils in their mouths. (Did I just write the weirdest sentence ever?)There are forces and factors that stand as obstacles between their current dental situation and where they would like their smiles and oral health to be. Some of these are cosmetic and some are functional, but the majority involve both.
I have discussed these forces and factors over and over during my 6 years writing for 406 Woman Magazine. Such as risk levels for developing tooth decay, the presence or lack of available bone, the presence or lack of healthy gum tissue, tooth alignment and placement, financial limitations, etc. My job as your dentist is to discuss the steps needed to maintain, reduce, or eliminate these obstacles.
Dentistry is no different than anything else on the internet.. You will see the 10% of cases that turned out perfect because the doctors are very proud and happy with their results, and rightly so. These are cases that had a prepared dentist, but also those factors mentioned earlier lined up nicely and were conducive to an ideal outcome. What we won’t see is the 90% of the day-in and day-out reality of dental outcomes. Pretty dang good, but not perfect enough for instagram.
You have survived another Dr. Miller article. Thanks for taking the time to read. I really appreciate 406 Woman Magazine for giving me an outlet to ramble on and philosophize about life, dentistry, and Montana. You all are perfect enough for instagram in my book. And speaking of instagram feel free to follow us @smilemontana if you don’t already.
Read Never Meet Your Heroes by Dr. John F. Miller, DDS in 406 Woman magazine.