Exceptional Dental Practice Management

What's Your Real Age?

     I'm a big fan of Dr.s Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen.  I love watching them on Oprah because they give their information in an interesting, yet firm manner.  They want to help us get healthier.  They also want us to know that we have a lot of control over how we feel, look and age.  I don't know about you, but I could feel, look and age better.  I know that for a fact after taking the Real Age test.  Just answering some of the questions made me pay attention to what I've been doing.
    Human beings are great at having intentions.  We get excited at the thought of self-improvement and can't wait to get started.  If you're anything like me, something gets in the way and indefinitely delays my new endeavor.  I took the Real Age test and I don't like my result.  The great thing is they don't just give you the bad news and leave.  They give you a detailed report telling you what to do to get back on track.  That's a relief.  The best news is, it's free!  Just click on Real Age test and you'll be there.  You take care of others all day, don't you deserve to be as healthy and to feel as good as you can?  Don't be afraid to find out the truth, they're going to help you make it all better.

Wake Up Call

    I just came upon a sobering story while reading Teresa Duncan's Implant Blog.  It is about Larry Hamburg, a dentist who discovered he has stage IV oral cancer. You can read about it here.He was in denial at first, and did not seek diagnosis right away.  Even after his hygienist urged him to seek medical attention, he waited a little longer until he was taking his son for a routine physical.  That's when his denial ended and his world fell apart. 

    Dr. Hamburg is 51 years old with a wife and two young sons age 9 & 10.  Like the rest of us he desperately wants to see his children reach adulthood and to grow old with his wife.  He is writing a journal of his personal journey through cancer a treatment and his message is this: Please, have a cancer screening and if you already do them for your patients, take even greater care to be thorough.  If you don't do them, start.  Yes, it is horrible to find out that you have cancer.  It is even worse to find out you made it worse by waiting or failed to diagnose a patient because their insurance didn't cover it.  You have worked to gain the knowledge and skills to enable you to help others.  Help yourself and take care of yourself. I'll leave you with this final plea from Dr. Hamburg:

You don’t know how important, and how loved, you are until you get this kind of wake up call.  You, and I, have the power to change the world…one patient at a time! But I can’t do it alone…Please help me make sense out of this, and do one more exam for a friend you haven’t met yet, and for your patients, and for yourself…PLEASE! 

A Wiser Leader

"     A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be."

            ~Rosalynn Carter~

     This really hit home for me.  I like to think that I'm at least an adequate leader and that at least I accomplish the first sentence most of the time.  I think if you've read this weblog a while, you'll remember my anguish over the receptionist that I was trying to help improve.  Reading this quote made me realize my mistake with her.  The place that I was trying to lead her was not a place she wanted to go, and more important, probably not a place she even ought to be. 

     What I didn't realize, in my complete belief that I could help her become an excellent receptionist, is that if she didn't have the desire to do that enough to be self-motivated, she didn't belong there.  It's that simple.  When people really want something, they tend to care and work for it.  Now I could squint and look at the second line, "A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." and convince myself that I was actually being a great leader.  I know I wasn't.  I knew all the time that she didn't belong there and that she was not going to be an Eliza Dolittle success phenomenom.  She belonged somewhere else, doing something that her life experiences, temperment and desire would be more suited to. 

     So maybe an addendum to this quote would be "A genius leader takes people who don't belong there in the first place, and leads them somewhere else."  I can only hope now that I'm a wiser leader who knows the difference.

Dead Tired

    I was just diagnosed with pretty severe sleep apnea.  I have been walking around tired for years and just thought it was my type A personality waking me up at night.  Now I know that it was survival instinct rousing me.  I was told that I stop breathing every 3 minutes.  I was horrified.  I won't get my CPAP machine until next week so I'm sleeping in my husband's recliner until I do. 
    I was very surprised to discover the symptoms and also that I had just about every one of them.  They are as follows: snoring, choking, gasping for breath, daytime drowsiness, morning headaches, memory or learning problems, irritability, concentration problems, mood swings, personality changes, depression, dry throat, frequent nighttime urination, high blood pressure, excessive nighttime perspiration, indigestion, loss of libido, rapid weight gain and confusion upon awakening.

    Quite a list, isn't it?  I put most of my problems down to hormones, job stress, raising teenagers and just getting older.  When I went to the doctor for a physical and my blood pressure was high and nothing I did brought it down, I decided to have the sleep study.  I knew I snored, but I put it down to excess weight.  I figured I gained that excess weight pretty quickly because I was nearing menopause and skipping the gym.  In the last year I started waking up at night feeling like I couldn't breathe and choking and gasping for air.  It scared me, but I blamed it on allergies.  Some nights I would wake up convinced that I forgot to take some medication and would even go search through the medicine cabinet for whatever I was sure it was.  Thankfully, I never actually took anything, but I would be extremely agitated and confused by it.  I found my feelings about the job I love fluctuating between extreme satisfaction and despair, but thought it was because I had handed over a lot of the assisting duties to another assistant so that I could focus on managing.  Do you see the pattern?  I came up with explanations for every symptom until it came to the blood pressure rise.  Soon after I found out about my blood pressure I began waking as soon as I started falling asleep and realizing that I wasn't breathing.  That scared me because my husband travels frequently.  I was right to be frightened.  My doctor told me I could have easily had a fatal heart failure or stroke in my sleep.   I also  missed my old self.  I am generally a fun-loving, happy person and I had become cynical, exhausted and constantly stressed.  I wasn't a lot of fun and I wasn't having much fun either.  When you wake up that  frequently, you don't get any REM sleep, so you don't dream.  REM sleep is the restorative sleep that you need to feel rested and refreshed. 

    I'm telling you this because I think a lot of us walk around dead tired and blaming it on our busy, stressful lifestyles.  I'm not thrilled at the thought of wearing a mask every night to sleep, but it sure beats not waking up in the morning.  I've heard a lot of people say they feel like a new person once they start CPAP and others who don't see much difference.  I plan to be in the first group.  I did extremely well with the machine at the second sleep study so I'm hoping all will go well.  If you have any of the symptoms I've mentioned, please do yourself a favor and arrange a sleep study.  I'm glad I did and I'm looking forward to feeling alive and awake again.