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Quarantine by Dr. John F. Miller DDS
Wow!! What else can be said without using profanity right? I write for this publication every 2 months and in that short span the world has quite literally shut down. Just like that, we’re all a bunch of unemployed homeschoolers with enough toilet paper to last us a lifetime of irritable bowel syndrome. I am really glad that I am not a kid right now. Well, not in the general sense. What I mean is, I’m glad that I am not my younger self. I was a very impressionable youth. I would hear things in the news and media and blow it out of proportion in my head. I remember being terrified of Cancer, I was sure that Operation Desert Storm was the beginning of end times, of course everyone was going to die of AIDS so why worry about getting good grades, and let’s not forget that Killer Bees from Mexico were going to terrorize our country starting
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with...wait for it...Arizona!! Where I lived!! This COVID-19 bugger would have done-in 10-year old John Miller.
You got it; Dental Hygienists came it at #1 with Dentists immediately following at #2. Loggers happened to be the least at risk FYI.
Fortunately, I survived childhood and have appeared to have developed some pretty good coping mechanisms. Nowadays, anyone who knows me would describe me as laid-back to a fault. I do not get worked up easily, especially about things that don’t directly concern me and that I cannot control. Welp, it concerns me now in that I am a collective member of the human race and I can control the limiting of social interactions as directed by folks far smarter than myself.
Obviously, this article was shared within the industry pretty quick and quite honestly wasn’t a surprise considering the nature of our work. It was also at this point that the beginnings of some recommendations and guidelines started coming down from the CDC, American Dental Association, etc. In a nutshell, for the safety of our employees and to do our part to flatten the viral curve, we were to eliminate all dental procedures that were non-essential. In other words, treat patients only experiencing pain and/or swelling.
Let’s discuss Covid-19’s effect on Smile Montana and dental offices across Flathead Valley, Montana, and the World. On March 15th The New York Times published an article titled: The Workers Who Face the Greatest Coronavirus Risk. I’ll give you half a second to guess who came in at numero uno, and this is not a trick question.
As I sit here writing this, we have been following these guidelines for one week, and it is uncertain how much longer Smile Montana will be operating in this manner. As I sit here the schools have been closed for two weeks and will be for at least two more, with most of us assuming normalcy won’t return to our school