Dr. Munk

By Al Munk DDS

EXPOSURES

Reprinted from a previous issue with permission. It’s really a shame that teeth had to come with gums. They would otherwise be such a nice little package. Just thirty-two pearly columns waiting for inlays and root canals. And think of the access we would have for root caries. We could throw away retraction cord and all the hemostatic nostrums so carefully collected over the decades. All that talk of coral pink and stippling could be dropped from the lexicon. Who really knew what flap curettage was anyway. But alas, for most people, I’m afraid the gums are here to stay. Out here in Ballard, they’re pronounced with the long vowel sound—gooms. As in “Hey doc, I think there’s a pus-pocket coming out of my goom.” This would be a typical opening statement by any one of hundreds of my patients. I would then write in my chart regarding their chief complaint as I was so dutifully trained, p.pocket, gooms, unknown origin. I’m unsure of the origin of this particular aberration in pronunciation as I seldom hear anyone say for example, “Could I have a piece of the Juicy Fruit goom?” For some reason the medical reference brings out the creative side of people as they explain to me that both their gooms and piles are acting up. I then ask them to make up their mind which ailment they would like serviced before I adjust the chair. Ah, the miracle of formocresol. When I was a freshman in dental school, the perio department in its infinite wisdom decided to teach us first-hand just what gingivitis was. This was, of course, long before the word was bandied about on TV and radio as it is today. “Listerine fights the germs that cause gingivitis” we are so often reminded. Yesterday I had a 96 year-old woman ask me if she had a problem with gingivitis. Of course I explained that the dreaded curse would likely claim her last six teeth sometime in the next thirty years. She laughed and pulled me close with one bony hand and kissed me on the cheek. This sort of thing happens all the time in my office. Anyway, the perio department’s plan was for the entire freshman class to put away the brush and floss for a month and see what kind of grunge would grow on the dentition in the meantime. Along the way, we were supposed to examine each other for signs of oral plague, materia alba etc. My love life, which ordinarily was never something to write home about, suffered greatly during this period of self-imposed oral slothitude. There were one or two in the class who only brushed their teeth on the Solstice anyway so for them, this experiment was not a problem. I suspect if a similar program was imposed on the student body of today, the University would find itself in court until the next millennium. In those days student abuse was not only allowed, but encouraged. Take for example, the perio clinic. We were required to sit in the perio clinic on beautiful spring afternoons with our patients for three or four hours on the off chance that some ancient dinosaur perio instructor in a white jacket would stop by and initial our treatment plans. The odds of this actually happening were slim to none. In the meantime, gums were rotting before our very eyes and most patients would die before having their perio treatment completed. Another useful exercise was the typodont scaling program. Some genius decided dental school was not already expensive enough so they called for each student to spend $300 for a typodont that had removable gums so you could paint artificial calculus on the roots and then scrape it off. Mind you, this represented 100 hours in the sawmill at $3 per hour for yours truly. Though it’s been almost thirty years, I may still apply for a refund on this one. Modern periodontists have finally recognized the futility of curing the incurable and have gone on to bigger and better things. The implant revolution has finally satisfied their urge to drill that we all had instilled in us early on. The drills are really big but go much too slow for my liking. Once you’ve revved to 300,000 rpm, it’s hard to go back to the arm. That’s all for now from Ballard.