To all you bloggers! I just had a patient in today that reminded me why they call my job "Practicing Dentistry". We did a fairly minor tooth color filling on this patient’s lower right bicuspid to replace an old broken silver filling. I placed the new filling with no apparent problem but he called up about a month later complaining of recurrent pain with the very same tooth. He was going to Maui next week and wanted to have it looked at ASAP. An X-ray quickly showed the problem. I had a margin problem between the teeth on my brand new tooth colored filling. Now this reminds me off an old saying of Dr. Jennet's, my operative instructor at UCLA in the early 70's. One of his favorite sayings was, "The only dentist that never had an overhanging margin, is the dentist that never did a filling." Much to my dismay, it actually took me 2 additional tries to get the margin down on this extremely interesting situation. Relying on our radiographs to verify the edges. And that is indeed why they call my job "Practicing Dentistry." You never know what is around the next corner or where future surprises may lay.
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