Thursday, October 28, 2010

My obsession with beauty

I wish I wasn't obsessed with beauty.

The thing with dentistry, is that I think it's really important to have a good idea of beauty.
With so much flim flam, I believe that understanding the basic tenets of beauty is very valuable for my patients.

After all, I'm in the business of making people feel beautiful.

In my obsessive self-quest, I've met many pretty people and truly beautiful people as well.
I've seen countless masterpieces of art. I've handled and made a few myself.

Beauty is perfection.
Perfection is attained by perfect practice.
Perfect practice is by carefully measuring results, calibrating and removing sources of error.

If this sounds like drudgery, it sort of is.
However, I think that this is a worthy price for my patients.

-Matt

ps. Hopefully, I'll get a decent camera sometime in 2011 to show you what I mean.
I stopped taking photos, as they don't do justice to the subject.

Why I haven't been posting

Dear readers,

My apologies for not posting much the past several months.
I've been working on the job search, and recently been a bit unmotivated.

I've learned that DentiCal creates a certain mentality and a certain lack of gratitude.
Even with the 25% chance of reimbursement, even with the 20% reimbursement of fees, even with putting up with a higher chance of getting sued--I have to deal with patients that can't be bothered. It's been a bit upsetting, so I've been focusing my attention on other things like spending time with friends, and learning to be a normal 27 year old.

Nevertheless, I really love dentistry.

Even with everything that sucks about dentistry, I can't help but love it.
It's like the chef with scarred and pitted hands.
I know of no other profession where I can be constantly challenged with getting better, where I'm paid to make friends, and where I can be paid to treat people like family.

I was chatting with Dr. Li at the Berkeley Free Clinic.
We agreed that reimbursements are down. Overhead is up. Our staff drive better cars than we do. However, the trust that we receive from our patients is sacred and beautiful.

And I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world.
But we wouldn't trade this