"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:14:54 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

Speaking of explaining looks...
I had a lady come in today after 5 months of wearing a denture that I
made
her. She complained that people have recently noticed that the teeth
aren't
straight (even though for 5 months she had been perfectly happy with
them).
She has a drooping right upper lip, so when she's not smiling, more of the
teeth are showing on the left than on the right. When she smiles, her lip
is straight, and consequently the teeth look straight. She told me that
all of her family members were commenting over Thanksgiving that her new
denture wasn't straight. That, of course, told me that she must not
smile
a lot when her family is around. But how do you explain that to a
patient?

I've worn full dentures since '68 as the result of an incompetent Army
triage doctor and a equally incompetent Navy Surgeon and over the
years, have replaced them three times. This current time will be the
fourth - about once every ten years.

To date, as a result of the incompetence of the original surgery, I
have yet to obtain a proper set of dentures. Either the teeth are too
small or the teeth are too large or the damn things don't fit right a
month after the final fit - they are a total pain in
the...er....mouth.

Fortunately this time I now have a very understanding dentist who is
striving to get it right - we've been working on this new set for two
months and we're at the final impression/teeth setting stage. The
teeth are a proper size for my face, the damn things seem to fit and
with a few final tweaks, finally - a good pair of dentures. Gonna
cost me a bundle, but this time it's worth it.

I don't envy dentists by the way - that's got to be a tough job in the
best of circumstances.


I really like dentistry. I hate making dentures. Even under the best
circumstances, statistics show that 1/3 of the people are satisfied from
the get-go, 1/3 take awhile to adjust, and 1/3 of denture wearers will never
be happy with their dentures no matter how well they're made. I find that
less than 5% of *my* denture patients are hard to satisfy (which is about 25
percentage points better than the average). But the people in that 5% make
up about 99% of the headaches in my office. I'm almost to the point where I
just won't make dentures any more. If a real headache patient (like the
lady today) keeps complaining even after I know that I've done everything
possible to make her denture text-book perfect, I tell her to go get another
set made at another dentist...and then I offer to refund her money when she
gives me *my* dentures back. The condition for the refund is this: she has
to get the other dentist to send me a letter stating precisely what is wrong
with the set I made. I haven't issued a single refund yet.