Ep. 41: Patient Interview - South Florida Michelle

Part 10:00

This is Beyond the Arches, where full-arch dentistry meets real talk. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Arches. My name is Erica and today I'm joined by Dr. Daniel Noorthoek. Hello. Hi. And then we are also joined today by Carly. She is our social media manager. This is actually her first podcast, so we're super excited to have you here today. Welcome, Carly. Thank you. Excited to be here. And then our special guest of the afternoon is actually going to be Michelle.

Michelle is one of our patients who had her procedure done about, what would you say, a year ago? It was November of 2024. Okay. My 43rd birthday, I got my final. Not too long ago. Yeah. So we're excited to have you here today. So we're going to hear a little bit about her story, who she is, how you got here. I actually remember the day that you got your finals. We decorated for your birthday. That was probably one of my favorite finals.

You guys are the cutest. We really are. We put the birthday banner up. We made me cry. And we celebrated. I know. And I was like, it was already emotional, like, getting the finals in. But then I came in, and they had the banners up. And I was like, oh, my God. I know. I think you were working with Val mostly at the time. We miss her. She doesn't work with us anymore. But Val brought you flowers and everything just to help, you know, make it cute.

You literally have the best staff in the entire world. I know. You know that. All of them. They're so, so, all of them are so great. Yeah. It's a good time, for sure. That's what stands out to me the most. Yeah. You all remind him he's lucky often. We do. He's good to us. He's good to us. We, I guess I missed, I probably missed your delivery. Yeah. I miss a lot of deliveries. Okay. For finals. But I didn't know that you guys, you actually got it done, delivered on your birthday.

The morning of my birthday, yeah. Yep. That's amazing. It's so special. It just worked out that way. So it was, you know, what do they call it? Kismet. It was perfect. Yeah. Absolutely. Where, let's start with the basics. So you are, you were just telling us. You were telling us earlier, raised here in Boca. Yes. Native. Yes. Raised here. Moved here when I was three or four, when basically Palmetto Park Road stopped at Powerline, basically. There was like not really anything else out there.

Which is wildly unique for our patient base. Interesting. It is. Most of our patient base is not from here. No. So, you know, preschool, elementary school, middle school, I went to Pope John Paul and Spanish River. I know right where that is. For high school. And then I fled. I left. I went to North Carolina. I was there for a little more than a decade. Went to college and stayed for a while. And then came back here.

My dad got sick. So I came back here and. Welcome back. Met my husband and had babies. You said you were in music. What kind of music were you in and what kind of stuff did you do? Just kind of a music lover. South Florida in the 90s had a really good music scene. There was a lot of bands. Not many of them are still around. I think Nonpoint, which is like a hard rock, heavy, heavy metal kind of alternative metal, whatever, new rock band.

They're still around, but I don't know if anybody else is. So it was a lot of, you know, every weekend was concerts at bars and clubs that probably had no business being in at that age. It was the 90s. It was a different time. And then I went to college for public relations and wanted to work for a music band. And then I went to college for NASCAR. I was in Charlotte, North Carolina. So that's kind of the Mecca of NASCAR.

Absolutely. And that didn't end up working out. So I took my externship from college with a radio station and I fell in love with that. Did promotions and did some on air stuff, producing for the afternoon show. Very cool. For a little while. Let's touch on real quick. What was the what was the interest in NASCAR? Cars in general. Yeah. Sponsorships. Watching it. I joke that I was. A little boy. My dad never had. He had two girls.

So it was kind of like I was the I'm the younger one. So, you know, it was all the stuff he wanted to share. I think with a boy that got kind of pushed onto me, which was fine. I was in the cars and that was kind of a thing we did together was to go see races. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. At the time when he was this was, you know, the late 90s again. So he was blowing up and at the MTV Movie Awards and was doing some really cool, unique stuff.

That no NASCAR drivers had done yet. He had a Rolling Stone feature and his PR person. It was and is amazing. He still is. And that kind of caught my interest. And I was like, OK, that's what I want to do. I want to do what that guy does. Is that where your interest in pub public relations went? Yeah, definitely. Very cool. Yeah. So NASCAR is a is definitely an interesting sports. I don't even know what it is anymore, to be honest.

It was that was kind of. Peak time. Right. So that was right before Dale Earnhardt died. And so that period of time right before and right after was kind of when NASCAR was really kind of hitting mainstream and the height of the popularity. So do you still watch and follow it all? No, no. All my guys are retired. And I'm pretty sure that Daytona is this weekend. I think it is. Yeah, I know Dale Jr. Has a podcast.

I watch his podcast. It's very cute. Very cool. He has one with his wife, too. That's awesome. So then you ended up here. I did. Um. Came back here. Met my husband. I was working in retail operations for a while. I kind of fell into it accidentally. You know, it's retail. Do you still are you still on the cutting edge of music band following? No, no. Well, I live in the 90s. That's all I listen to. Still, what are your favorite bands?

Oh, Dave Matthews band. I have a Dave. Dave Matthews tattoo. So a huge DMV. Have we talked about this? I'm a huge fan myself. Yeah, I've been to maybe like 12 or 15 concerts, which isn't a lot when it comes to Dave fans. And you've probably been to more. But yeah, yeah, I when I worked in music in Charlotte, I worked radio and then I worked to Jason. I worked for a live music production company as kind of a side hustle.

So doing things like selling merch and running, which in the business is basically running air. And it's for the band, literally going to the grocery store with the writer that you see online with all the stuff that the band needs for their dressing room and going to the store and getting all that stuff. So I got to see a lot of concerts for free. That's awesome. How long did you do that? I did that. That was right after college.

So 20, 20 or 2005 until about 2013 when I came back here. That's incredible. Yeah, it was fun. I bet. Got to see a lot of really cool bands. Got to see a lot of really not cool bands. Yeah. And then when I came back here and then when I had kids, we don't I don't get to do that anymore. So we go see two bands every year. We see Dave Matthews and then we see Tool. They come.

Do you do you go to the local ones, West Palm? I try to. Yeah, yeah, it's hot. It is hot. It usually rains when it's an outside concert here. Yeah, I don't even mind the rain when it's that hot. Honestly, I'm getting so old for this. It's like. I just bought a shirt the other day that said Heart Says Pit, Knees Say Balcony. That's funny. Yeah, that's where I'm at these days. But yeah, we try and go.

We're going to go this year. I think it's Memorial Day weekend. Dave Matthews this year. Cool. Robert Odom, our marketing guy, he is big into Tool. He goes to that concert as well every year. They're very fun. They're a fun show, right? Very fun. Yeah, very. The last show was interesting. It was the first show I've been to where they had a. No phone policy. Oh. So you weren't allowed. Like if you need, if you had an emergency or something, you had to step out to answer your phone.

There was no pictures, no videos, no, you know, texting, no scrolling Facebook. No, none of that. So. Remove yourself and be in the moment. Exactly. Which we all. It was. It was great. Need to do anyway. Yeah, it was fantastic. And they weren't playing like they would kick you out for sure. They had security on point. It was at the Hard Rock. It was at Hard Rock. Yeah. I think I remember that was Odom going to that one.

He goes as many as he can. Yeah, I'm sure he did it. All of them. Yeah. That's his number one favorite band. Yeah. I can see that there are people who love Tool, love Tool. So, yeah, I get it. That's awesome. That describes it perfectly. Tell us a little bit about your journey for Teeth and how you found us and. Oh, well, OK. I mean, I've never, despite, you know, my parents being pretty good about teaching me and doing it when I was young, I've always had kind of problems from the beginning.

They both have had issues with their teeth as well. But I was hanging on, hanging in there and doing what I needed to do to hold on to them. And, you know, it was still manageable and affordable. And then I got pregnant twice in a row, back to back. And that was just, you know, downhill quickly. And then it was, you know, infectious. Yeah. Infection after infection. And they were quoting me prices to save them that were astronomical.

And I got worried, you know, about infection. I had two little kids at the time and still do. I guess they're still little. My oldest is about to be 10 and he keeps reminding me that he's not a little kid anymore. But, yeah, so I had kids and I was like, you know, how stupid to die from a tooth infection in the United States of America. So I went looking at Mexico because I couldn't afford to do it here.

I didn't think I went looking in Mexico and read it where I go for everything. My washer or dryer. Shut up. You know, if I need to rage about something in the world, read it. Apparently dentists, too. So I went on Reddit and found I don't know if I found a post from you first or a post from Mike. It was one of the two and read it. And then it clicked that you were here in Boca.

And then my first thought was like, he's going to I can't afford him. Boca dentist in Boca. Are you kidding? OK. Looked into it, saw your pricing that I probably could afford that. And then I thought, OK, well, he's got to be there's something he's paying to hide. He's a negative ad. I searched and searched. I did my due diligence. I couldn't find anything bad about him. And I'm like, that's not true. That almost is is is worse than finding.

Right. It is. We actually talk about if we get a negative review, leave it. It's not going to be the end of the end of the world. Right. And then I made an appointment. I came in and met you. And, you know, I clicked you. Everybody, again, is fantastic. I, you know, I feel like I'm doing the commercial, but it really is. Everybody's amazing from start to finish. And there's no judgment. No, you know, I've definitely experienced that over the years from dentists and even ▶read it.

You know, if you are insecure about your mouth and you go into a dentist and you leave thinking like, oh, my God, what is he saying about me? And gosh, maybe that's the worst case he's ever seen. There are dentists on Reddit that are saying that kind of stuff. Yeah. So if you look for that and you're like, wow, OK. Yeah. But, you know, you were cool. And I know you were a Redditor and I trust me, stalked your past comments and everything and saw that you weren't, you know, there was no red flags on Reddit.

So that's usually a good sign. Yeah. And then I came in, made the appointment and then we did it. And that atmosphere, if I was to search where one, I don't judge anyone just because why would you judge somebody on the way they take care of their teeth? And who knows what the story is before that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the real reason why that atmosphere is present is, uh, weirdly enough, if I was to kind of track it back in my, my brain, I've always really enjoyed, uh, biking, road biking.

It was something that my dad and I did together. He got me a road bike when I was, I guess, 13 or so we did a bunch of like long endurance rides together and such. Like it was always an activity that we did together. And when I went to college. It's an older bike, you know, and I don't have a dollar to my name. Uh, I walked in with my bike and, you know, any bike shop that I would go into with this bike was like, you would feel, you would be instantly judged by the people there.

I don't know why biking in general is some of the worst shop runners of, of all time that when you walk in, they're like, oh, why don't you have the eight, seven, one, four, six in there? That's, that's a piece of crap. The seven, two is junk. You know? And you're like, oh, well, my dad gave it to me as a gift, you know, like how about not be a jerk and I'll spend some money here. Anyway, long story short, that feeling, anyone that I resonate with, whether it be a bait shop or somewhere where I feel like a dental patient would, where they're feeling uncomfortable, you don't, you're not a dentist, so you don't know.

So why would I go and say, why did you let a guy do, you know, resin fillings instead of X, Y, Z? Like, that's not your place to know. And it's. Probably it wasn't ultimately your decisions, but if I trace it back, weirdly enough, it goes back to bike shops and feeling made to feel bad and hating that feeling and trying to go to bike shops or, or wherever. But I tried to support the people that are, dude, you like, you, you have a, you don't know what you're doing, but you have an interest in fishing here.

Let me show you everything. I get that. I worked at a snowboarding shop in college. Same. It's gotta be the same. Yeah. And that's definitely the vibe we were, you know, locally owned and that's the vibe we tried to give. Everybody was, you know, we're going to spend an hour with you and give you all the information, whether you buy from us or not. And we hope you're stoked on snowboarding when you leave. And that's all. Yeah.

No matter what the situation is, nobody wants to be on the other end of things where you're like, you're questioning yourself. You're like, what am I doing here? Am I, you know, am I dumb? Am I, is this a good decision, bad decision, whatever. So we definitely don't, we always, I always reiterate this in my consultations as well. We come in, myself and Lilia, the treatment coordinators after like the doctors are coming in. And we'll say, we are.

We're going to reiterate whatever you need to be reiterated at any point in time. This is so much information. It's not even funny, especially for patients. It's if it's like their first full arch consultation. So we're like, call us, text us anything. Like we are more than happy to help you feel comfortable and confident in the decision that you're making. My favorite part about doing this podcast is when we have patient interviews and we talk to them because we get to know you obviously in the process, but our contact times, what an hour.

Yeah. Yeah. Of talking. And then there's another couple hours worth of work, but you're not able to talk. They love, like you've lived though. Every time we, every time you, you say something, you've worked somewhere else or done something else. It's like interesting. Like I love getting that out of the people. Yeah. Is it the, uh, Jack of all trades, master of none. Hey, as long as you were interested in all of the trades. Yeah. What? Um, so tell us the story about the snowboarding, uh, place that you worked.

Uh, that was a place in Chicago. Yeah. It was a place in Charlotte that unfortunately no longer exists. I think it was somewhat a victim of the pandemic, um, called Waller bear surf shop family owned, uh, in Myrtle beach, South Carolina for, since 19 seven, Oh God, I'm going to get it wrong. And it's on the t-shirt 1976, I believe. Um, so the son of the original owner opened the Charlotte stores and I managed one of them.

Um, and then was assistant manager at the other store for, I worked there for, I worked there through college. I worked there while I still worked in radio. Um, you know, I would work one or two days a week, uh, for 10 years. What kind of shop is it? You said surf, surf shop, but for instance, obviously in Charlotte, not really used all that. But Charlotte has the benefit of being about equally halfway to the mountains and to the beach.

So it's about two, two and a half hours in either, either direction to get to either one. So, I mean, it wasn't completely out of, out of thought for people to take day trips and that kind of thing. So it's probably pretty similar, like around here we have Peter Glenn, which is the ski snowboard shop. They'd say, well, why is there one in South Florida? Cause you still have to take a plane. Well, those of us that like to ski and snowboard kind of want to get some gear before we go to the mountain and have to go with what equipment is up there, et cetera.

So I was wondering if it was like that kind of place, but yeah, we did. We did hard goods. So we did, um, surfboards, skateboards, uh, wakeboards, which was huge and lots of lakes. And, um, and then, uh, what did I say? Skateboards, snowboards, surfboards, and wakeboards. Yeah. Snowboards obviously were seasonal. And of all the boards is snowboard your draw. What's your, do you have any draw? I surfed down here before I left never well and, uh, not often enough to become good at it, but Jack of all trades, master of the check did that one.

No, but I did. So I love surfing and I knew enough about it to be able to sell surfboards. Um, and then I got to surf a little bit more up there too. Um, I did try snowboarding and it was fun. Um, I got really into longboard skateboarding. I don't know if you're familiar in school. I have a couple of long boards. Yeah. Um, that was towards the end. And then it started again. I was, you know, when I left, I was in my thirties and it was starting to hurt me.

It was hard to fall. Yeah. ▶So I never, it was always, uh, it was a very popular way to get to school and get around school when I went to UF and it was always really interesting, but I never had the like guts to go get one and figure it out. I was never really a skateboarder when I was a kid, but I have one now in my later adult years. So like you said, like falling is not great, but it is a fun, it's fun pads and I'll go take you to one.

We'll go down the parking garage. It's fun. It's a bust. That's what the kids do after, after hours, like at Mizner, sometimes when I'm leaving the office, you see groups, 15, 20 kids are like so fast going down the parking garage. The one that was the most fun and the most ill-advised in Charlotte was the, uh, one of the parking garages for Panther stadium, which in Charlotte, the football stadium is directly downtown. So there's like no parking lot, um, you park where you can kind of and walk.

But the parking, the one kind of designated parking garage has a spiral driveway down. That's cool. Did you enjoy living in Charlotte? From what I can tell outside or looking in it, that most people that live in Charlotte love it. And it looks very like clean and nice and big, but not too big. Exactly. It's, um, mid-sized Southern city. So comparable to like Atlanta as well, Atlanta feels a little bigger than Charlotte, I think. But, um, yeah, it's beautiful.

It's changed a lot. I went up there this last year to see Kendrick Lamar, uh, in concert and it's different, but bank of America is located there, right? Yeah. Yeah. And stadium bank of America. Oh, there you go. Yeah. And also, uh, NASCAR. Yes. The only thing negative I know and can say about Charlotte is I cannot stay in that airport. Yeah. So much walking. Have you ever flown through Charlotte? I've never flown through Charlotte. No. It's.

It's you'll be, you'll come into a and need to go out of, we'll say D and you've probably got a two and a half mile worth like walk and wind. It's not, it's not like a, you know, say in Atlanta, you kind of just take the train and you're there. Charlotte's got some buses. It's a lot of walking. It's a lot of like walking all the entire length of the terminal instead of just the T. The thing about Charlotte, Charlotte is a very well-planned city.

So, um, it all makes sense. The way the grid and the city works makes sense and the buildings are placed in exactly the right spots. And this, the skyline is beautiful. That's all by design. And then you see something like the airport where it's like very clear that like the city outgrew the airport and the airport kind of went, Oh no, we need to, we need to add on and add on. Who cares if it makes sense?

Get it. We need to, you know, and it, yeah, it's a nightmare. All of their civil engineers, all their good civil engineers went to downtown projects and all the. Wow. All the D students were just, Oh, you, you go work on the airport, Todd, go work in the airport. It's not important. Uh, back to teeth, tell us as you were healing, what was your experience like during the, during the week of obviously there's pain. It wasn't, you know what?

It wasn't, it was not even that bad. Um, it's coming from like infection after infection. It was nothing. Um, the surgery was great. I was really hesitant. ▶I was one of those people that was super hesitant about not being put to sleep. Um, I've had a lot. A lot of bad experiences with pain, uh, with dental stuff and, um, you know, it took, took some reassuring. I don't know if maybe it was you, but somebody that, you know, did the reassuring, but it took some reassuring that it was going to be fine and it was, um, you know, the experience was fine.

The medication worked. I do. I do remember a little bit more than I think the average patient, but I didn't care a single bit about what was going on. I'm pretty sure I'd bit you at some point. I don't remember. I remember. I remember something about you going like, open your mouth. Open. Oh, with your finger in there. Um, but yeah, it was, it was great. Um, next day came in with the temporaries and I didn't really bruise all that bad or swell.

So as I remember, if I try to remember your case, I remember the red resounding thing that I remember is that you are a very even keel per you're very similar to me. The highs and the lows are there's, they are there, but they're very also mid middled out by a lot of even keel. You were very even keel through the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you were relatively pretty easy, pretty easy going the whole time.

Relaxed. Maybe you didn't feel that way mentally, but you didn't show it to us. Yeah. You internalized it all really well. Yeah. You didn't show it to us. I'm pretty sure. I think on the second, second, um, day of, of trials, I think I burst into tears, but everybody was very sweet to me. Uh, it's an emotional process, you know, it's a lot of money. It's a risk. Yeah. It's a big risk, you know, there's no going back.

Um, but it was best decision, hard decision to make, but best one ever. And, um, during the healing, what was your diet? Like there, was it a big, big lifestyle change or ice cream, ice cream from McDonald's milkshakes from McDonald's. It felt good. And what's your favorite at home go to flavor? What kind of person are you? Oh, choose wisely. My favorite, favorite that I never really get is probably the Dolce de leche Haagen-Dazs. Yeah.

That's pretty solid. I tend to stay on like the simples when I go to favorites, you know, I like anything. I like pretty much any ice cream, not, not simple as vanilla, but like we'll say like a cookie dough, which I think I was telling you guys, I watched a YouTube the other day. Some group of like influencers got to the other together and did like a collab video. And one of them, I watch, they went out and went to, I think it was Kroger and they bought six different brands of cookie dough ice cream and they melted it all and sifted out the cookie portion to see which brands are like taking advantage of you and which ones are generous.

It was so fascinating. Wow. Um, yeah. Number, number one was, uh, Ben and Jerry's huge, huge chunks. It was, uh, it was for what we now, what used to be a half gallon, but not, it's just a little short. They made it equal for all of them. It was like 220 grams of cookie dough. But so if you go down the line, so the number two and three were both the store brands, both Kroger brands, like Kroger super premium and Kroger premium.

And going down the line, what was the one that was, Oh, Tillamook was the least, not the least least, but it was on the bottom. So just for comparison, Ben and Jerry's was 220 grams. Tillamook was like, if I'm remembering correctly, it was like in the seventies or sixties. Is it one third? Wow. That's not enough. Not enough at all. That was the flavor that my family could never keep stocked in our house because my brother and I would, we call it cherry picking.

I know people call it different things. Yeah. You go hunting. Treasure hunting. Treasure hunting, cherry picking, whatever you call it. But whoever was going to get that ice cream after one of us had absolutely no cookie dough in their ice cream. So I'm pretty fair and equal. You know, I'm pretty, um, right down the middle when it comes to everyone's an equal party when they're going to eat cookie dough. I don't. You're like fair game. Take your scoop and you get what you get.

I don't treasure hunt cookie dough, but moose tracks, you're in trouble. I'm only going. I was like, I can't relate it, but I can.

Part 226:21

Um, I don't even know if they still make it. Ben and Jerry's made a flavor called chubby hubby. Oh yeah. That had peanut butter filled chocolate covered pretzels. Yup. That sounds delicious. I remember that one. So good. I'll eat all of those right out of the pint. No shame. What's your favorite Carly? I honestly really like Neapolitan. Okay. I know that's like very boring, but I just love the flavor of like chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. ▶It's the best of all worlds.

When you talk about favorite ice cream, most people are going to go to, I feel are going to go to a pretty simple one. Yeah. It's like a childhood. Yeah, it is. I think. Yeah. Yeah. We all enjoy all of them, but you're going to go to something that's like super simple. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me when somebody says chocolate or vanilla, like you're going to the simple basics as the favorite. Yeah, absolutely. I'm usually a vanilla gal unless we're like at a specialty place.

Like if I'm just buying ice cream at the grocery store. I'm probably picking vanilla. But if we're going to like, we just, the other day went down to Solito in Mizner. Okay. We did a popsicle. I think I got a dulce de leche from there. Okay. Did you ever try that? Have you ever tried that place? No. It's delicious. It tastes like fresh fruit. It's awesome. It's amazing. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. Actually. Your kids would like it.

In terms of a premium experience, like paying a, like a premium, like it's, it's one of those experiences that's pretty much worth it. Yeah. ▶Yeah. It's good. So ice cream. Ice cream. Yes. That was basically it. Um, mashed potatoes, applesauce. Was it a big lifestyle change or is it kind of not a big deal? Not really. Um, it got annoying towards like the end of the period a little bit. Um, just because it was like, you know, I, I was kind of cheating, but not really like, you know, pulling like tiny pieces off the chicken tender or whatever.

Um. I was just trying to, to kind of get a taste of something that wasn't ice cream. I don't think that's cheating. Do we call that cheating? When everybody says they're like cheating, they like look at me like, am I going to get in trouble? I'm not judging. I didn't judge you before. I'm not judging you now. Yeah. Yeah. We know when we give the rules that everyone's going to cheat a little bit. Yeah. It's not about the cheating and the actual.

I didn't want to mess anything up. Yeah. Yeah. It's about the force that you use more than it is the stuff that you eat. So. It's also the fact that you knew that you were kind of like tinkering on that fine line of like, should I have this? Should I not have it? So you kind of save that cheating moment for a special occasion. I'll tell you after a year of being in the finals, I was in, um, temporaries for like ▶two or three days, a couple of weeks ago and that was hard.

You just had a reline completed recently. Yeah. That was hard. Cause then I, it was like, you know, it was hard to switch back into like, oh yeah, I can't really eat anything. I've heard that. Yeah. Once you have the car of your dreams, it's hard to go back to that like little rental car as you're working on it. Yeah. We get that for sure. Yeah. And then about, um, actually random question. So being that your diet had a lot of ice cream involved, which is cold.

Part 329:22

Yes. How was, how is the sensation or how was the sensation during your period of healing in now eating with implants? It's um, a mental thing. Like I still, every once in a while I'll go to like swish with some water from my water bottle that I know is ice water and my brain goes, oh, don't swish with that. It's going to hurt. Yeah. I can't, I can't like retraining myself to know that I can bite into the, you know, popsicle or whatever.

And it's not going to give you that shock that you get. Does it, does, do you get a sensation though? Like, is it, can you feel that it's like if you were to eat a lot of ice cream or like a popsicle that takes a long time, that's going to be like prolonged exposure to cold. Do you feel that sort of resonate in the bone at all or anything like similar to that? Yeah. It feels almost like, I mean, it feels, I guess because the zirconia gets cold when it's exposed to the cold that it feels like it would, you know, normally with, with regular teeth to me, I think typically anything I eat feels, these feel like my teeth at this point.

Um, occasionally if stuff gets caught underneath, then you're like, oh, okay. Yeah. They're not mine, but they function the same way. Um, I gotta be careful with heat sometimes. Yeah. Cause the teeth as the gauge of how hot something is, isn't there anymore. So I've definitely put stuff in my mouth and I'm like, Ooh, that's a little bit. Yeah. Your, your stop point is the sensitive, easily damaged roof of your mouth. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Makes sense.

I've heard people comment on the cold, like the coldness of something before, but I haven't heard the hot being mentioned. So that's good. Yeah. I definitely have to slow myself down sometimes and make sure that something is cool enough to eat. Cause I've. Yeah. Yeah. I would have expected my group. Just the only kind of point that I would have put together and try to expect something would be like my grandfather had an artificial knee and when it was cold out and we would get in his pool, he would be sensitive to it.

And he'd mentioned that he was sensitive to, I would have imagined that a prolonged exposure might've been some somewhat similar, like a little weird, like cold ache or something, but. It doesn't seem to bother me that much. Yeah. It's probably not enough exposure. Like what I'm talking about, an artificial knee metal in a pool, that's pretty prolonged exposure. So maybe it's just not enough. No. Yeah. And maybe my gums are toughened up at this point too, that it's not too, too bad.

It doesn't bother me that much. And, uh, what was your first meal out? Oh, I guarantee you it was probably nothing exciting. I disagree. Went home and had mashed potatoes. I feel like you said it was a salad. Yeah. I feel like. No, no. I still haven't tried a salad. Okay. Um, well maybe I have, but not intentionally. Okay. Oh, here's a salad. Maybe like chips. I want to say it may have been like McDonald's or something like.

That's a good one. Lame on my way home from the appointment kind of thing. Um, but then I had steak a few nights later and that was nice. That was awesome. Okay. I feel like you said chips and salsa. That's probably was in there too. Chips for sure. Because we're. That was one that I was breaking into tiny pieces. Yeah. I feel like you said chips and salsa. Cause we just had the Superbowl pass and I feel like it was around Superbowl time last year as well.

And I feel like. Yeah. I'm getting that vibe. Superbowl was still within my, uh, right within my period of where I had to eat soft. So I had to get creative with snacks. I guess we didn't mention in the beginning of this, you're a year out now, 14 months or so. Yeah. Um, has your life changed at all other than the small thing, which are big things, the confidence obviously. And the look of the smile, but you're also now no longer getting the, um, you know, there's a guard dog in here.

Yeah. There is a guard dog. Um, the, I just lost my train of thought. The. You're out 14, 14 months. It's changing my life. Yeah. You're not the little thing. It was a good question. It's gone. It'll come back. Sorry. Oh, well. Yeah. So, um, no, like, uh, meaning, uh, how has it changed in terms of, you know, is it, has it brought you a new sense of confidence and, you know, Totally. A hundred percent. ▶Um, again, with the, like the mental gymnastics, a little bit of, of remembering that I can smile and I don't have to be self-conscious of what my teeth look like or I smile the right way to make sure you don't see certain teeth or whatever.

Um, so yeah. That's getting over that hurdle. I still in pictures have to remind myself, like, okay, show your teeth. Um, but yeah, I mean, Before your, do you like these teeth better? This is a random question. I've never asked a patient. Do you like these teeth better than you do your originals before, when they were intact? Yeah, totally. That's awesome. And I was really probably kind of annoying about designing them too. No, I don't think so.

Particular. So. The, we talk about it all the time. Our system is made so that you can be as picky as you want or not. Yeah. Because there are people that are picky and then people that are not. Yeah. And they don't even people, people that end up being like super, super picky may have been in the console and said, oh, I don't care. You guys can just pick and they ended up coming back for six sets.

That's fine. And that's, that's why we take that time that week.

Part 434:52

It has nothing to do with speed or equipment. We have all the equipment to do it the same day. Like we say over and over. That's, that's why it's there. Being local. I definitely kind of took advantage of that. Good. But yeah, it was worth it. It was great. We want, we want you to. We encourage you to. Yeah. Yeah. The only problem is when you get into, if you take too much advantage of it, it's not a, a money or time thing.

It's a, it's a safety thing. We got close to that window. Which is fine. We kind of have to get there. Cause you know, we're coming up on the two weeks or whatever it is where we need to get embraced. And I was like, okay. We, as, as Mizner has the majority of our patients have, uh, are, are sourcing our source from the rest of the country. We kind of have the luxury that most are on the timeline on the timeframe, whereas our other offices in Tampa and Jacksonville, that's a daily struggle that they have to fight that we don't feel.

We have no idea really what that's like on a day to day. Every single one of their patients is local and every single one of the patients may get to be like yourself. Yeah. And they have to make sure that they stay on that timeline because also when people are here, they're here to do that. And they make the time where a local person may have, uh, in its life, they may have an important admin meeting on Thursdays that they can't miss.

So they can't make it on Thursday. Well, that happens two or three times in the process that automatically just shoves it out. Even if they're only going to go through three sets, they're just, it naturally happens because it's life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Has it, has it faded? Uh, obviously you're here talking about it and it hasn't faded the specialness or what it's brought to your life, but in a way of incorporating into being you and your personality and who you are, like, as it kind of faded into just an existence and a part of Michelle.

I think so. Um, you know, I, I, I don't get a lot of feedback, especially like strangers or anything like that. I'm not, I'm not the type. I love it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I'm intimidating or I just, people don't approach me like that. So, you know, I don't get the, the feedback from people I don't know, but people I know, you know, a lot of them, it's almost like it's normal for them too.

And so it makes me feel like it's not really that big of a deal. And I know they look a million times better. ▶Well, sometimes I think blending in naturally and organically is almost the same thing. It's almost the best compliment instead of, you know, standing out like a sore thumb or anything. It's crazy. Totally. Totally. That's good. So as we kind of get to the end, you have a lot of surprises in your life. What have we missed?

That's awesome and cool about and unique about you. Oh, well, uh, like any certain like hobbies that are unique and special. Uh, I am a fish keeper. Okay. What is like fish keeper? Uh, I keep beta fish right now. I have, uh, three, uh, four tanks, but three beta fish. They're interesting. They're very social fish. Very fun. Obviously mistreated, um, a lot of the time. So by casual, not beta fans. Yeah.

Part 538:12

Same with goldfish. Goldfish have no business being in a home tank unless it's gigantic. They really need to be in ponds, but they're sold to go in these little bowls on your table. So betas are kind of the same way. Yeah. Um, very overbred, very poor genetics, uh, hard to take care of sometimes, but. You always see the small bowls. How, for comparison, how big of a tank do you have for each one? Uh, Like what's appropriate?

Betas really need to be in a five gallon. Okay. Um, I have one of mine in a five gallon. He's a long finned, which that is not, that's bred into them for us to like them. They're not, they don't look like that in the wild. Oh. I had no idea. They don't like it. It's hard for them to swim. Uh, my long finned guys. A tail biter. So he gets mad at his fins basically because they weigh him down and he'll turn around and bite at him.

That's kind of sad. Yeah. So he's in the smaller tank. He likes it. Um, my other two are shorter fin and they're in a 10 gallon. And then I have a 20 gallon that my husband says, please don't put a betta fish in it because you can't really put any other big fish in with the betta fish that will fight. How did you get interested in specifically the betta fish? Um, I was, you know, walking by those sad cups at the pet store and seeing these gorgeous fish in there.

And, uh, The little Chinese to go containers. Yeah. And then we had to, you know, my, my daughter, we talked earlier, my daughter is dying for a puppy and we can't do that right now. So I kind of was trying to steer her on the fish. Yeah. We get one of these beautiful fish and we'll take good care of it. And then, um, my mother-in-law came home with my daughter and a fish and a bowl. Hmm. So I had to go out to the pet store and get proper set up and start taking care of this fish.

And then they call it multi-tank syndrome. So it tends to happen with fish keeping, um, you end up with multiple tanks. That is so sweet. I grew up my whole life just to relate to this story. ▶I grew up my whole life. I've never had a pet. I've never had an animal. I've never had anything. One day for like my ninth birthday, my neighbor walked over to my house with a betta fish. And that was my birthday gift.

And I was crying. I was crying. I was so excited that I finally had something. So I hope that your daughter like loves them and appreciates them. And maybe one day she'll get a puppy. She, she, their mom's fish now. Um, you know, she, okay. They don't, they don't, you can't pet them. And you know, they're not betta fish are interactive. They're interested in what you're doing and want you to feed them at all times. Yeah. Um, you know, they're fun, but yeah, their mom's fish too.

When you said fish keeper, I was going to say I'm a fish keeper. I like to catch them and keep them. Well, I hear you have a 3d printer. I do. So there is a huge market for 3d printed fish tank, um, accessories like for the fish and then also for the tank. So, you know, if you ever need anything printed, I actually have two at home. Okay. Yeah. It's like my dream. That's the next thing. My, I am ADHD and I am a habitual crafter and I bounced from prior to fish keeping.

It was, um, miniature making. So dollhouse, I made a dollhouse and for it built all the furniture and you know, did that whole thing and then drop that picked up fish keeping. So I don't know what the next, I mean the fish are here to stay obviously because you know, living creature, but, um, the next hobby, my daughter is dying for it to be 3d printing. So I'm going to sell you on this as a hobby. Okay.

My husband's going to be so happy. The access to a good quality printer. Is wildly insane. Yeah. If you wanted to go to say making miniatures or making like, uh, people do people that do, uh, model figures from dungeons and dragons or whatever game or whatnot, they're going to typically use a resin printer like dentistry does where the trade dips into the goop, et cetera. Right. You can get a really good printer. That's not, you know, for dental materials and stuff, but you can get a new, a good home one for like 500 bucks.

Yeah. As a camera, you can watch it, do it the whole thing, but it's kind of messy. I'm not a, and so that resin, the resin printers are not what I'm really into. What I have is called the FDM printer. And it's a printer. That's essentially just a fancy hot glue gun. And for a kilogram, which is two pounds worth of, of plastic, it's about 10 to $15. So it's not terribly expensive in the printers themselves. Uh, they're clean, fast, efficient.

You know, maybe like a foot and a half cube kind of thing, but the, you can get a really pretty decent one that doesn't do all the materials, but it does whatever you would want to do. Hobby for right around that same, like 500, if you really wanted to get fancy, you could spend a thousand bucks. What's cool about it. What I absolutely love about it is there's always something going on. So unlike other hobbies, say working on a car or longboarding.

It's weather dependent, it's situation dependent, time dependent. So when you get down in through this hobby, what's cool is your printer can be at home. They all pretty much have cameras. You can watch it printing. You can see how it's doing, et cetera. Um, but if you get into the design side, the design software is free for personal use, like home use. If you're not using it for commercial and they use a little bit of a stripped down version, but it's the same.

Let's say Ford is manufacturing a brand new engine. They're going to CAD cam it mostly on this type done this platform. Right? So it's like wildly capable, but you get it for free because you're just a little consumer. And this is the take home that I love. It doesn't take a wildly important, crazy computer. You can take it with you. You can do it in the airport. You can do it in bed. You can do it at work.

You know what? What I love about it is it's, it's one of those hobbies that can be sort of ever present.

Part 644:19

So you're not doom scrolling on Reddit. Instead you're designing X, Y, Z. So like what I'm, what I'm printing right now is, uh, it's actually a trait. It's funny that we're connecting these together in the same conversation. So in fishing, uh, you always want to kind of have bait ready, et cetera. And the only thing that's out there is you vacuum seal your fish with your bait fish. With the hook and the lead, the leader and such.

And it's a big tangled mess. It's inside a vacuum pack. ▶It's always the, the hooks always catching on the bag, et cetera. So I took maybe a week or two ago. I said, you know what? I'm going to design something that I love. That's for me. That's going to fit for everything. And so what I designed is a tray that sits each one of the rigs of the bait fish in, and I can wrap my line. And I can stick it.

I can stick it into this little like rubber kind of, uh, V if you will. And like kind of jam it in there and it keeps it all organized. They stack on top of each other. I can put it in the freezer without getting yelled at by my wife. It's amazing. Uh, because it's designed by me for me. Uh, and it's so rewarding. I'm, I know I'm like gushing here about three. Honestly, my favorite is that you can solve your own problems.

Absolutely. And the rubber part. Also is printed by the 3d printer. So you can print a version of rubber called TPU. Okay. And TPU is a really cool material. It's super flexible and super durable. And the more layers, the more dense you make it, the stronger it is. I mean, you can pretty much print TPU and use it to, you know, you could run a car over it kind of thing. Right. But you can also make it really weak by making it less layers.

So there's this aspect of the design that's always kind of tweaking and playing. But as an example, I needed a rubber part to hold the fishing line. I designed it to snugly fit in there. It holds it. It's it's so it's such a cool hobby. And, and we're talking about literally at the most a thousand dollars. Everyone has a computer. It's universal. So you're talking about a thousand dollars for the fanciest ish one that you want. Right.

And unlimited fun. So I fully support. Listen, I had a little bit of cash to burn this last year. A little bit. Um. And my whole philosophy that I'm carrying into 2026 is choosing joy because it's so hard to find these days. And wherever I find it, I'm taking it. You know, I'm going for it. So that was, you know, I had a little bit to burn and I'm like, I want to find something. And I looked very seriously into those and I ended up buying Disney annual passes.

I was wondering where this was going. Maybe next year. Yeah. Yeah. There's actually, as I'm thinking about it. I think that. It's a. Cheaper version. Um, you want one that hasn't included for the most part, you want one that has an enclosure so that you can, it'll get to the temperature and the consistency that it'll, you can do the slightly fancier materials. Yeah. Um, and I'm pretty sure you can buy a brand new one of those for $350.

I'm going to have you send the link.

Part 747:28

Cause I wonder if it's the same one I was looking at. Potentially. Sounds. We're not sponsored by bamboo yet. It may be. Yeah. Bamboo is. That may be the one that I was looking at too. Simple. Easy. It's dangerous. It's. I'm going to have to make a lot. It's not that dangerous though. I'm going to have to make my kids so much stuff. It's really hard to get hurt by the expenses of a 3d printer. I will say, I will go on record and say for a home hobby, 3d printer, it's very difficult to hurt yourself financially.

Yeah. Well, that's good. And you can always sell little $10 trinkets. So your daughter actually, so Robert Odom has the same, our marketing guy has the same printer. His son's big into video games and they do this. Um, every year they do like a little business kind of market for their kids so they can kind of learn. The kids can learn business and margin and all that. So his son, Robbie took a video game that he likes.

It's like, I guess it's called gorilla tag. Oh yes. My kid. Yes. So he took, I guess they get badges and such for gorilla tag. So they took those badges and they printed off a bunch of them and he's selling it at that market. And so, you know, it's probably, what did he tell me? I think they're selling them for a dollar and they probably cost about 10 cents a piece. It's amazing. And Robbie's like wildly excited about it.

And the kids are all like hyped up about it. They're like, Oh, are you going to print those? Yeah. Tell Robbie he has another customer. Cause my daughter would go nuts. Yeah. Nuts for that. Yeah. You should message. Uh, you should message Odom. I will. I think we messaged before. Um, so yeah, I will, I will do that cause that's funny. My daughter would love that. Now that I'm thinking about it too. You actually, your daughter made us bracelets and I think I actually gave it, I think Dr.

Dan has it waiting to be put on the shelf. So actually I made bracelets for you guys because they were not appropriate for my daughter to make. This is true. Um, but yes, that my daughter was making bracelets for her friends that were very age appropriate. And then I made some that were not. We love them. And Dr. Dan, when we have that, that shelf that we were just discussing with the kind of memorabilia on it. Oh, I can't wait.

Um, we have that. Yeah. That's the big news. The big news is that we're doing our own studio and we'll have our own, you know, backgrounds and such. And so, uh, on those shelves, the intention is to put our little knickknacks and trinkets and gifts from our patients. So if you gave us something, it may show up. Some would call them chachkis. Chachkis. Anything and everything. But we appreciate you taking the time. This has been really fun.

It's always really fun. It's chill. Just get to know you kind of scenario. Yeah. Yeah. We, we talk about teeth all day. We don't need to talk about teeth that much. And these are perfect at this point, so I don't really have any reason to come back and see you for a year. So this is, this is great. Well, you'll certainly go in the bracket of people that we always look forward to seeing and we always look forward to coming in.

And I'm glad that I ran into you, you know, I'm not necessarily there when the cleanings come in. So it was great to see you and schedule this out. I would have kept bugging you to come on. I'll come on again if you want me. Perfect. Yeah. Come on as many times as you want. We'll have you start running the patient side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The patient interviews. I would love to.

Part 850:37

No, thank you so much. And we're excited for you and looking forward to the future and working with you forever and ever. I'm going to make you uncomfortable. I just, I told you this before. I hope you know that what you do changes people's lives really does. And the fact that you do it in an ethical way speaks so much about you. I mean, your practice speaks a lot about you, obviously the people that you hire. But yeah, doing this, this in an ethical way is huge.

Thank you. Yeah. It's. only way to live yeah you know that there's i don't have to be the one that's the most the most popular brand in town i'd like it to be but if it isn't then we all have a mission you know like carly has a reason to go to work i have a reason to go to work erica has a reason to go to work and you have a reason to feel good about the dentist you come to definitely so um we've we've always tried to keep that you know in mind that it's never it's about numbers to survive but it's not about numbers when it comes to people yeah so we appreciate that you're welcome all righty well till next time till next time thanks michelle thank you thank you thanks everyone