![]() ![]() In my 30 years of experience, I've never had a patient come back after I've pulled a wisdom tooth and say, "You know, I really miss that tooth." Nobody notices losing a wisdom tooth. At this point I recommend removing it and spending your money on your other teeth." Worst-case scenario, push back the chair and say, "You know what? This tooth is a disaster. If you're afraid of doing a second molar for fear you might mess it up, do it! That works out to be one more tooth out of 20 saved. If an endodontist does a molar root canal-with all of the extra training, the microscopes-they have a 95 percent success rate. Insurance companies are crunching the numbers of hundreds of millions of claims, and the results show that if a general dentist does a molar root canal, 90 percent of them are still working after five years. It's all fear-based: You think you're not good enough, but it'll be absolutely fine. You have patients in pain, in your office, begging you to do the procedure-you don't have to have a treatment coordinator present treatment-but you're saying you'd rather not do the procedure? Your parents and grandparents all did things they didn't like, too. Does a fireman say that he only likes to do garage fires? There are hundreds of firemen who run into burning buildings, all to their peril-they do it because it's their job. Patients show up in pain, they're leaving work, they want to come in right now … but you're telling me you don't like root canals-or you like the easy ones, up front, but you don't like doing molar endo. The only thing you don't have to sell in dentistry is a root canal. I don't want to be a million dollars in debt." If you're already $350,000 in debt, you've dug yourself in a hole so deep, you have to own your own business to pay it back. ![]() Suck it up, buttercup! You can't use other people's money until you get one-third of a million under and then say, "And now, I'm going to stop using other people's money because I'm nervous. To pay back your loans, you get a job at a corporate dentistry chain, making $150,000 a year-you're paying $40,000 in tax and living off the other $110,000, and your student loan schedule is 40 years. But once you've graduated and you're already $350,000 in debt, you say that you don't want to go the next step and borrow $750,000 to buy a dental practice. You knew it'd be a dumb choice to work at McDonald's for 20 years to save up enough cash to go to dental school, so instead you leveraged other people's money-debt-to take student loans. I'm always amazed by people who make bad decisions because of fear. ![]()
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