Professional Courtesy: Peace and Love, Peace and Love by Dr. Thomas Giacobbi

Last month, I decided to take a day off to spend time with my son, who was home during spring break. He was sleeping in, so I was going to stop in at the office to take care of a few things before we went to lunch. Before I even left the house, my phone rang—it was one of our team members, telling me that the chairs wouldn’t turn on.

The chairs have air switches, so I knew that it was a compressor problem. I left the house immediately because the first patients of the day were due to arrive in less than 20 minutes.

I’m blessed with a short commute, so within 10 minutes I was in the equipment room. I immediately noticed the breaker switch on the front of the compressor had been tripped; I flipped it on, and was happy to see both motors start and the compressor begin humming like normal.

I joined the staff for the morning huddle and returned to the equipment room to find ... the compressor off and the switch tripped again. It wasn’t a fluke! I called support at Air Techniques and the helpful technician did some troubleshooting over the phone. We isolated the problem to one side and I was able to run on half a compressor until a part could be ordered. We had air as the first patients arrived!

I was gone for about three hours, then returned to the office to check the compressor and see if my associate needed any help with hygiene exams or emergencies. The schedule looked good, but a patient had called with a problem. He’s wearing a temporary implant-retained hybrid that’s connected to five implants; a few weeks ago, that was six implants, but he lost one and I had put him back in the temporary so I could change his restoration from implant-retained to an implant-retained bar plus denture. This patient has natural lower teeth, and we’re learning some important lessons together.

When the patient arrived, I saw the denture in three pieces in his mouth and as I removed the screws, one of the abutments came out with the denture. My stomach churned when I saw the abutment was missing the bottom half of its screw; the other half was secure inside his implant. Yada, yada, yada—another abutment came out with part of the screw missing. “MacGyver mode” kicked in and I used the tip of an ultrasonic on the center of the screw fragment and tried a little counterclockwise rotation with the tip of an explorer. The screw fragments were recovered.

But the day still wasn’t over! I was visiting with a patient in hygiene while his daughter was treated, and he said, “Remember when I broke my tooth in November and you put in some temporary stuff because I wouldn’t have any insurance until the new year? Well, that piece came out—and some of the tooth came with it. I have it right here.”

I looked at the piece and told him that wasn’t temporary material, but a new piece of tooth. He insisted that couldn’t be true, so I told him that I could taste it to be sure, but I’d rather take a picture. An assistant brought him to a free room and took a picture of the broken tooth, which I put up next to the original intraoral photo I’d taken back in November. The new pictures showed my temporary still in place, with a new piece of his tooth missing—the other lingual cusp. Let’s just say his reaction was priceless. He left with a smile on his face and a new temporary next to the old one, with a plan to return for his crown.

When the dust settled on the day and the compressor was finally turned off, I unplugged it and removed the cover so I could test the failed component. My multimeter provided a positive diagnosis, and I had a repair assignment for the next day.

I share this story with “peace and love” and these words of advice: Don’t take a day off from work!

Please feel free to comment on this article online at Dentaltown.com. You can also reach me via email: tom@dentaltown.com or on Twitter: @ddsTom.