Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine
Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine
Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine
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telecom start-up called Snapdragon in the<br />
late 1990s, and later moved on to Wired<br />
Business and Alcatel, two other telecom<br />
companies. It was a real dot-com experience.<br />
We were all drunk on the idea <strong>of</strong><br />
being millionaires overnight! But the dotcom<br />
boom went dot-bust pretty quickly, so<br />
things didn’t pan out the way we’d hoped.<br />
Corie Rowe is about<br />
to open a clinic on<br />
Chicago’s South Side.<br />
That’s a big career change. Was it hard<br />
to make the switch<br />
Sort <strong>of</strong>. It was great to get that big paycheck<br />
every two weeks, but I always missed the satisfaction<br />
that I got when I worked with lowincome<br />
communities. That was far more<br />
rewarding than any accolades I could get in<br />
the tech world. Luckily, after a couple years,<br />
I had an epiphany about dentistry.<br />
How did that happen<br />
I finally had a truly great dental experience!<br />
It was around the time I left grad school<br />
temporarily in the late ’90s. I had a cavity,<br />
throbbing pain—something wasn’t quite<br />
right. I hadn’t been to the dentist since I was<br />
a kid, if you can believe it, so I was pretty<br />
lucky that I didn’t have any other problems.<br />
I was nervous, <strong>of</strong> course, but this guy was<br />
fantastic. He gave me local anesthetic, and I<br />
didn’t even feel the needle because he shook<br />
my jaw. That was totally new to me. My perception<br />
<strong>of</strong> the pain was much less than the<br />
horrible experience I had as a kid, so I left<br />
the appointment thinking very differently<br />
about dentistry.<br />
Then, in 2000, the surgeon general’s<br />
report on oral health in America came out.<br />
It was pretty influential—it basically said<br />
that the state <strong>of</strong> oral health in low-income<br />
communities and communities <strong>of</strong> color<br />
was so bad, it was becoming a public health<br />
nightmare. That’s when it hit me: Those are<br />
the same populations I was working with<br />
doing environmental stuff, so if I became<br />
a dentist, I’d have an opportunity to really<br />
make a difference in those communities. So<br />
I got back in touch with <strong>Tufts</strong>, finished the<br />
last few credits on my master’s degree and<br />
applied to dental school.<br />
What was it like to be in dental school after<br />
years <strong>of</strong> doing environmental work<br />
It was like trying to drink water from a fire<br />
hydrant. That’s how fast and furious the<br />
information came at us. Ultimately, though,<br />
it was a blessing. I was talking with some <strong>of</strong><br />
my classmates recently—we’ve only been<br />
out in the real world for a year and a half,<br />
yet we all feel that <strong>Tufts</strong> prepared us really<br />
well for any challenge. Drinking from the<br />
fire hydrant helped us define the boundaries<br />
<strong>of</strong> our own knowledge and gave us the<br />
confidence we needed to teach ourselves<br />
anything we didn’t already know.<br />
How do you think all <strong>of</strong> your experiences<br />
have shaped your approach to dental care<br />
They’ve made me appreciate that dentistry<br />
isn’t just about white, straight teeth. It’s<br />
about total oral health, and systemic health.<br />
How you chew your food, for instance—<br />
that can affect your temporomandibular<br />
joint, which can cause headaches or pain<br />
from chewing. It can affect your whole life.<br />
So how will that translate into your work<br />
at the new clinic in Chicago<br />
The clinic on the South Side is in a predominantly<br />
African American area. My goal will<br />
be to educate my patients on a one-on-one<br />
basis to help them understand how their<br />
oral health ties in to their overall health.<br />
My negative experience with dentistry<br />
also informed my outlook, in that<br />
my practice will use a lot <strong>of</strong> technological<br />
advances to reduce a patient’s perception<br />
and apprehension <strong>of</strong> pain. I know what it’s<br />
like to be terrified when you’re in the chair.<br />
If you give the patient a couple <strong>of</strong> tablets <strong>of</strong><br />
a benzodiazepine, for example, it relaxes<br />
them and reduces their anxiety so you can<br />
get the work done that’s needed. Those are<br />
the individuals who <strong>of</strong>tentimes fall through<br />
the cracks within dentistry—the ones who<br />
are afraid <strong>of</strong> the dentist.<br />
As a new grad, however, one <strong>of</strong> the most<br />
important things we have to keep in mind is<br />
that a dental practice is a small business. The<br />
clinic will be in a storefront on West 95th<br />
Street, where there are a lot <strong>of</strong> other businesses<br />
that have been open for years, so I’m<br />
hoping that’ll help bring in patients. It’ll be<br />
a small practice at first—just me, an assistant<br />
and a front-desk person. But if things<br />
go well, I want to bring in an <strong>of</strong>fice manager,<br />
an insurance verifier and a hygienist. Right<br />
now, I’m just trying to promote the business<br />
the way other small businesses do—go out<br />
and make connections in the community,<br />
work with the local small business bureau,<br />
send out marketing pieces, the works. tdm<br />
David Levin is a freelance science writer in<br />
Boston.<br />
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