The Best

I know all you guys out there think your wives are pretty great. I know all you women out there think you are pretty darn good spouses. But I'm sorry to inform you, that my wife is the best.

I did my first filling on her two years ago. And knowing what I know now, things could have been done diffently, perhaps more...ideal. And now she was my patient for the Western Regional Board Exam (WREB) I took in Cleveland this weekend. This is kind of hard to describe just how stressful these past few days have been. Lets see, how to put it? I felt like throwing up for about two days before it actually started, and then didn't sleep hardly at all because I was always thinking about things that could go wrong. And there are about 10,000 things that could go wrong.

The worst thing that could happen, is that your patient doesn't show up, and if you don't have a backup, you fail. The second worst thing that can happen, is that your patient knows exactly how important this day is, and the day of the exam, he demands $1000 or he's walking out. There are hotels to book, travel arrangements to make, paying the patient for time off work, gas, food, and a bonus for doing this for you. On top of all that there are 110 pages of testing protocol you have to get right. So you can imagine my elation when Annie had a couple cavities that qualified for the test! Well, there was some doubt that they were big enough to qualify, but both were approved for treatment! And contrary to rumor I didn't have her floss with honey until after we knew we were there, we just wanted to make sure they were big enough to qualify! (I guess it worked, also helped along by my orders to eat a smarty in the area every 15 minutes).

Anyway, it's not a very fun exam to sit for. To keep bias from entering the grading the examiners only know me as candidate A-017, and never saw my face. So Annie had to go back to another area to get approved, come back to me for cavity removal, go back for a preparation grade check (walking around with a rubber dam-I wish I had a picture), then coming back for the filling, then going back for a final grade. Do that all again, and we're finally done.

The exam went beautifully, almost without a hitch. My other patient didn't show up, and let me know at 10 PM the night before I was supposed to see him. Luckily I had a backup, but was stuck with an empty hotel room I had already paid for.

So thank you Annie for showing up, for being a great patient, for not charging me $1000 (although you'll probably hold this over my head for the next 60 years), and thank you for pounding tums like candy in the middle of the night while pregnant which created these beautiful cavities and reduced my stress a bit on this horrific weekend. I'll get my results in a couple weeks. Hopefully I passed, and will never...ever, have to do this again.

P.S. For anyone entering dental school soon, get your spouse to start on those cavities now!