Dental Podcasting and Becoming a Dentist with Alan Mead

I've got a great story that's like that. Okay, so when I was a freshman at Miami of Ohio, so that's where I went to undergrad, which is outside of Cincinnati. 

Dennis 11:20  

That's referred to as Khaki U. 

Alan 11:40  

Or the Harvard of the East, Harvard of the West. I don't know... That's the Harvard of the Midwest. But every college likes to say that. Michigan likes to say that. Johnson likes to say that... In any case, mine was mine was a great place to go. I have no regrets. And the funny thing about Miami is I hated it the whole time I was there, but looking back, it was such a great thing. And I found myself in those places a lot in my life. In any case, so some friends from my dorm, literally the first couple days we were there, I had a car. I had a truck, actually a pickup truck. And that was rare.

So, a bunch of us went in to Cincinnati, downtown Cincinnati. This kid lived there, and so, I didn't know anything. I just drove. And so they told me to park here, and we're like downtown. It wasn't a rough part of town, but it was not... Cincinnati, downtown Cincinnati, was not super busy. It was not... But we walked by, and there was a big bus right on the street. And there was a door open. This is much like your door. And we were dumb 18 year olds and so we just went in the door. Of course, we couldn't have gotten into a bar if we wanted to. This was the backdoor.

So we walk in the back door to the club. It's friggin Joe Cocker singing "You Can Leave Your Hat On" to a completely crowded.... It was like, that was his bus that was like waiting to take him off stage, and like somehow some stagehand had left the door open, and we walked in and watched his finishing number, which was pretty cool. And they didn't kick us out. They saw us there, and it was pretty cool. That was pretty neat thing. So sometimes, sometimes those doors -- if you're bold or dumb enough, whichever it is, maybe a little both -- it's maybe worth walking through sometimes.

Dennis 13:22  

And for those listeners who don't know who Joe Cocker is, you have to go YouTube him.

Alan 13:27  

Sorry, he's died a while back. But he's he's got a real gruff voice. And he's got a bunch of songs you've heard before. You know, it's... But yeah, I like... Who knew we were going to walk into a Joe Cocker concert? This would have been in what 1989, too! 

Dennis 13:40  

Oh, at the height! 

Alan 13:41  

He was awesome. 

Dennis 13:42  

So, you tell the story about how you and Jason met. But before you get into all that, one of the things that I'm always super curious about, Alan, is when, talking to dentists, there are such different journeys for all of us about how we got into it. And so your dad was a dentist, correct? 

Alan 13:56
Yeah. Yep. 

Dennis 13:58

So, what was it like having a dad as a dentist? Because I cannot... My daughter can talk about it, but I can't talk about that. What's it like having a dad as a dentist? 

Alan 14:08  

Well, he liked it. He still likes it. Like literally we went to the... You know the Better Meeting up north? 

Dennis 14:15  

Yeah. 

Alan 14:16  

So, we were at the Meeting last fall. And it was really cool because we had a bunch of... several podcast listeners that came from not Michigan. I mean, the meeting is basically Michigan people that go up north and see excellent continuing education for $0. Basically, it's like the best deal in CE, and it tends to be a Michigan-ish thing. Well, I invited some people from the pod, anyone who wanted to to come up, and so we got we had people from Oregon, we had people from Indiana, it was great. And we saw Hornbrook who was fantastic. He was really good.

And anyhow, so my dad, every person he ran into every person younger than about 50, he said, "Whatever you do, don't retire. Just slow down. Just slow down!" Because he misses it. He really misses it. He does work in my office some occasionally like doing removable stuff, but so he's someone who doesn't like to sit still very much. And he does miss it. But I mean, he loved it when I was growing up.

So like, I remember moving into his old building. He had multiple old buildings at that point, but when I was probably about 12, I helped him and the guy that he built the building with, move into the new office, and that would have been like 1981. And I remember... I just remember what a huge deal that was. I remember... I don't know man, I just grew up in it! You know? He would take us over there all the time. I tell the story constantly. But he'd take us over there all the time when he was doing whatever as dentists do, and you got something... You've got some on your desk, you've got to... whether it's charts or whatever, he'd take us over there.

My sister and I would move around and spray each other with air water syringes, and go up and down on the chair. My kids do the exact same thing when I take them to the office. So I mean, but there's a comfort of being in a dental office. I didn't recognize a dental office smell, if you did, because it was just dad's office, you know? And then more than that, this is the best part. I started mowing the lawn at his office when I was like 12. And the lawn at his office was enormous to be mowing with like a regular mower. And that's exactly... I mowed it with a regular mower. So it took two and a half, three hours, and it was... I mean, I'm sure I did not do a very good job considering how it would take like a lawn place probably like 10 minutes. 

Dennis 16:33  

Right, right. 

Alan 16:33  

You'd have 3 guys doing it, and be done! But I mean, like I literally... I was around that office a lot. A lot! And then when I could drive I'd put the mower in the truck, and it was... I was not good. I broke a lot of sprinkler heads with that gig, actually. But I also had ortho. He did ortho. Man, he did ortho. He was doing ortho before it was even close to cool for general dentists to be doing ortho, like,

Dennis 17:04
Like twin wire? Twin wire society? 

Alan 17:07
Yeah, I mean, yeah. And he did a fair amount of... I was in a bionator when I was in seventh grade. Well, I remember specifically because I had to give a speech, a speech class and I went up with the bionator and forgetting it, that it was in my mouth. And I took it out midway through the speech, which was a real hit, apparently! I don't know if there's any...

I mean, of course, it was the grossest thing ever. Poor Mr. Navarro had a heart attack. But I mean, and looking back knowing what the bionator is, that's like, I mean, I don't think they use the bionator very much because it was this giant piece of acrylic that I was wearing the whole time, and it was... I was in headgear. Basically everything that he learned, he would try on me, basically. And I have... I've said this on the show before. I have spaces. I have all of my wisdom teeth, and I've got room for more. I have a diastema that he closed multiple times, and I was terrible retainer wearer because he had been braces when I was like, eight, you know? I was so jacked up.

Dennis 17:59  

You know what's interesting, I hate to interrupt, but it's, you know... You talked about the bionator, and you're talking about starting early intervention at eight. And it's interesting. Your dad was a real pioneer. 

Alan 18:08  

He had no idea! He had no idea what he was like. And he would never... He never, never took these out. He'd never do extraction work. Well, little did he know... I mean, he was treating airway before they knew... Yeah. And that's the one thing you can say! I've got a lot of things wrong with me. I got a tongue the size of the school bus. But my airway is pretty good. Because I have these jaws. I have these jaws. It's ridiculous. And he didn't... There were never any teeth gone, he was never going to retract me much. But even when he did, I didn't wear the retainer.

So I have a natural diastema. He ended up, after a couple several times, fixing the diastema closure he did in composite, he did them in porcelain, probably midway through college. So I figured that had to have been about 1992. They're still on. And I mean, he didn't prep much. Because there's no way these things stayed unless he was bonding to enamel, for sure. I mean, like so. And if you look at them on the x-ray, I've got a beauty of a space to my teeth still. So it's yeah, they probably need to be redone. But that's some longevity. Considering I'm 50 years old. I've been there for 26 years or something. 

Dennis 19:13  

That's not bad. 

Alan 19:14  

Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. So I grew up in a dental office, and I've had a lot of dental work done on me.

Dennis 19:19  

So I mean, my daughter grew up, you know, in the dental office. I mean, I was always going in on the weekends doing stuff and she's like, the last thing I'm going to do is be a dentist. I don't want to have that. So, you know, you can be in that environment. And you can be either compelled to, you know, join it, or you can be sort of, you know, opposite. You can be sort of pushed away with it.

Alan 19:41  

Yeah, I know Dad wanted me to be a dentist. I don't know why, like I now that I have kids. I don't have a strong feeling that I... For one thing, dentistry was... Like right now, with the kind of debt you have to go into to go to dental school, it clearly is a different animal. So I don't feel super... And I, unfortunately, having heard and talked to lots of you younger dentists, that debt load is not anything I necessarily would wish for my kids. But on the other hand, I mean, it's been a good profession for me.

But like I said, I think I was born at the right time on some level. But I always... it was always a thing. It's really funny. When I was in college, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Dad thought that was not a great idea. He wanted me to be a dentist, but I wanted to be a veterinarian and I would go back and forth on that deal. And I remember when I was taking the DAT, the standardized test for dental school, I don't even know if they do that anymore. 

Dennis 20:39  

They do. Absolutely. 

Alan 20:40  

So, I'm a pretty good test taker, but I didn't really study much or anything like that. But the most important thing was at the time I took the DAT, I was pretty sure I was going to be a veterinarian. And so I'm like, damn, I signed up for this test. I might as well show up and take it, but I don't want to be a dentist at this point. So I went in there with zero expectations. And I did very well. I did really.... I will say I did not do well on the organic chemistry part because it had been a couple years since I'd taken organic chemistry and I didn't do any studying for it. But I did really well.

Apparently on the biology section, I got 100%, and apparently that doesn't happen ever. And I literally got a... I got a freaking scholarship for my DAT scores the first freshman year of dental school and like you could have knocked me over with a feather. I thought scholarship? I don't even remember taking the test because I didn't need to take it. So that's I will say that; if you're taking standardized tests, take the ones you don't think you need because of the lack of pressure. I did the same thing for the GRE because I was already going to be a dentist when I took the GRE for vet school. So that's a really... That's a test prep tip that they don't give you. I'd be an award winning lawyer by now.

Dennis 21:58

Yeah. So, alright, so that's really... I'm really surprised by that. I was sort of thinking alright, you're you're loving dentistry. You're out there practicing with your dad. And so you get in, you get in dental school. So what about vet school? Did you follow up with vet school?

Alan 22:01

No, I would have... I would have applied to Michigan State. Because Michigan State is a great vet school. And that's... I mean, like, I didn't have a drive to go it. But when I was looking at dental schools, I couldn't have been any more midwest. I looked at Michigan, Detroit for about three seconds. Detroit was still in... Detroit was still in the building that my dad graduated from. 

Dennis 22:28  

Yeah, that's a scary area.