Dental days

While I was in Albuquerque, I got to shadow a number of dentists. It's been fun as I've expanded the number of practices I've visited to see how the atmospheres differ, and how each dentist interacts with their patients and their staff.
I spent a couple of days in a general dentist's office, and really liked what I saw. General dentistry does look like a lot of fun since there's such a wide variety of different things you can do, and you get to build patient relationships a little more than you might in a specialist setting.
I also went to an endodontist's office. Endodontists are specialists in root canals and apicos (a procedure that tries to repair a failed root canal) primarily, though they also perform some procedures that deal with tooth development and regeneration. Since the only procedure they do, for the most part, is root canals, with the occasional apico, I thought it would be really boring. But I actually really enjoyed it! It was fun watching the doctor work, especially because everything is on such a minute scale (clearing out nerve channels on teeth is really precise work!). There were cool microscopes and cameras that the doctor looked through as they worked, which was quite different from, say, oral surgery, which is what I have the most exposure with.
And, best of all, I got to meet the zoo dentist! I went to his office, and he was really friendly and gave me a lot of advice about dental school, getting ready for applications, and choosing where to apply. He was also an older dentist, and it was good to get his perspective on dentistry since most of the dentists I've met have been relatively young. He told me that he's been volunteering as the zoo dentist for decades. His first animal patient was an otter. He took me to a back room where he had pictures up of him doing root canals on a polar bear, a jaguar and giving a filling to a mountain lion, and he had a hand print in paint from a gorilla he'd done some work on as well. It was so cool!