Teaching Keith To Do The Floss

I know it’s been around for a while but last weekend our daughter Chloe decided that it was time she really made a concerted effort to teach Keith ‘The Floss’.  Now you may not know this but Keith has a bit of a reputation amongst our staff and our friends for being a pretty rubbish dancer.  Give him a Strip the Willow or a Dashing White Sergeant and he’s a force to be reckoned with, but we described his step – tap (isolated from the knee down), as dad dancing way before our eldest Rachel came on the scene.  Having two daughters who go to ballet and modern every week means he really doesn’t stand a chance in our house.

So the kids have been going on about the floss for months and we’ve both looked on in desperate confusion at how they can be that coordinated - and do it so fast!  When I was watching Chloe try to teach Keith in a step by step “you can do this daddy” fashion last week it struck me how different people are when it comes to coordination.  Keith can spend hours of his day coordinating his hands and his brain while looking in a mirror in a tiny black hole and dealing with tongues, saliva and all manner of other slippery obstacles.  Can he move his arms and hips in the opposite direction in time to a beat? Not a hope!

But what about these patients that we ask to floss their teeth for us everyday?  Perhaps they are fantastic at doing ‘The Floss’ perhaps they can just feel the rhythm and do it instinctively, but put a bit of dental floss in their hands and make them look in a mirror and they can’t even get their fingers into their mouths.

That’s why its really important for us to take the time to talk to our patients and find out what works for them.  There’s more than one way to skin a cat.  If you’re struggling to coordinate hands and mouth there’s interdental brushes and electric toothbrushes.  We’ll work with you to find the right way for you to keep your mouth healthy.

I’m rubbish at flossing (the dance and the oral hygiene), my dental floss lives in my kitchen drawer and I use it to slice cakes in half longways (it makes them lovely and even!)  I know that interdental brushes work for me – they’re quicker and easier and leave me more time to do the million other things I have to do.

But back to ‘The Floss’, Keith did finally get it, albeit that he’s doing it at a ¼ of the pace of the girls.  Like anything (including dental flossing) practice makes perfect.  I reckon being made to watch the

next 12 weeks of Strictly will help him to improve his moves!😂

If you need advice on improving your dental moves call our team on 01236 421103.  We’ll be happy to help!

Oh and if you want to learn 'The Floss' and impress your kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru1ZZhxLX2I

Challenge Yourself - You'll Feel Better For It

This blog post was nearly a rant about HBOS and why they are an incompetent bank but I didn't think it was fair to subject anyone to that on a Friday morning particularly when I could go on about it for at least 10 sides of A4 (front and back!! - picture Ross from friends and his angry face and you'll get where I am with them.)

So I'll save the ranting for my complaint letter later this morning and think about something a bit more positive here.  I've always wanted to write a book.  There it's out there in the public domain, there's no going back now.  Ever since I first read the first Harry Potter book - and realistically a long time before that, I've wanted to have that ability to capture people's imagination in the palm of my hand and take them on a journey with me.  What a talent to have!  I'm not sure then quite how I ended up down the blind-ended alley that dentistry is, but that's a blog post for another day.

Anyway, you come to a point in your life when you realise that all you do is get up in the morning, get the kids out to school, go to work, come home, taxi the kids around, do some more work, eat dinner and go to bed and it becomes an existence rather than life.  And you think to yourself there has to be more to life than this.  So one night when you've had a couple of glasses of wine you book yourself on a creative writing evening course thinking what a blast that will be.

I can't recall ever being more nervous sitting in a room than I was last night, particularly as we started introducing ourselves and over half the class were writing regularly and had box files of half written stories at home.   Half way through  we were asked to basically get down on paper the premise for the story we would write in the next 10 weeks - the genre, the characters, the setting, the plot - then the teacher came round and grilled us on our idea, pulling it apart to make sure it would stand up to writing.

It sounds terrifying and partly it was - but do you know what, it was invigorating!  It was like turning on a part of my brain that had been switched off for so long it was growing dusty in the corner.  I loved challenging myself.

It's so easy to get stuck in the mundaneness of the treadmill of life and not notice that its happened.  You've got to find time for yourself somewhere amongst that and take a chance at something new.  Enter a race, take up a new hobby, challenge yourself.  I promise you'll feel better for it.

                             

This week I've challenged our team to take part in Muddy Muckers to raise money for St Andrews Hospice.  Getting muddy, fresh air and exercise and raising money for a fantastic local charity - what a brilliant way to challenge ourselves!  We've already had some really generous sponsorship in the practice and we're also collecting at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/gillian-preston

 At Coatbridge Family Dental Care we all look forward to hearing about your new challenges next time you're in the practice.  Keep us up-to-date with your lives by coming in to see us regularly for your dental health checks - I promise you'll feel better for that too.