Impressions
at the perfect time.
Gold Medal Performance by Dr. Stephen T. Radack III, Editor
The 25 th Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina, Italy just concluded this past weekend. My wife, Mary, and I watched many hours of coverage. She has been off work after foot surgery in January and had exhausted all the Netflix series she had been recommended to watch. The Games came
So many different options: curling( one of our colleagues from Minnesota, Tara Peterson, D. D. S., was in the bronze medal match against Canada); bobsleigh – women’ s monobob, men’ s and women’ s two-man( and woman); skeleton; luge( doubles was interesting); biathlon, halfpipe( still not sure what convinces someone to hurl their body around three or four times in midair on a snowboard or skis); downhill skiing, figure and speed skating; and of course both men’ s and women’ s hockey. Everything we turned on had highly-trained, dedicated athletes either competing against each other or the clock, some with their team and others solo.
The Games had so many highlights for Team USA, including gold medals in alpine skiing, figure skating, freestyle skiing, bobsleigh, and men’ s and women’ s hockey. Alysa Liu became the first woman to win gold in figure skating since Sarah Hughes in Salt Lake City in 2002. And of course, the last event of the games, Team USA’ s dramatic overtime win against archrival Canada in men’ s hockey. The first gold for the men since the Miracle on Ice back in 1980 in Lake Placid.
Every one of us who watched that hockey game or has seen clips of it saw goal scorer Jack Hughes proudly talking about his team, the United States, the feeling of winning, and the great dentists back home, all the while with several fractured maxillary anterior teeth and bloody lips. Imagine that guy calling us on a Sunday morning and needing to get into the office! While most of us will never win an Olympic gold medal, we know how much time, work and dedication go into achieving our goal of becoming a dentist. Even after we graduate and obtain our license to practice, we must continue to educate and improve ourselves, not only to maintain our licenses, but to not get left behind in the constantly changing profession. Jack Hughes and patients like him will be in your office. YOU will be the one to give him or her their smile back.
I recall getting an emergency call years ago on a Friday morning from a patient who had been hit in the face by a hockey stick the night before. The ironic thing about this is that he was coaching and not even playing. At first glance, he was in much better shape than Jack Hughes. He had been hit in the face by one of his players. His # 8 had taken the brunt of the force and appeared to be intact but pushed labially. There had obviously been trauma to the upper lip and gingival tissues. The bigger surprise was after the X-ray was taken and showed a root fracture in the apical 1 / 3. I had not seen anything like this at the time, so I called my oral surgeon friend and asked if he could see this patient, thinking the tooth would need to be extracted. That would not happen because his maxillary facial bone surrounding the tooth was basically pulverized. If the tooth was extracted, there would be a huge defect and make implant placement unlikely. He put the tooth back into the proper position and it was splinted into place. The patient returned for regular visits to check the site. The splint was eventually removed, and to this day that tooth and the surrounding teeth have remained vital and in place.
A good friend and former PDA vice president, Dr. Bill Veihdeffer, served as the team dentist for the Erie Otters, an Ontario Hockey League team here in Erie, for many years before he retired. He attended every home game and was there just in case. A good night was watching the game without incident. There were nights when he might have to stitch up a cut lip or address some minor damage to a tooth. There were some chaotic nights where a player would get a tooth avulsed or fractured off at the gumline. These young players ended up in Dr. Bill’ s office getting the issues resolved and he gave them their smiles back.
Like all those athletes who trained to compete in their sport, made their country’ s Olympic team, but did not make the medal podium, we as dentists are very similar. We also“ trained” for years to achieve our dreams. Practicing dentistry every day may not be the same as a sporting competition, but it is so much more for us. It feels like a race some days, and getting to the finish line at the end of the day after treating our patients is our medal podium!
— STR3
4 MARCH / APRIL 2026 | PENNSYLVANIA DENTAL JOURNAL