La vitalité
The M I R A C L E
of a
SMILE K i n d n e s s Ma t t e r s By Mike Odom Photography courtesy of Done In One
I
t’s no great secret that life sometimes has an enigmatic way of offering us exactly what we need to rise above our seemingly hopeless situations. The problem is that solutions don’t always present themselves as such. It takes faith and imagination to seize these potentially life-altering moments before they pass. I want to provide an anecdotal example of this phenomenon in action in hopes that my story can help others recognize blessings when they emerge and use them to their advantage.
Opposite top: Mike Odom showing off his new smile Opposite bottom: Dentists use facial recognition technology to get the perfect mold of patients’ mouths and a master ceramist finishes up each set of Done In One implants all within forty-eight hours.
42 | A P R IL 2019
The present-day portion of this tale began for me when a young periodontist named Daniel Noorthoek fatefully appeared in my life and offered me a cure for the pain to which I had reluctantly grown accustomed. Armed with an admirable air of confidence and steadfast determination, he singlehandedly carried me across long-established enemy lines and helped me overcome a lifelong, legitimate, and all-too-common phobia of dentists and their offices (which I considered torture chambers.
Ultimately, he gifted me the ability to smile again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Long before I was comfortable even conversing with a dentist, I had a deep-rooted phobia. And, I want to make it clear that “phobia” is not an understatement. When I was eight, I flew face-first off of a skateboard and lost my two front teeth to the sidewalk. The dentist my mother took me to in 1988—who had undoubtedly received his license a century before—did a number on my unsuspecting psyche, and I wouldn’t step foot inside a dental office for decades. Later in life, I stood, shaking, in front of a mirror, trying desperately to remove a throbbing molar with a pair of pliers, giving up only when I heard an audible crack—a sound that I will never forget. More incidents such as this occurred, and when I did finally make it to a dentist, it was only because doing so seemed like a more sensible option than tooth pain– induced suicide. I forced my way in and demanded to
