It’s that time of the year when storms in Workland can knock power out for seconds to hours. It’s an annual ritual for us to have at least 1 patient per year experience a power failure during a procedure.

I only work during the day and we have lots of windows in the treatment rooms at the office but storm clouds are quite dark and so we usually have to break out the flashlights in order to finish things up. I haven’t needed a power generator…yet. That’s unlike the periodontists next door.

A patient that I saw back in 2005 during a power failure returned yesterday for me to check out an unrelated tooth. Here’s my treatment note from back then:

Here’s my post-op xray of the tooth I worked on (I did the 5 and the 7):

And here’s the tooth as it stands today:

There’s a massive screw post that her dentist has placed almost to the apex. I don’t know how long this tooth will survive before it either splits along the root or bacterial leakage happens alongside the post.

Morale of story? Not really sure, but it has something to do with power failures affecting root canal treatment prognosis less than irresponsible dentistry does.