For me, this became personal long before it became professional. Years ago, my wife and I were on the East Coast visiting another doctor and his wife. While I was having a conversation with him about TMJ, sleep, and the way these problems can show up in places we don’t always expect, our wives were having a completely separate conversation of their own.
As he started describing the patients he treated and the symptoms he saw every day, something began to click. He wasn’t talking about my wife, but he might as well have been.
For a long time, she had been struggling with symptoms we hadn’t been able to fully explain. And here I was, a dentist, sitting across from another clinician who was connecting dots I hadn’t connected myself. At almost the exact same time, his wife was having a similar realization while talking with mine.
That experience changed the direction of our lives. We began looking at what my wife was experiencing differently, took action, and started seeing changes in her health. But it also forced me to confront something professionally that I couldn’t ignore: I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
I had been trained to look at patients through the lens of dentistry. Suddenly, I was beginning to understand how the jaw, airway, sleep, pain, structure, and the rest of the body could intersect in ways that weren’t always obvious from the dental chair. I started asking different questions. I sought out clinicians who knew things I didn’t. I studied TMJ, sleep, airway, and pain more deeply, and over time it fundamentally changed the way I practiced.
That experience is a big part of why I started the Southern California Interdisciplinary Study Club. I know there are clinicians throughout Southern California who have patients sitting in their chairs right now who are still looking for answers. Sometimes you may have the answer. Sometimes I may have it. Sometimes it’s going to come from a physician, orthodontist, physical therapist, surgeon, or another specialist entirely.
The important thing is that we know one another well enough to have that conversation. I wanted to create a place where we could ask difficult questions, bring real cases to the table, learn what other disciplines are seeing, and build relationships with people we trust enough to call when a patient needs something beyond what we can provide alone.
Because I know firsthand what can happen when the right clinician enters the conversation at the right time.