The path I took on my journey as a student of Orthotropics is well-trodden with my teachers the Mews and Bill Hang lighting and guiding the way forward. However, as dentists who venture into the land of early intervention orthodontics, we all seem to travel the same stretch of road. I suspect our experiences and lives play out with many similarities.
We walk along winding path, seemingly on our own, in isolated loneliness.
Many of us begin because we aren’t happy with how our children finish their treatments. We are unhappy as we have the underlying feeling, there should be "more". We are told though by those in the know; "That’s all there is folks. The hand you are dealt with is what you have to play with."
Hence we live in despondence.
So when an outlier claims, they have "more", our interests perk. We stop, we listen, we watch and we are intrigued. We think; "Well it certainly looks like they are doing "more"! What if there is more?"
We look around and see the gathering of some of our peers. Like-minded, kindred spirits. Other dentists unfulfilled and looking for more. And we join these groups and immerse in the wonder of another way.
These teachers orate. They reveal the secrets of their discoveries. They fascinate. They show success.
They encourage participation.
And thus drawn are we. And in we follow. And we find purpose.
Enthusiasms that we did not even know was within us and passions that ignite a new beginning.
Yet each and every one of us, within a blink of time, looks around and realise we are again alone.
We start many cases but finish so few the ways we envisaged we would. The children whose faces continue to fall and fade from the ideal we promised haunts us. Questions arise and are sort from and by us but the answers remain elusive.
We have all lived this. Yet I found fortune as on my way, I encountered another journeyman.
Dr Sandra Kahn was like no one who was part of my normal sphere of life. A seasoned and accomplished Orthodontist based in a different country, living a different life, yet a traveller on the very same road, tracking on exactly the same path.
At the point, I met Sandra I had already begun to develop my own methodology of care. It seemed I was already achieving a level of consistency in my treatment outcomes that should have created confidence but by nature, I am one always plagued by doubt. Immobilized by indecision and so locked in self-isolation.
Sandra is my counterpart in character and personality. My two talents are the ability to recognise what is important and the capability of taking the complex and explaining it simply. Hers is the gift of drawing together the talented with the influential.
Together we formed an unlikely partnership and took GOPex (Good Oral Posture Exercises), a simple evolution of my grandmother’s culture of manners and presentation and formalized it into technology App that has the potential to remind all generations to come of what is possible…
…of how we are meant to behave and who we are meant to be.
Sandra took what was just a backwater experiment in my tiny clinic Down Under and launched it into the heart of the community of Europe’s oldest Orthodontic University and then onwards to those institutions of influence around the world.
From my unwavering belief in John’s Tropic Premise and her decisive support of my contribution to our profession we launched her new model of primary dentition early intervention; Forwardontics.
My focus has always been narrow-minded, myopic and techno-orientated. In the real world, this translates into; "Precisely arriving at a dead-end".
My purpose was to travel John Mew’s road. Staying true and following without deviation. A seemingly noble endeavour but in practice, just another trip to a destination that no one else knows exists, nor cares about.
I could not see this of course so Sandra created Forwardontics to carriage the engine I had developed and transport our children into a future all of us deserve to arrive at.
What I do, take 8-year-olds who have grown in malformation and laboriously, painstakingly, unrelentingly, through long-suffering force out a semblance of harmony, has no appeal in today’s world.
Forwardontics takes the egocentric doctor out of the equation of a child’s life and returns the responsibility of a child’s upbringing into the hands of those who truly care for their wellbeing, their parents.
Sandra will revolutionize the lives of your children by refocusing your love into uplifting their posture in spirit.
Postural Orthodontics is just my bridge to release myself of my attachment to my comfort zone of hard discipline. My way instils an underlay of strength but it has distinct tones of harshness to it and that folks, is a lonely existence and indeed not for everyone.
At 51, I am who I am. No time soon will I be giving up my "carrot and stick" but for those who look to me for guidance, be glad the Forwardontics connection paves the path that encourages all of us to find our way home.