Of All The Parts To Dolly Parton She Played A Part In A Cosmetic Dentist’s Heart
You didn’t have to be a fan to know of Dolly Parton …
You didn’t have to own an album, see her live, or on tv; or ever hear her on radio for her to have some connection to your life. You could be a child receiving monthly free books from her Imagination Library. Or have been a patient at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. It’s possible to have only ever heard The White Stripes blues-rock Jolene and the pained and raging heart Jack White leaves on stage is because he wrote it. It may be that Whitney Houston’s two-time Grammy Award winning song would have passed you by, had you not been a Kevin Costner die-hard. You may never have known that Elvis would have recorded I Will Always Love You three years before he died, had conman Colonel Tom Parker not demanded 50% of the publishing rights.
Dolly Parton was surprisingly spangly and superbly sharp.
A short sharp shock brought news of her death, mere days after she’d posted a video of the health issues she was taking in her size-6-six-inch heel stride. Positive and forward-looking right to the end, its difficult to know if it came as unexpectedly to her as it did the rest of the world.
Her legacy is deep and broad; her philanthropy extensive. For many years and for many more, her name has not only come out of mouths, it’s gone into them.
When a cavity forms and tooth needs filling, to hold the restorative material in place if a side is drilled out or missing a temporary barrier is needed to give the substance shape, contour, strength and function. Amalgum, composite resin, porcelain or ceramic are used depending on the tooth position and treatment.
As familiar as we are with the prolific patents of Benjamin Franklin, the name Benjamin Franklin Tofflemire screams Monty Python, rather than a fellow patentee.
It was he, who as an experienced dentist at age 40, devised the Tofflemire matrix band in 1946. It’s a system of thin, flexible reuseable stainless steel strips to loop around a tooth and create the needed temporary wall. Each is tapered to match the contour of the tooth in a choice of 3 gauges and 4 universal sizes: from paediatric to extended for deep margins near the gum line. The implement that precision fits to the tooth by tightening a matrix band between just 0.05mm and a 0.035mm thick, is the Tofflemire retainer; its job to shape thin metal to the contours of the tooth to replicate the original, leave no space for food to become trapped between the adjacent, and hold the repair agent in place.
To the untrained eye, these strips that measure only 57-70mm long look like tiny boomerangs or fake moustaches for caterpillar comedians.
The Dolly Parton (aka dolly) is the #2 MOD (mesio-occluso-distal), specifically designed for back teeth multi-surface restorations.
For subgingival needs, it’s shaped like a minute cut-out bandeau bikini top, earning its original ‘Mae West’ moniker – the brash, brassy and buxom 1930s screen star. Forty years is long enough to fade from familiarity. The ’70s were the height of Dolly’s popularity at the time – and it can only be surmised that the updated name sprang from the mind of male practitioner, since Barbie seems the stronger contender for anyone familiar with cut-out dolls and their clothing.
And so it is that #2 MODs have been known as “dollies” for close to the span of her seven-decade career.
They’re integral to dental repair and in cosmetic dentistry celluloid or transparent strips in the same style are used for visible anterior, premolar or molar restorations so that blue LED can penetrate and cure the resin.
Cosmetic dentistry encompasses a raft of treatments and procedures with focus on improving smile aesthetics, whether its tooth shape, colour, alignment or gum detracting from the optimum.
Lasers remove the excess tissue and reshape uneven gum lines and “gummy smiles”. Grafts can rectify receding or damaged gums; colour-matched filling materials cover exposed roots with pink veneers. Depending on whether these gingival masks are removable or fixed, they’re made of either flexible acrylic, composite resin, silicone, ceramic or porcelain.
The thin shell of dental veneers transforms misaligned, cracked, stained or broken teeth. Under the expert hand of a professional, whitening treatments achieve the brightness no OTC kit ever can, without any risk of dental or soft tissue damage.
Dolly Parton was never one to shy from the fact that it was cosmetic procedures that had her look the way she did. As a self-made woman she “had the doctor’s bills to prove it”. She was playful, creative and extravagant with it and blessed with rapier wit she didn’t skimp on her smile. Strategic enhancements to a naturally attractive smile show soft tissue and dental work, including porcelain veneers, over decades.
Would she be delighted to know of her Dolly stamp on dentistry?
No doubt she would. “If you see someone without a smile, give them yours,” she once said. And in so many ways she has. Not just with her talent, joy, generosity and light but with a funny bit of engineering that tightens everything up and holds it all in.
Of all the parts to Dolly Parton she played a part in this Sunbury cosmetic dentist’s part, my heart sang with her as each dental veneer, each gum contouring, each teeth whitening, each denture, and each Invisalign, was lovingly and gaily rendered.
The irony of leaving a hole that nothing can fill would not have escaped her, and tickled her pink.