Ep. 72 The Forgotten Mouths with Dr. Sonya Dunbar

Speaker A: So I just say that as healthcare professionals. As healthcare professionals, because we are healthcare professionals. You know, we care for the mouth is connected to the body. Uh, I don't have to tell you this, but we should have some sort of compassion to do something if there's nothing but to pass the book on or tell somebody about something, you know. But we just can't forget the long term care facilities that's nestled in our community.

Speaker B: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Irreplaceable Dental Team. Well, you know, I always have special guests, but sometimes you gotta do it twice. So you may have or you may not have been on, um, the podcast the last time we were speaking, speaking to this precious gem. But I am going to let Dr. Dunbar speak to you. Sonia, welcome once again. How are you doing today?

Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you for having me on your show. I always appreciate the opportunity to share with your audience. So thank you for, um, doing a repeat with me.

Speaker B: Right, well, we are doing a repeat as far as you being a guest, but we have fresh new stuff to talk about and I'm so excited. So before we get into it, just share a little bit about yourself for those viewers who may not have caught you the last time or who may have, um, who may not remember all that you covered.

Speaker A: Well, thank you for this again for this opportunity. My name is Dr. Sonia Dunbar. I'm affectionately known as the Geriatric Tooth Fairy. My husband and I, we own a mobile DSO that provides dental mobile portable that provides dental care for residents to live in long term care facilities throughout several states on the east coast of the United States of America. We do comprehensive dentistry. Um, we partner with a team of dentists and dental therapists and hygienists and we provide this much needed care long term care facilities. What started me on this journey was my grandmother was in a nursing home and I noticed that she was being neglected and that's what started me on this journey. I've been, um, a dental hygienist, a proud registered dental hygienist for over 33 years and I recently got my doctoral degree with a concentration in geriatrics. I am an ordained evangelist and I'm very proud of my husband and our relationship and the path that God has chosen for us to do this care. There's not a lot of finances in care for seniors because they get the Medicaid and it doesn't reimburse a lot. But the smiles and the lives that we're saving is worth more than is weight in gold. So I appreciate my journey I sleep good at night knowing that I'm able to use my talents exactly in a profitable way. But the profit may not be money, but it's in my heart when we do make some money.

Speaker B: All right, so I would summarize it this way. You serve with your head, your hands and your heart. How about that? So listen, I have, um, a little birdie told me you had something special that came out recently, um, in the form of a, um, B, double O

Speaker A: K.

Speaker B: Know anything about that?

Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. I've written my fourth book, but this is my masterpiece. It's called the Forgotten Mouths. And it's everything, uh, about portable and mobile dentistry, Geriatric oral tail, um, the combative hospice, non verbal tube fed, get into nursing homes, how to get an assisted living, how to get paid while you in there, the supplies you need. It has colored pictures in it. It's a. It's a road map for schools for the, um, for anybody in the medical or dental profession who is interested in learning how to take care of the aging mouth. From the, from the prescription to the medicine to Silver diamond, everything that you can think about is in this book. And it was an amaz. It is an Amazon number one bestseller. The first day it came out. It sold. It sold over 200 books the first day it came out.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: It beat out a book from Mayo Clinic, which is a really big hospital here. So it's an amazing, um, book. It's been in the making for over 20 years. And it's a life. It's a heartfelt. It's an evergreen book. Um, the stuff in here won't change. So it's a good book to have on your desk.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. I don't have mine yet, but I commit to getting it.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: So, Sonia, your website calls the state of senior oral care a silent crisis in the Forgotten Mouths. Your book that you just described, what does that crisis actually look and feel like for a senior living in a facility?

Speaker A: Well, it looks and it seems like, I think to go in. The older. The older we get and the grayer our hair comes, the more invisible we become. It's just a fact. The older you become, the more invisible you become. I was in the grocery store with my daughter and her friends several years ago and they were in their 20s and. And we were walking toward the produce part and an older lady in front of us dropped her wallet. I immediately started running shorter because she started to bend down and that's the worst thing you can do. She's on a cane. She's been. And down this is. And my daughter and her friend walked right past her. They didn't even see her. And when I went out, when I caught up with her, I was like, did y' all see this? Like, see who? This is almost invisible.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And if you think about it, you. When you see older people sitting down on a park or anywhere, you kind of just. Because you know, if you're not conscious, your eyes just go right past them. So the ultimate betrayal, uh, of life is when they get put in long term care facilities because then they're behind closed doors. No one sees them. Don't even come outside.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So. And this is the silent epidemic. Epidemic. Because no one sees them. Um, a lot of dental professionals do not go into the long term care facilities. So people may have bridges in their mouth implants, um, all on four, whatever that looks like. Crowns and. Or just a lot of people have their teeth and it's. They don't. No one sees them, no one hear them. And it's forgotten. It's silent.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And that's the crises in America.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Countries is like this. Some countries actually pay people to keep their elders at home.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: But it's. It's in America. And. And I've been to your beautiful country too. And then to the Bahamas. So a couple of those countries are like that too. But it's sad. And that's why it's so important to take care of our bodies. Because my grandmother used to say, you know where you start out, but you don't know where you're gonna end up.

Speaker B: That's so true. So, Sonia, I think the way I would summarize what you said was we have to be careful that our seniors aren't visibly invisible.

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker B: That we see them, but we don't.

Speaker A: I love that. I love that.

Speaker B: Thank you for. Thank you for bringing that to. To our consciousness. Because there are things that your brain doesn't even click on to say that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just what it is. And you keep on rolling. You know, I think that as we live purposefully, what we'll realize is there are things that touch you that may never touch me. And it's not because you're good and I'm bad or vice versa. It's just that each of us has within us, uh, something. We were created to invest our time and our skills and our efforts in living, um, purposefully. You can probably say that you and your husband could say 100% of the time that this Though hard, though challenging, is what you guys were created to do, to see and to pour into the visibly invisible seniors. And thank you for that. Thank you so much for that. Now, Sonia, You've spent over 30 years as a clinician. I know you gave us some idea about your grandmother, but is there anything else that compelled you to move from just providing care to writing this book to expose the issue?

Speaker A: You know what? Really, uh, I've always been a person to help, to underserved. I've always. In school, if there was somebody, if it was a bully, I always would go to the underdog. So I've always had, like you say, some people just have certain things in them. But I. I know that my voice right now is strong and is loud, but their voice is weak and frail. So while I have a voice, I want to use it. I want to use it to spread the word. I want to use it. This is why this book was written. I want to leave. When I leave this earth, I want to leave a reference behind. When I go to speak at schools, there's always one or two dental students or hygienists or hygiene students or dental assistant that says they have a heart for this. Like you said, everybody don't have this in them. Now, I think as humans, we should have some form of compassion. Like my mother used to say, anybody can pet a dog on the head. Not comparing old people to dogs, but when you see a dog wagging his tail, you rub it. You know, that's compassion. So if you know that these older people, you know, when you know better, we should do better. And if you know that these old people are being ignored, and if you're a public health, if you are a. A health care person, even if you don't have a desire to go in there, everybody don't like working on older people. Everybody don't have the temperament for that. But you can go train the staff, right? You can go drop toothbrushes off, you can go drop oral care literature off. Just telling people about xerostomia or how important it is to brush your teeth or mouth. Body connection, you know, I don't. I'm not a big person on little kids, you know, because they. They just bite me or something. You know, we do the Head Start, but it just. They love. But they, uh. Every time I leave them, I get sick of this. I get a pink eye, a cold or so. When it comes to kids, I'm like, yeah, but no, so. But you know what? I go and I go to the head start And I train their mothers, I do. Because my thing is you can teach a kid to brush their teeth all that you want, but if the mother don't know how to brush her teeth right, what, what good is the three year old? So my effort is, I, my team, we do head, but my desire, I tell them, let me, let me talk to those 20 year old mothers, the 19 year old mothers and tell them, look, you go, your gums bleed when you brush your teeth and first thing they say is, no, my teeth bleed because your teeth can't bleed. So I just say that as healthcare professionals. As healthcare professionals, because we are healthcare professionals, you know, we care for the, the mouth is connected to the body. I, uh, don't have to tell you this, but we should have some sort of compassion to do something if there's nothing but to pass the book on or tell somebody about something, you know, but we just can't forget the, the long term care facilities that's nestled in our community right around a block from us, so people don't even know it.

Speaker B: That's so true. That is so true. Uh, you know what, I'm going to take you to task on something that you, you just said and it's, I'm, I'm tongue and cheeking you, meaning personal Summer. Okay, I'm just playing with you a little bit. So I had an aunt Ruby who lived with me and when I was in dental school I took her to get some dentures made. And um, my um, professor graciously agreed to, you know, work with me as I got her a new pair of dentures. So he's taking the impression, right? And he says, he said, don't bite me. Now she says she heard him say bite as, uh, hard as you can. You can imagine this man who's going to give me my final grade doing this. And then he says to her, you don't need no dentures. So it's not only the pediatric patients that can bite. But, oh boy, I guess that I agree with that.

Speaker A: I agree with you on that because I've had my fair share of bites.

Speaker B: All right, so let's get serious again. You identified barriers like, um, a lack of training and fear of liability in your research for your book. Which barriers did you find that is the root cause of why so many dental professionals avoid this work?

Speaker A: I think one of the number one reasons is money, money, money. Okay? When seniors, when they retire, their insurance change, right? So if you get somebody that's coming in and they're for cleaning floor, rubber cleaning and um, um, couple of wings and whatever that looks like, that could be 175, maybe 200 visit. Whereas if you're a senior and your, your insurance change and you're now one of these supplement Medicare plans that may look like $53, you know, and when you got to pay your bills, you know, you know, what, what, what is that? And then they don't want to pay for 4,910. They don't want to pay for um, burial. That's a period maintenance. They don't want to pay for that. So you're, you know, you look stuck with doing maybe a pro fee, but people don't really need a pro fee if they 75 with pocket. So you know, it's compromising. So I think the number one barrier is time in your chair because time is money and hygienist is expensive. Assistance are expensive and we have overhead. That's one of the number one barriers for medical professionals. The second is getting access. Whether they have access to getting into your office. If they're in a wheelchair, do they have access? Does your office accommodate a wheelchair? Do you have something that could. Do you have an empty room where they can lay their wheelchair? You know that you can work in them in a wheelchair and they can put their head on something or do they have to transfer out of the wheelchair?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Okay. Do you have room for a walker then? Some people just intimidate with people coming in their office with walkers. There's some of the offices are not up to 88 cold, where the doors and everything, because they're older offices. So those are, those are things that, those are big barriers. Uh, those are the big boys, you know. Then you have the younger people that may not know how to, that may not know how to handle older people. Sometimes they take a little longer to get to the seat. You got to go over that medical history. They gonna, you're not gonna rush them, I can tell you that right now. So if you, you can't rush grandma. You, you know, you can talk fast if you want to. She gonna take her time. If you talk too fast, you go ask you for her purse and she gonna dig in that for about 10 minutes. So you rather just, just, you know, put him at lunch time before your lunch or at the end of the day. Because so, so sometimes it's intimidating if they don't want to lay all the way back in a chair because of, you know, the OPD or different breathing things. It's intimidating. One girl told me she scared me because she got white rings around her eyes and she was like 23 years old. You know, I think the lady had cataracts. And, you know, it just, it just scared her. You know what I'm saying? Brown eyes, you know, it. You'll be, you'll be surprised at what people, younger people look at, you know. You know, older people had it like they had a Cadillac, that little. Right. You know, so she, that scared her because I said the same thing. I was like, what? She was like, no, that brown part that it was, it was gray. I was like, oh, okay. And then when they, you know, uh, the long list of medical history and then if they start breathing funny, you know, it's just a lot of things that make. And they shaky if they have Parkinson's, you know, people get nervous about stuff that, that, that. No, the people who work with the geriatric don't normally do. So there's some training that needs to be there. When you give them electronic tablets in the office, those can be intimidating for people that are not accustomed to doing electronic things. Instruments. That high pitched sound, if someone has a hearing aid on that is horrible. That has to. If they have a hearing aid on. So those are barriers for older people and younger people, you know, in the dental space. So those are just some of the barriers.

Speaker B: I just never thought about the hearing aids and the high pitched sounds. You are so right. You are so right. So, you know, I was, I was going to ask you, this book, um, Forgotten Mouth, is it. If it was written primarily for dental professionals or is it also a guide for family members and caregivers who want to advocate for their loved ones?

Speaker A: But it's a guide for everybody. And it's written, it's written in layman terms because, you know, it's written easy because I have dyslexia. So I, you know, I've struggled with that all my life. So I had to make it easy where I can understand it and other people can. And it's pictures. So it's very, it's an easy read. It's a fun read. It's interesting. I have little stories in it to keep people going. So it's not 100% academic, but it is academic. So it just works.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, you've said so many things in such a short period of time. It has the wheels, um, in my head going round and round because even the scheduling, you want to give that appointment a little padding on the front, on the back for the very reason that you said, said they're slower Moving. They have to process their thoughts, they have to share. And some of them are. Some, like most people are very sociable. So they may want to, you know, tell you about the grandfather's this or the granddaughter's win or whatever. And then at the end, you need time to be able to share with the caregiver as well, well as the client what happens. So it can't be a rushed appointment. Yeah. There's so much that we overlook or underestimate when we're working with our seniors in the office. So I can just imagine, um, how you have to adjust when you're looking at a mobile situation because you're not in an environment that is always ideal. And although they may come to the bus or whatever, or you go to the rooms, there's always something that's not going to be quite a hundred percent. And you just have to adjust. Um, in Jamaica we say you just have to flex. You just have to flex. So, Sonia, your mission is to empower professionals to become leaders in this field. How does the book serve as a roadmap for a hygienist who feels called to this work but doesn't know where to start?

Speaker A: Got you. There's everything in it. Um, first of all, at the bottom of the book, it offers a free guide that I have on my website, um, about how to start mobile. It leads you to my website and there's a lot of free information on there. Also, it has a geriatric certification in there, which if anybody, a dentist or a hygienist is interested in becoming and getting started in this, I think they should take that certification and get that under their belt because it teaches so much about the geriatric population and it tells you how to get, um, just started going to homes. You can just start going to people homes. You can start in homes, you can start at assisted living facilities, you can start at group homes. Um, nursing homes is the, is the last. That's a big stop. But you can start a group like, um, when people, people having their mother and father at home, you get surprised how many phone calls we get. And people will pay you any amount to come to their homes and take care of their loved ones. And it's. And it's not, it's not, um, mobile dentistry, it's portable dentistry. Mobile is with a van. I do have a van, but I only use it for my kids and for, um, free stuff. I don't put older people in a van because if they come up them stairs and they hurt themselves, who's responsible and, uh, once they leave out of that facility to come to your van, who's responsible? So I believe when portable and some of the safest places is in their own home, which is the nursing home or their home. So I encourage people to do portable, where you get the small equipment that's just like in the dental office. Office. And take into the resident's place of, um, living.

Speaker B: Thank you for that correction. And it makes so much sense, especially when we're living in such a litigious society. One big move, and they're going to call the lawyer on the big billboard beside the nursing home. Yeah. I have a final question for you, Sonia. After reading the Forgotten Mouths, what is the single most important action or shift in mindset you hope readers will take away?

Speaker A: The most important thing that I want people to take away from this book is that every stage, every part of life has a stage. And no stage should be forgotten. Every state should be recognized and reverenced in that stage. When you was a baby in an arm, that was a stage, and you deserved that. You could cry anytime you wanted to as a toddler then no one, we expected you to holler on the plane, but let me get on there hollering. They're gonna call the, you know, crazy people and then the teenagers. We expect you to do silly stuff as a teenager. That's what you do. You're getting your horse hormones. You don't make your brains thinking. When you're in your 30s, we expect you to figure out who you're gonna marry and buy your house when you in your 40s, you. You work until your retirement. But when you're in your senior years, those are those years. And those years to be respected. Those years should be honored because you put your time in and we shouldn't be forgotten. So I, I, uh, my. My goal for this book, if people can see the stages and respect the stage, this is a stage that people are in. And like I said, you don't. My grandmother used to say, you know where you started, but you don't know where you're gonna end up. There are people in these nursing homes that have six or seven kids and don't none of them come see them.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Some people have one child and that one child doing everything. Or there's nieces and nephews, so you never know. One lady had one daughter was so good, the daughter got cancer and died.

Speaker B: Oh, boy.

Speaker A: And she was, like, 90, and she lived to be 100 and something. 10 extra years without her only child.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Uh, and that was the one that was coming up there knitting, and they were having. But she never seen that.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So you just never know what hand we gonna get dealt. So I just feel that every stage you're in, live that to the best of ability. And don't look down on older people because they're older and they're more frail and they're more weak because at one time they were strong. And if God blesses us to live, will be there one day.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So that's what I would say. Just, you know, don't let the people be forgotten. And as dental professionals, let's pay attention to their mouths.

Speaker B: Sonia, you have said so much in such a short period of time. I hope that, like me, I think I ordered my book. It just didn't come on time. No, I. I did from the moment I heard. And then looking at that title, I just said I had to get it, but it didn't reach here on time. However, I am hoping that from this discussion, it will spark a lot of interest in everybody. Caregivers, family members, dental professionals, dental students, everybody. Because you are right, our seniors have put in their time, and they deserved to be respectfully treated and with kindness and love and all that they spent their lifetimes pouring out to us. Uh, so thank you so much. Uh, I have a quick question. Will you consider coming back on another occasion just to give us so much more information?

Speaker A: I would love to come back. I want to talk about dentures and prosthesis. I think that's good. Uh, subject, if you allow me to.

Speaker B: Okay. All right, so I'm already rubbing my hands together for the next episode. Thank you so much. Dr. Dunbar, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And, uh, an eye opener speaking with you today.

Speaker A: Thank you, and bye for now.

Speaker B: Well, I don't know about you, but I got so many gems speaking to Dr. Sonia a while ago. Okay. Yes, I do believe that we need to be careful that we don't create a scenario where our seniors are the visibly invisible. And the reality is their nursing homes filled with patients who have crowns and bridges and implants and dentures and everything else that walks through your office. And they still need care. So if you feel so inclined, the team can visit regularly a nursing home or can consider having that as part of their, um, regular service to the community. And as, um, Dr. Dunbar said, be respectful. Give them time. If we need to schedule extra time for them. That is perfect. That is okay. That's what they need. And at the end of the day, make sure that you feel comfortable as to how we treat our seniors, let's not call them visibly invisible, okay? So like share, subscribe if you haven't AS because life is better when we live, grow and learn together. See you the next time.