-: My name is Mary Lee Gillespie and I am a general dentist
in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Basically, I can do anything a dentist can do.
I can pull teeth, I can do dentures, I can do fillings,
root canals, implants, so I can do everything.
In my practice, it's a little bit different
than going to another general dentist's practice.
We have you come in and we take all of your records,
which would be x-rays, intra-oral photos,
and get your medical history,
and then I get to meet you for about 30 to 45 minutes
and we go through everything.
And then you get your teeth cleaned after that.
Some dental offices just get your teeth cleaned,
and then the dentist runs in for five minutes,
and then is out of the room.
So I try to build a relationship with my patients first.
Well, I do IV sedation, and so we can do as much dentistry
as possible in that one appointment.
You have to go past your general dentistry degree
and get that additional to the degree,
and so I put people to sleep with an IV and use medications.
And we do a whole host of dentistry
in a several hour appointment.
So I can get a cleaning, a filling, pull all teeth,
implants, root canals, crowns, we can do everything.
Well, I try to figure out what your expectations are
of what you want to see done with your oral health.
And so, that's a big part of me building a relationship
with my patients is making sure that we're on the same page
and that I can offer a service that will be
exactly what they expect of.
So we definitely have to discuss finances, time frame,
and exactly what they want to see done with their mouth.
Some people just want a cleaning,
and then some people want the Hollywood smile.
So, everybody's different, so that's the reason why
I spend a little bit of extra time with my patients
to figure out what they want.