Dear Spear Family,

When something major happens in our life, we read things online and talk to friends and family about it. We look to coaches, mentors, consults and experts to help us. We listen to coaches. Sometimes we get to ask questions. When we are in a discussion, the conversation meanders and flows; by writing down the issues at hand it become easier to see what's happening and we can make sense of it better. Outside of a few dental colleagues and a couple buddies from dental school, I don't have many people to share this with so I share it here. I hope it's appropriate. If you find it pointless or annoying just stop reading.

Like nearly all of you, my office stopped seeing hygiene in mid March and stopped all but CDC approved emergencies in late March. We went from 6 doctors down to one (me) seeing between 3 to 9 pts a week. 9 patients is is a half hour normally. I realized how fragile my practice was and how what I thought was unshakable was very much vulnerable.

When we were all shutting down it got really weird. My friends who practice were acting in ways I'd never seen them act before. Anger. Denial. Panic. "I'm staying open" I heard more than once. Nope, your not. One of my friends cried when it sunk in, yes were are really shutting it down. I realized we were going to war in a sense and so I'd better prepare for battle. Like in Lord of the Rings. Sharpen the swords and get the shields out. Beat your chest. Sound the battle cry we are going to do this and we will be victorious. Chant the incantation. "I am a Gladiator. Winter is my season. Bring me your fears bring me your anxiety I bring you results. I add MASSIVE value and find a way to victory". That was the excitement before the battle. Now we are in the actual fight and all those endorphins are wearing off. To use a baseball analogy, what inning is it? 1st? 3rd? 7th inning stretch? I have no idea.

You might remember the soccer team in Thailand that spent nearly 2 weeks in a cave after a flood. After soccer practice, the coach decided to take the 12 year olds on a hike up to a cave. They stopped at a convenience store and purchased the equivalent of 4 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When the coach and the boys entered the cave and began to explore it began to rain harder and harder. Within no time the cave entrance was flooded. The coach moved the boys deeper into the cave to find higher ground and keep from drowning. Soon the cave was totally flooded and they were trapped. It took the rescue crews like 11 days to even figure out where they were then another 6 days to get them out. When they rescued them they still had the equivalent of 1 1/2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches left. The coach said he didn't know how long it would be until they were rescued so they had to ration very conservatively.

The soonest I can open is June 1st. Maybe it will be moved up or back even more. Who knows? I have to conserve my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hence the layoffs and the deferrals and the loans. Stay alive, don't die.

I asked my operations manger, Chris, a question this morning. I said "Chris if you fell out of a cruise ship into the warm ocean and there were no sharks, how long could you tread water and float?" Chris is a very fit triathlete, cyclist and crossfitter. He said "a very long time". I said "now imagine you had no idea when you would be rescued and there was a 100 pound weight strapped to your back. How hard would you try to shed that weight?". That weight is payroll, rent, phone bills, equipment bills, subscriptions, consumer purchases and everything else that can drown me. So I'm shedding the 100 pound weight and making damn sure I have a peanut butter sandwich or two left over when I can eventually return to work. Otherwise there may be a shell of a practice to return to, especially if it drags on or there is another spike.

I have no clear date upon which I can reopen. so decision making is challenging. I was talking to a friend about our recovery strategies and told him in the game of chess you know all the rules. Everything is a known. Each piece can do a certain thing and the board never changes. In tennis, it's much different. Clay vs Grass. Weather variations of temps, wind or precipitation. Top spin vs side spin. Referees influencing things. This shutdown is closer to tennis than chess but in reality, its the freaking Hunger Games. All of a sudden there are killer wasps and explosions and beasts and as soon as you have your EIDL/PPP strategy laid out they change the rules then you adapt and they change again. It's bloody chaos.

When the plane crashed into the twin towers Sept 11th, 2001. Mayor Rudy Guilianni headed into what they called the war room in City Hall. They had contingency plans for hundreds of situations. A poisoned water supply, a dirty bomb in the subway, a 100 story building on fire a EMP detonated 1/2 mile above the city etc. While they didn't have a specific plan for a plane hitting the building, they pulled from the other plans and with 30 mins of the first plane hitting they had a plan which they executed. Guilianni was credited for saving 1000's of lives and was a national hero (regardless of how you feel about him now). We should have a recovery plan that accounts for being open June 1st, June 15th July 15th, deals with another shutdown in the fall or deals with lower revenues for 6-12 months .Then we've already began the attack and we aren't on our heels when the Hunger Games programmer makes another radical challenge.

The mental game of this has been so important. What can I control? What matters? I strung a bunch of good productive days together then stared at the wall for a few hours the next day in complete shutdown mode. As I was edging toward despair and overwhelm I wondered, "nothing changed that much from yesterday to today, why am I numb?" Luckily I came out of it. Not luckily; it's a miracle that I came out of it. I am so thankful that I recovered so quickly because some of our colleagues are hurting so much and not dealing well.

Most of us have seen the black and white Yin Yang symbol. It is an ancient Daoist symbol representing chaos and order. They believed if you were living rightly you straddled the line between the two. You have one foot in chaos and one foot in order. Systems and habits give us order. Pushing our selves and getting out of our comfort zone and trying new things give us chaos. Order is light. Chaos is darkness. If we have too much order in our life we get bored. Too much order is a totalitarian dictator. Too much order gets you into a rut. This COVID 19 pandemic shutdown is the opposite of order. It's chaos. Everything I was doing...stopped. Bank accounts...depleted. Enter chaos and darkness.

One of the first people to reach out to me was Kirby, my SPS consultant. She told me about 4 initiatives SPS was going to focus on. They were suspiciously identical to the 4 things another mentor of mine told me to focus on a few weeks earlier. I can't say his name but his initials might be I.M. and he might talk with a cool accent and he might have a really impressive mustache and I might be really jealous of his watch collection. The point is the ideas and actions to focus on that I got from the Spear SPS team jolted me out of the paralysis I was falling into. They are shinning a massive bright light into the darkness. They have given me a beacon to focus on and I am so thankful for that. It's like in Harry Potter when they are at the lake and Sirius Black is about to die as the Dementors suck the life out of him. He finally realizes its up to him and conjures up the expecto petronum spell and repels the evil. In Lord of the Rings the good guys are fighting a battle at Helm's Deep and when all is about to be lost they remember, Gandalf said "look to the East on the fifth day" and there is a bright light streaming in and he's got an entire army with him ready to vanquish the dark evil forces that are raving our heroes. The hero is me and Spear is the Gandalf led army.

Could I survive without them? Yes. Most certainly. They are just making it so much clearer. There are problems in the world. We are going to fix them and that has deep deep meaning. More than ever before. What will it mean to me when we come back, triumphantly? What will it mean to the patients? What will it mean to the team? Will it have all been worth it? I know it will. I can see us in a year. It's glorious. We are strong. We are so much more grateful.

If you made it this point, thanks for reading. I would love to hear your story on your hero's journey,

Chad