Ken Johnson DDS

07/22/2025

I am updating my broken appointment policy. For now on, no shows and same day cancellations will be charged $50.

06/04/2025

06/07/2023

Summer weather is here again, which might make a nice, cold can of pop sound appealing. An occasional coke won’t harm you, but be careful not to allow it to become a daily habit. I believe sugary drinks are the number one source of cavities. Even people who floss and brush effectively still get tooth decay if they are frequent pop drinkers.

And as always, remember to floss like you mean it. Don’t back off because it causes a little bleeding. In fact, if you see bleeding after flossing, it means you aren’t flossing enough. Bleeding gums harm your heart health, so take it seriously.

If you want premium dental care in a privately owned practice that won’t “sell” you a lot of nonsense, call 608-365-9456. You’ll be glad you did.

12/29/2022

Another year comes to an end. I am really glad to be able to announce great news regarding dentistry.

For years, I have tried to find a composite filling material that had all the properties I wanted, with minimal post-operative sensitivity. It is disappointing to place a filling, achieve excellent, flush margins, carve realistic anatomy into it, but then have the patient call later to tell me the filling gives a twinge of pain when hard foods push directly down on it.

Obviously, my reassurance that the tenderness eventually (usually) goes away on its own doesn’t always satisfy the patient. This frustrating downside to tooth-colored filling materials has always been the reason I have never recommended the replacement of silver-mercury fillings if they are still in functional condition.

About three months ago, my sales rep recommended a new adhesive that comes with a desensitizing agent. Since using this new material, I haven’t had a single complaint of post-op sensitivity! Finally, now that I am within seven years of retirement, someone finally solves this problem.

Better late than never, I suppose. Oh well, I hope you all have a great new year. And if you decide to swap out those dark gray mercury fillings, I no longer have any reason to talk you out of it.

10/05/2022

I am saddened to announce that our longtime assistant, Rhonda, has decided to move on after almost 28 years of a great working relationship. I wish her good fortune.

So, if anyone knows of an experienced dental assistant who would be happy in a low pressure, unhurried work environment, please let them know we are in need.

And, as always, FLOSS YOUR TEETH. 🤓

09/08/2022

The number of last minute cancellations has become ridiculous. People hold a hygiene appointment for six months, receive multiple reminders, then cancel the evening before the appointment. This means my wife, who runs the office, has to scramble to try to contact people to fill the wasted time slots.

When trying to schedule someone for a cleaning, we often can’t get them in for several weeks because the appointments are already booked, often by people who are going to cancel at the last minute. We try to stress the importance of keeping appointments by having each new patient read and sign an acknowledgment that they’ll be charged a $25 broken appointment fee if they fail to give at least 24 hours notice before cancelling, but we seldom actually charge it, mostly because the $25 doesn’t even come close to making up for the wasted time, and patients often pitch a fit over it. So our practice has always been to only start charging repeat offenders, whom I regard as lousy patients anyways.

Here’s the thing; I’m getting too old to put up with being so casually disrespected anymore. Frankly, I’m not trying to build up the patient base anymore. So, for now on, those repeat offenders are simply going to be told they’ve lost their welcome here.

I’m sure many patients will respond to that by saying, “who cares? You’re not the only dentist in town”. I’m also sure that they will later realize they were mistaken. This area has transitioned to corporate-owned, PPO accepting offices. You’ll get a different dentist every year or two. You’ll almost always be seated late for your appointment. You WILL be charged there for broken appointments. When you have some bit of dentistry fail prematurely because it was poorly done, you’ll be told that dentist doesn’t work there anymore.

You’ll realize you should not have blown me off repeatedly and gotten yourself kicked out. If you want to see the highest quality dentist in this area, who stands behind his work, takes care to keep you comfortable, never rushes through your procedure because he’s overbooked, then consider showing the barest minimum courtesy of not wasting his time.

Finally, if you must cancel, don’t even think about making snide complaints to Meggan when you learn the next unbooked slot is several weeks away. It gauls us, too, because we know that many of those slots are booked by someone who has no intention of showing up, and by cancelling last minute, you’ve just become one of those people.

I know that life happens, and even the most courteous person might not be able to keep an appointment. And sometimes you simply forget. I’ve done that myself, and I would never resent a patient who has had one or two broken appointments over the years. But we have patients who have such a history of broken appointments that we literally say to one another, “ya think he’ll show up this time?”, when we see him on the schedule. Those people are now going to be weeded out, which will ultimately help the decent patients to not have to wait so long if they are forced to reschedule.

You get an email four days prior to your appointment. If you contact us right away to say you must reschedule, we don’t consider that a broken appointment. We don’t even note it in your chart, because you didn’t do anything wrong. But if you call on the day of the appointment, that doesn’t allow us time to get someone else in. If you do that repeatedly, that demonstrates a general disrespect, and you’ll be told to enjoy your new corporate dentist.

03/12/2022

Sorry to say farewell to our assistant Laura. Six years of excellence, but now moving on to another city in another state. We’ll miss her.

That’s leaves only my mediocre Spanish to assist our hispanic patients. If anyone out there knows a fluent bilingual person with a personality conducive to teamwork and customer service, tell them they are needed here!

Meanwhile, with mask mandates winding down, please be assured that our operatories are still strictly disinfected between patients, as always.

01/30/2022

I haven’t posted in a while, mostly because little has changed. But there are still 66 million unvaccinated Americans, so I would like to make one last appeal to encourage those who hesitate.

Over 10 billion doses of Covid vaccine have been given. So, if you were waiting to see if it was safe, that has been proven. It’s no longer an emergency approval, either. It’s fully approved, and is safe. No medicine has ever been 100% safe. Nothing is. The important point is that taking these vaccines is vastly safer than not taking them.

You WILL be exposed to Covid. It has already been in every school, every family, every store. Hoping you can simply avoid it is like hoping you’ll never encounter the common cold. So, the only question now is, do you want to rely solely on your own immune defenses, or should you strengthen your defenses by taking the vaccine.

You should take the vaccine. The only exceptions are people who sincerely can’t take it, for legitimate medical reasons like allergy to ingredients, etc. For the rest of us, you are far better than 100 times safer after vaccination.

Some Covid patients have had long term residual complications. It is absolutely NOT just like getting over a cold. So please, get the vaccine. For that matter, please make sure you and your family are current on ALL recommended vaccines. Although older vaccine technologies aren’t quite as safe as mRNA vaccines, they are all safer than the diseases they prevent.

Healthy people still buy health insurance. Safe drivers still buy car insurance. Vaccination is your best Covid insurance, and living without it could really bite you in the butt someday.

05/04/2021

Covid cases are dropping. But don’t forget, they dropped last summer, too. That is normal for corona viruses.

Now is not the time to become complacent. We have this sucker on the ropes, and we need to keep throwing punches until it’s knocked out.

The number of vaccinations administered daily is starting to slip, and there are a lot of people who are still suspicious about the vaccines. Sometimes I see people saying, “they’re not even approved by the FDA!” That kind of statement demonstrates a lack of understanding about FDA approval.

First of all, they ARE approved. They have emergency use approval that was based on tens of thousands of doses already administered with positive results. Full approval will be granted after all the bureaucratic nonsense our FDA is notorious for has been completed. This country has always lagged behind other countries for drug approval, and because of that, Americans have not had access to new life-saving drugs as quickly as Europeans have, resulting in unnecessary deaths.

It took an emergency pandemic for our FDA to finally do something right, and on time. By now, 245 million doses of vaccine have been administered in the United States, and the negative side effects are MINISCULE compared to what an unvaccinated population would suffer. The possible side effects are no more significant than those of the polio vaccine, yet for some reason, people are suspicious of this one.

104 million of us are FULLY vaccinated. If this vaccine were dangerous, it would be huge news by now. It’s not. Get the vaccine. This isn’t something you are being asked to do for yourself. You’d be doing it for your community and your country. You’d be doing it for the people sitting with you in your church, or in the audience of all those things we were robbed of doing last year.

This is a fight, and we need to win it. Please don’t let fear keep you from joining in this fight.

03/18/2021

I have been seeing a lot of dental appliances being marketed by labs directly to patients via social media. No honest lab would do this, knowing it’s illegal. Also, they can seriously screw up your mouth.

If you have received unsatisfactory products from these labs, report them to your state professional licensing board to get them shut down.

01/17/2021

Just a little while more, folks. Keep wearing those masks and washing those hands.

Just imagine how lonely Betty White would be if the rest of us died off!

09/17/2020

A study just suggested that people who wear glasses gain some protection from covid. They note that 31% of people wear eyeglasses, yet only 5% of covid patients in hospitals wear glasses.

They could have saved themselves some work, and read my articles from four months ago. Or maybe that’s where they got the idea. 😎

Sadly, they still posit that the benefit is from droplet protection, which is intuitively absurd. Anyone who has watched the videos of green-illuminated cough droplet distribution will dismiss that theory immediately. It also suggests that a primary mode of infection is having people couch directly towards your face. When is the last time you witnessed such thing? No, the far more prevalent transmission mode is the touching of contaminated surfaces, and subsequent touching of eyes, nose or mouth.

The truth is obvious; when you are wearing glasses, you are less likely to rub your eyes. Touching your eyes with contaminated hands IS a primary mode of infection. That’s why handwashing is so important.

So, wash hands after touching public surfaces, and if you don’t wear prescription glasses, wear sunglasses. Either one will remind you to keep those icky fingers away from your eyes. That, along with a mask, which helps remind you not to touch your mouth and nose, will decrease your likelihood of directly placing viruses on your mucosal membranes.

Also, be advised that wearing the same pair of latex gloves all day long is no different than wearing none at all. In fact, if they give you a false sense of security, they could be worse. I have personally witnessed people in Walmart, rubbing their eyes with a gloved hand. No benefit whatsoever.