I try to live my life by the "do unto others" philosophy of. I try to put myself in the place of other people and think, how would I want something done if I was that person.

Well an interesting thing happened to me this past weekend. I have a very close friend who lives across the street. I live on a great block and have made some very close friends in the few years I have been in this home. I consider them family and try to treat them as if they are my own. I'm not always saying that is a blessing!

Anyhow, my good friend lost his mother last week to a long-term illness. Her funeral was Friday morning. I went over the house to help out with anything they needed and to provide some emotional support to my friend. His sister and brother-in-law were in town from Canada for the funeral and were staying for a few days. It was about 5:30 at night and I heard someone talking about the brother-in-law having a bad tooth ache.

What would I want done if I were in his shoes? I'd want to be out of pain ASAP. I also was thinking of my friend and his sister and that the weekend was tough enough as it was and now the brother-in-law was going to have to be in pain the entire time also. I did not know the gentleman, but I went outside and introduced myself. I could see he was in terrible pain and asked about his symptoms. Turns out #14 was necrotic and needed a root canal. I told him I was taking him to my office right then and was going to do the root canal.

I think I caught everyone off guard, because no one asked me to do it. I just knew it was the right thing to do. It would be what I would want done for my own family. We ran to the office and I did a molar root canal on him. I have to say, you really appreciate your dental assistant when you don't have one! We completed the root canal (and yes, I found the MB2, all you dental geeks!) and sent him home with pain meds.

I saw him the next day and he looked great. He was feeling almost no pain and I felt blessed to have helped in their time of need. He, his wife and the family could not have expressed more appreciation to me for what I had done. It will now be a story that will be told many times over I'm sure by the family, but I just was honored to be able to help out. I always have tried to live by this motto and this past weekend, I'm really glad I did!