Most people don’t find their calling in life until they’ve matured and tried on a few different hats. Not so Dr. Stacy Tracy. When she was still in eighth grade, Tracy—now celebrating 20 years in her own dental practice—decided what her profession would be. You might say it was an epiphany that sprang from a “smashing” encounter. With monkey bars, that is.
“I was 8 or 9 years old and in third grade,” Tracy said. “Two bad things happened. The monkey bar accident and then, at Halloween, I caught on fire. That was the worst year I ever had!”
Tracy, who grew up in San Antonio, recalled going to a friend’s grandmother’s home just a few doors down the street. “They had big metal monkey bars and I could leap to the third rung. My friend dared me to go to the fourth.” The dare produced a less than glorious result.
“My mouth landed on the rungs on the other side. I bit all the way through my bottom lip and smashed my front center teeth.”
Face down on the ground, blood pouring from her mouth, the hurt and scared elementary schooler was in shock. A broken piece of her front tooth was poking through the lip, the other bent all the way into the roof of her mouth.
At the emergency room “the family doctor stitched me up,” Tracy said. “I talked non-stop during the whole thing. It’s lucky that it looks as good as it does. Fifteen stitches later, she still had to face oral surgery the next day.
“I broke the bone around my teeth,” Tracy said, though she says she really doesn’t remember any of that.
Next came years of specialized dental care to repair all the damage. “I went through a lot after the accident putting everything back together. That’s when I became interested (in pursuing an education in dentistry).”
She watched the endodontist’s reflection in his glasses as he worked on her mouth. “I was curious about what he was doing,” Tracy said. “I was never afraid. I had never been to a dentist before that.”
By eighth grade, she decided she wanted to go to dental school, never wavering from that early decision. She earned an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio, then went on to dental school at the University of Texas Health Science Center in the same city.
“While I was there it was ranked the number-one dental school in the nation.”
This year marks Tracy’s 20th anniversary since she established Tempe Smile Design, though she’s been a dentist for 24 years.
Her best advice for parents when it comes to their kids teeth?
“There are a lot of parents who don’t think dental hygiene is as important as it is,” Tracy said. They don’t think it’s important to floss baby teeth and that if little kids don’t want to brush, they don’t force the issue. “There’s a misconception that baby teeth will be lost so they aren’t as important. They think baby teeth are disposable.”
Not so.
Tracy cautions parents to take good care of their children’s oral hygiene from an early age in order to avoid future problems.
Info: TempeSmileDesign.com. 480-829-8200.
Office: 1712 E. Guadalupe Road, Suite 109, Tempe.
