As an orthodontist at Smile Pop, I am constantly thinking of my Invisalign patients, even while in quarantine. Today is Thursday, April 9th, 2020 and it marks my 22nd day in quarantine. Have I necessarily “been in quarantine” the entire time? Meh. I’ve crossed a couple state lines but more or less the answer is yes. It’s been over 2 weeks now since I’ve see my last patient and I find myself wondering – am I losing my hand strength or is it that just a form of my imagination?

I’m writing this at 6:30am facing the ocean watching the sunrise. This is not a typical day. I repeat, not a typical day. Normally we are sleeping in a bit later and it’s because we sleep in a room with hurricane shutters put down so it is pitch black. Even with a pitch black room, I am, however, still waking up around 7:30am on the reg and that’s just because my body is a savage.

I thought I would “blog” first thing in the AM because right before I decided to do this, I was going to write down a list of my intentions/goals for today. A couple days ago I decided to add a little more structure to my days. I was never planning on that, but when I heard this quarantine will last at least until the end of this month I just knew I had to to it.

Let me take you back to the week of March 16th, when things really started to crumble in NYC. I tried to be proactive about getting my patients more of their Invisalign aligners before I shut down shop and left New York City. After cancelling their appointments through our online scheduler, Schedulista (which made it very easy!) and then manually cancelling it through our appointment book software on Tops Ortho, the Smile Pop team looked at all the aligners we had in the back storage closet and shipped out what we could.

When I opened Smile Pop back in July 2019, I spent a couple days doing research as to how I can efficiently ship things from my office. I did not want to keep walking to the post office, standing in that line, and wasting precious time. So, while I didn’t quite need to know how to efficiently ship things then, I was so thankful now that I spent that time all those months ago to figure it out. On a sidenote, but an important one, here’s what I learned:

• When I first opened my office I purchased a digital scale to weigh my shipment. It got in on Amazon for about $10 and it is the size of a man’s wallet (the George Costanza sized wallet, not the credit card holding ones).
• I also invested in the DYMO 4XL thermal printer. I say “invested” because I remember it being around $250, more than I cared to spend, and I got that on Amazon. It’s my favorite thing now – you don’t need to buy ink, you just need to buy the rolls of labels as it heat “prints” the information on the labels. Then you simply peel them and stick them on the package.
• Finally, and this is the awesome part, I created an account on GoShippo. It’s a discounted online postage store that can be linked to several shipping companies. I use USPS because I feel that it’s cheaper than UPS and FedEx because it is. (Even if you have to ship internationally it’s cheaper!) GoShippo is a pay as you go website. A label that could typically cost me $3.75 to ship if I sent it from the USPS store now costs me $2.72. The savings add up and I can easily send an automatic email to the patient once the package is shipped out and delivered. I feel like all other postage websites wanted a monthly fee and I gotta tell you – I am tired of paying monthly fees, no matter how small they are, because they all eventually add up!

Okay, back to the matter at hand. As I was spending hours in the office – not treating patients but putting packages together – I came up with the idea to send care packages to my patients. I thought, “This will be a big pain in the butt, but maybe it can also give [my front desk] something to do during this quarantine, too.” Turns out I ended up doing it all myself as I didn’t want to make Alli, my front desk, drudge across the NYC subway system where the only thing riding them at the time were the Subway Creatures. (I live close enough to the office to walk. I’ve never actually typed that statement before and now that I think about it in quarantine, that’s pretty cool! I can even stop at at least 20 unique coffee shops if I wanted to on the way (but I don’t because I’d go broke).

The name of my office is Smile Pop, so I got creative and thought, “I’ll mail out some Smile Pop[corn] and put a label on it referencing Netflix and chilling since that is what a lot of people will be doing while in quarantine these next few weeks. The first thing I did was ordered the supplies: more metallic pink on-brand 9×6 padded envelopes off eBay, popcorn in bulk on Boxed.com (the line at Costco in Harlem was way too long for me to stand in and risk getting the ‘Rona), and design the popcorn label on Canva.com. (I love this site by the way – so fun to get creative with everything from Instagram posts to website banners, etc).

I ended up printing out 250+ labels at my fiancé’s corporate office (thanks Prospect Capital!) and cutting them into the size I needed with the guillotine cutter. Pain in the butt. Took me at least an hour or so. My fiancé helped package them all together and then we even slipped in a couple scratch off lotto tickets under the popcorn label to make it even more fun for a 100 special patients. I wish I could tell you I randomly slipped them in there, but if my patient’s name made my smile when I came across it, they definitely got one. 🙂

Thank goodness for my fiancé who helped me package all of them because at the end of it all, it was a lot! I actually made extra care packages and dropped them off at the local hospital down in The Village to hand out to the first responders. They loved it! I even made a short YouTube compilation to share with my friends and family.

Okay back to present day, Thursday, April 9th in Narragansett, Rhode Island. That “high” of doing that thing that felt so good and let my patients know that I’m thinking of them was over a week ago. It ended up costing me just under $1,000 (and to spend that kind of money on something so frivolous during a time where no money is coming in seems irresponsible, but I would do it again in a heartbeat). That is what gets me going in the AM – knowing I can put a smile on peoples’ faces.

I’m now getting a few emails a day from patient asking if I can send them more rubber bands or more Invisalign aligners. That’s good and all, except now I need to be more organized about it because I am having Alli, my awesome front desk helper, venture the NYC subway systems into the Smile Pop office once per week to ship out the items. To help me stay organized, I made a free form on Google Forms for the patients to put in their necessary info and it makes my life that much easier. Yay for technology!

Okay, that’s all I have for now. This took about 30 minutes for me to write. Pretty easy. And I actually appreciate the blogging because it reminds me of my calling – to do good for others. Time to start writing that do to list for today. But first, coffee. 🙂 If you’re a patient or stranger who stumbled upon this, come check out our latest thing since we’ve been in quarantine – a Smile Assessment right from our website! Check it out!

P.S. I’m surprisingly in a good mood today even after remembering that my fiancé and I were supposed to fly to Paris today. Things could be worse. I could be writing this in a 400 square foot apartment in New York City with three screaming toddlers running around me. 😉