I’ve been underwater before. Teaching myself to swim in preschool didn’t go well. Neither did that homemade rope-swing over the Russian River five years later. I was exactly 60 feet underwater when I got stuck SCUBA spelunking. That was an unpleasant half hour of very slow breathing. I’m still underwater with that can’t lose property I bought in Arizona… my wife won’t let me forget that one.
Two weeks ago I found myself underwater again. Aimee and I had just purchased two new cone beam CTs, namely ridiculously accurate and powerful Planmeca Promax 3D Max’s. Only five 3D Max’s are currently in California: a plastic surgeon, an oral-facial surgeon, a surgical teaching facility… and Reveal Diagnostics in San Francisco and Mountain View. But the new technology didn’t put us underwater.
Two weeks ago, we also opened two new 3D dental imaging centers. We’re now scanning in Mountain View and Marin, as well as our flagship office in San Francisco. But it wasn’t tripling in size that put us underwater.
It was the water. Literally. Two weeks ago we walked into our San Francisco office and found a flood. The dental office above ours flooded. Actually it started flooding when the doctor left his water running Thursday afternoon; by Monday morning it was more of a monsoon. That monsoon soaked our carpet, warped the baseboards, infiltrated the drywall, and even seeped into the conference room table so thoroughly the legs split. It hit everything but our new cone beam and the office computers. We were seriously, literally, wetly underwater.
Luckily I had an ark! Her name is Aimee. In two weeks Aimee had the insurance wrangled, the water extraction team organized, the carpet replaced, and a few thousand other things taken care of… She was like a giant blow dryer for water and the problems it caused. I may mock or terrorize her most every business and weekend day, but at catastrophic moments like this (and on most other business and weekend days) my business partner is pretty amazing. My soaked point is sometimes you know you could end up underwater; I just co-signed a loan for my niece… Sometimes you don’t, and you walk into an office swamp. For those surprise underwater moments, get yourself a lifeboat or an Aimee. But you can’t have mine!
