Articles by or Featuring Dean Lodding, D.D.S.
The Path Dean Lodding Took to the Set of ABC-TV’s “Extreme Makeover” Began with a Friday Afternoon Whim that Still Intrigues Him
It was more than 25 years ago; he was a junior in college with his sights set on dental school. If he hadn’t dropped by his advisor’s office that day on his way to a dorm party, he’d have missed the application deadline for the entrance exam and would have had to wait until his senior year to pursue dentistry.
A four-year degree would have qualified him for a different dental school than the one that allowed him in with just three years of college. As a result, Lodding muses, it he’s gone to the other school, he’d have connected with different people.
Perhaps he would never have gotten involved in cosmetic dentistry, or never opened a stat-of-the-art dental practice in Elgin. Perhaps, too, he wouldn’t have met Bill Dorfman
Dorfman, renowned for making Hollywood smiled flashier, is known to fans of “Extreme Makeover” as the lead cosmetic dentist of the hit television show.
It was his friendship with Dorfman that got him invited onto the personal redesign show, and this month he’s scheduled to film with the Extreme Team again.
“They wanted to have clinicians from different parts of the country involved” Lodding said, “to emphasize that this is not all just about Los Angeles.”
But there was a catch – for Lodding’s first shoot he needed a California dental license which usually takes four to six months to process, and Hollywood wanted him right away.
“The best way to do something is face to face,” Lodding maintains so he flew to Sacramento, picked up a bouquet of flours for the clerk and asked her to do what she could to speed the process. That new license was his in just three days.
Procedures were filmed in Dorfmans’ office. “He’s on the 17th floor of a high-rise,” Lodding said. “Space is at a premium so everything is tight and compact, but TV makes it seem like it’s bigger and more open. Everybody is just packed into the room.”
“It’s no different than working (in Elgin),” he said, “except that there’s a cameraman, a sound man, there’s a producer and director.”
Doctors Dorfman and Lodding played “tag team,” working on patients in three or for rooms at a time.
Lodding said other patients for the show were in Los Angeles at the same time, involved in different aspects of their total makeovers, such as the eyelid lifts, nose and ear surgery, laser hair removal, liposuction, and botox and collagen injections that one of his patients, Pam, received in addition to extensive dental work.
Or they might have been working out with a fitness trainer or shopping with a fashion stylist. During the first season patients roomed together in hotels for their six to eight weeks in California, but this year they’ll get a luxury upgrade at the new Makeover Mansion.
Who pays for all this? Lodding said he’s not sure about the mansion, but services are donated by the professionals.
He said Dorfman estimated that a million dollars in dental work alone was donated during the first season.
But compensation comes in other ways for Lodding. The week after healing enhance Pam’s smile, he was on a father-son trip with His Dad in Las Vegas, where Pam was scheduled to unveil her amazing new look for family and friends. She invited the Loddings to the “reveal” in her home and. Unbeknownst to here, to her wedding.
“Her fiancé wanted to surprise her by getting married that night,” Lodding said, “so he told ABC about it, and ABC sent him out to get a ring. He asked them, ‘How big of a ring can I get?’ and they said, ‘Well, it’s gotta be big enough to show up on TV.’
“They show the whole scene with him going to Kay Jewelers and picking out a ring.” Lodding said,” He showed me the appraisal, which is like $13,900, but he got it for free.
“Pam had these issues about her physical appearance,” Lodding said. “but I had a chance to talk to her fiancé and her brothers, and they all were sauing that ever since she was alittle girl these things have bothered her. They never stopped her from being a beautiful person, but these things were just hanging over her.”
Lodding, 48, is a firm believer in the power of modern makeovers, “as long as somebody has the right perspective and goes into it – which is critical – not thinking that this is going to make them a different person. It’s just changing the presentation.
“There are some people who like to overdo it with plastic surgery, but I think if you kist keep it in the right perspective, something to enhance yourself a little bit, it’s a great thing.” He said. “It takes that little weight off your back.”
Porcelain veneers, whitening agents, bonding and dental implants are buzzwords in cosmetic dentistry and the tools Lodding uses to brighten smiles and boost self-esteem. He still does general dentistry as well in his high tech office, which must seem far removed from the South Dakota reservation where he filled cavities his first year out of dental school.
“I wanted to expose myself to some different things,” said the Chicago native, but “the family draw was real strong and I came back to Illinois.”
Hooking up with an established Elgin dentist brought him in 1981 to the Fox Valley, where he helped promote veneers in the earliest days of cosmetic dentistry. Lodding opened his own office, Smile For Life, six months ago and has turned dwon offers to partner with dentist friends across the country who can’t imagine what keeps him in Elgin.
“I enjoy the people,” he said, “I enjoy providing this service right here, and I don’t feel a need to go to downtown Chicago or to L.A. or to Texas to do it.”
He’s excited that programs like “Extreme Makeover” show cosmetic dentistry as accessible to the average person.
Back when he was considering careers, Lodding thought he might become a priest if not a dentist, but it turns out he’s still involved in soul nourishment.
“You can see people that will have a whole different demeanor about themselves after they’ve had something done to enhance their smile.
“The smile,” he said, “is the gateway to the soul.”
