I received one of Power Up Film’s Amazing Men in Showbiz awards last November and I was smiling from ear to ear the entire night.I’m usually standing behind the velvet ropes of a red carpet at splashy Hollywood events like this but on this night, there I was with a group of photographers taking my photo.I did not feel the least bit self-conscious and I have my amazing dentist, Patrick T. Yoshikane, to thank for that!Three months earlier, it would have been a different story. Instead of a broad smile, those photographers would have been met with the closed-mouth grin I had resorted to when I began to feel embarrassed about the condition of my teeth.I’ve always been excited to get a photo with people whose work I enjoy but I was getting less and less excited when I’d see our photos and compare their pearly whites to my dingy yellows.I needed some extensive dental work on my back teeth, work that had been delayed after three years without dental insurance. I made several trips from Silver Lake to Orange (an easy commute straight down I-5) until Dr. Yoshikane and his assistant, Cherry Limjoco, finished bridge work on both sides of my mouth. It was stellar. So good in fact that it made my front teeth, darkened as a child from taking the antibiotic tetracycline, look even worse.While I’ll be paying off my bridges for years (superstar office manager Linda Schweers-Hunn is an absolute whiz at figuring out financing options and guiding you through them), Dr. Yoshikane wanted to give me a great smile and decided to make me his one gratis case a year for porcelain jacket crowns.I already knew from my previous work that it would be as comfortable an experience as dental work can be. I get a little anxious in the chair if a procedure goes more than an hour so I was put into a feel no pain zone with oral conscious sedation and didn’t have a care in the world.There was minimal post-operative pain. I’ve had procedures where I’m sore for days and very uncomfortable and in some serious need of a pain killer. After each of my procedures with Dr. Yoshikane, at most I had a Motrin or two and suffered no ill side effects.it’s now been more than six months with my new smile and it’s better than the one I had in my 20s! What a tremendous psychological lift. I find myself smiling during conversations and in photos without the least bit of thought and I’ll always be grateful to Dr. Yoshikane and his staff. More