Let's Talk Teeth

Blending Art and Dentistry: Reflections with Dr. Victoria Mañón

• Saadman Alamgir

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In this episode of Let's Talk Teeth, we feature Dr. Victoria Mañón, who shares her inspiring journey from Baylor University to the UT School of Dentistry in Houston, where she received her dental degree as well as oral surgery training. Dr. Mañón discusses her lifelong inspiration from her parents, both oral surgeons, and her pursuit of oral surgery. Additionally, she delves into how the pandemic reignited her passion for art, leading to her becoming a noted medical illustrator. Balancing her oral surgery career with artistic endeavors, Dr. Mañón offers advice for dental students on maintaining hobbies and personal wellness. Join us for this insightful conversation about the intersection of dental practice, artistry, and personal growth. Be sure to follow Dr. Mañón on Instagram @maxillofacial_artist

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:18 Dr. Mañón Educational Journey

00:59 Choosing Oral Surgery

02:16 Art and Medical Illustration

03:57 Balancing Art and Life

10:59 Transition to Private Practice

16:08 Impact of COVID-19 on Residency

20:31 Advice for Dental Students

23:10 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Saad Alamgir:

All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Let's Talk Teeth. Today we have Dr. Victoria Mignon

Victor Razi:

Manion. Manion. Yep.

Saad Alamgir:

Sweet. And so Dr. Manion, if you don't mind, just kind of tell us about your journey, where you went to undergrad, where you went to dental school, what you're doing now, and we could kind of just go from there.

Victoria Mañón:

Sure. I did my undergraduate time at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. I'm originally from Houston. So after Baylor, I went to dental school at UT, the school of dentistry at Houston. And I also did my oral surgery training there. I stayed on for six more years afterwards. I graduated this past July and now I'm working in private practice. So that's kind of the quick and dirty of it.

Victor Razi:

What what kind of got you down the oral surgery route?

Victoria Mañón:

So I was one of those that knew right away in dental school that I wanted to specialize in being an oral surgeon. Funny enough, both my mom and dad are also oral surgeons. I practice or not a practice, but I worked a lot with them growing up as a teenager. Just kind of getting to understand how the office worked kind of filling in every now and again when they needed help with. Sterilization or, you know, things like that. Plus, I think my dad just kind of wanted to expose all of us to what him and my mom did on a daily basis. And I really enjoyed it. And I just kind of decided from there that I wanted to do what they did. I shadowed orthodontists and other specialists and funny enough, I've, you know, my experience with general dentistry at the time was very limited. Because I've never had a cavity. So I'd never had a filling done. I basically only went for hygiene appointments. And when I went to, when I got to dental school and started doing all the things that general dentists do, I was like, Oh I think I need to be an oral surgeon.

Saad Alamgir:

Yeah. So for better, for worse. Yeah.

Victoria Mañón:

I, you know, did what I needed to do to match and I did. Now I'm on the other end of it. And yeah, that's, so yeah.

Saad Alamgir:

For those of who, for those of the listeners who don't know, I was looking at your Instagram and it's maxillofacial underscore artist. And you seem to be, I mean, you're an amazing artist as well. So has that always been a passion of yours or is that something that kind of arose during residency or?

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. So funny enough I always enjoyed drawing and art as a kid. Those really, but for after car during college and even dental school, I kind of gave it up because, you know, I was in, well, I mean, you guys in dental school understand it kind of consumes your life and your hobbies kind of go to the wayside. And you know, I didn't really pick it up for those 10 years between starting college and my, you know, before starting medical school. During medical school during my second year of medical school, that was when the pandemic hit. So all my classes were online and I had a lot more free time to pick it back up again. And funny enough, I ended up drawing something into a card for one of my attendings and they were like, man, you should really turn this into medical illustrating. And so I, Did and it's gotten so much more positive feedback than I've ever anticipated. I was just kind of doing it for me and for fun. And you know, I was very active with writing and publishing as well. So I managed to incorporate the figures and the illustrating into that as well. So it's actually 1 of my favorite parts of being in a surgeon now Cause it's very applicable to what I do every day. And it's nice. Cause I get to share it with other people who are training and, you know, from all over the country or different parts of the world. So it's super fun.

Victor Razi:

Yeah, that's sweet. How long does it like take you per week or like how long? Do you spend like drawing?

Victoria Mañón:

So it just kind of depends on what else is going on in my life. So I have a two year old son that keeps me very busy. Yeah, I'm

Victor Razi:

sure.

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. So in the peripartum period, I didn't really do too much of it with it. You know, I kind of had to drop it for a while just because I had to take care of myself and take care of him. You know, certain times in are also busier than others. And so again, When I have time, I capitalize on it and I illustrate a lot. Sometimes in a week or a weekend, I can spend five to 10 hours or, you know, if I have the time, I'll just do it, you know, between the weekend or a day or something. And then sometimes I don't have time to do it at all. So it's kind of just managing your time to, you know, make it happen when you can. So

Victor Razi:

For sure. And which part was it where, Cause it's kind of grown now to a big A lot of people appreciate what you do. I appreciate that. Yeah. When did it start like snowballing like that? Cause a lot of people were aware of like your art and like how you contribute to the field. So when that happened,

Victoria Mañón:

that's very flattering. So thank you. Honestly, probably within the last year, because I kind of lingered around. I mean, I don't know if this is a metric or not or a valid metric, but I kind of lingered around like five, 6, 000 followers for, you know, cause I've only really been doing this now for I guess maybe three, four years now. So the first couple of years, it just, it grew Steadily, but not, you know, exponentially, if you will. And then, like, all of a sudden, there was a couple posts that just got, I guess, a lot of attention, or, you know, also some good friends of mine, Dr. Drs. Dina Amin and Dr. Marwan, they, I worked with them on a book called Pearls and Pitfalls, and so I did about Pearls and Pitfalls. 40 illustrations for that book, which I was super excited about. Yeah they're amazing people. But when that book came out and when I started posting that, I mean, it just. So really over the last year it just kind of, I jumped up to 15,000, so it was, you know, pretty, yeah. So I'd say probably within the last year

Saad Alamgir:

Yeah. That's sad. Yeah. So how does the illustrations help on the clinical side? So do you help illustrate the cases you've done via your illustrations or is this more of a anatomy type textbook where you help Label things.

Victoria Mañón:

So I've done both. Anatomy. I mean, I had a an attending and residency that always would say anatomy is destiny, you know, and so if you don't, if you don't know anatomy, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know how it's going to affect your patient, you know, anatomy is also your patient's outcome as well. Right. You know, for me, having to draw these figures for procedures and things and, or just, you know, basic surgical anatomy was, A game changer for my own education, right? Like I,

Victor Razi:

right.

Victoria Mañón:

Art is one thing in the sense that art can be fictional medical illustrating has to be true to the human body, right? So it has to be accurate. And it forced me to do a lot of research on what's anatomically correct. And, you know, in the process of putting that on paper on, on digital media, it really forced me to learn it as well. In terms of the surgical procedures it really kind of forced me to realize oh, there's certain gaps in my own knowledge as I'm drawing this out. I'm like, what do I do after this? You know? So anyway you know, once you kind of draw it out and, you know, with the amount of time it takes to do 1 set of illustrations, you really, It's hard to forget once you, when you've spent that much time, you know, putting attention to detail.

Saad Alamgir:

Yeah,

Victoria Mañón:

exactly. Exactly. So it's helped me a lot on the clinical side of things, you know, plus, you know, if you guys, you know, obviously all are working with patients love it. When you draw examples or things out for them, it helps them understand things better. So sometimes I draw it out or sometimes I even use my own illustrations and presentations to show them like, this is what's happening. This is what we're going to do. And I think they really appreciate that as well.

Victor Razi:

Yeah, that's super cool. Do you ever come to a mental roadblock where you're like trying to think of ideas and like, how do you like get through that? I feel like I'd, if I didn't want to make art, you know, I'd make something. I'm like, okay what do I do now? You know,

Victoria Mañón:

all the time. I think about, this is kind of funny saying this out loud. Cause it's been in my head for so long, but I think about what colors I would use for, start to illustrate something. Or I think about be the West, the best way to depict particular concepts, right? You know, for example spatial spaces, you know, explaining to a student what a potential space is, or, you know, what that space can become is what's the best way to do that. Right? You know, so there's an education component to it. When I look at other people's art, you know, there's really an incredible artist such as Peter Lawrence, you know, he's probably one of my favorites, you know, even Frank Netter, right? They, I look at their stuff and I think about, oh, my gosh, that's such a beautiful outcome. How did they develop that technique or what would it take to, you Do something like that. So it's very technique driven. You know, when I work on my pieces, I have certain ideas in my head about how I want it to look. And so it's a skill like dentistry, right? Like you guys right now have this idea of what your preps and what your restoration should look like and getting that, you know, go from your brain to your hands is a skill, right? So art's exactly the same thing. It's you know, just the You just keep practicing until it looks like what you want it to look like.

Saad Alamgir:

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, when you said that dentistry is like, all right, that really, we have tomorrow in class, we have to do a couple of preps and I'm just imagining it's the exact same skill and already. So you have to have enough expertise to know what it's supposed to look like, but you have to have the dexterity to actually put it out onto an actual, into a physical space. So it's very, Exactly.

Victoria Mañón:

And you have,

Saad Alamgir:

sorry, go

Victoria Mañón:

ahead.

Saad Alamgir:

But yeah, this is very interesting. You know, it's a skill that takes honestly years to get down. So kudos to you for doing it for as long as you have and for doing as well as you have.

Victoria Mañón:

It's a lot of fun. The only thing I was going to add to what you were saying is it's not just yourself and what you want it to look like. It's you have to have this under intimate understanding of what instruments are available to you. Cause if you don't understand what you're working with, it's hard to get the result that you want. But anyway, yeah, it's you know, dentistry is art and, you know, thing, people who do beautiful work. I mean, that, that is a different form of herb. It's a different medium is what it is. So

Saad Alamgir:

So you had mentioned you had graduated OMS now. So you're working now, where are you working at?

Victoria Mañón:

So I'm in private practice in North Houston. We are in a suburb called Kingwood. Kingwood, Texas. It's a multi partner practice. So right now there are six surgeons in the office. We have a few locations but yeah, basically I'm just working four days a week and I'm enjoying that right now. So

Saad Alamgir:

yeah, how's the adjustment been from residency to private practice now?

Victoria Mañón:

It's been a transition. Being perfect, proficient and residency is unlike being profession and private practice. They're two very different things. You know, I will say it's not as busy as residency, you know, residency, you work these crazy hours and you have these demands and, you know, you, I mean, you have responsibilities in private practice, but hospital stuff is very different than private practice. And I actually ended up taking a couple months off. To kind of work As you should. Yeah. Yes. And I'm so glad that I did. I got moved into my new place. My son started school, so getting him nice adjusted to daycare was a process in and of itself. Yeah. Rotating into private practice, it's almost, you just underestimate how much paperwork it is to get your licenses and all that sort of

Saad Alamgir:

stuff. For sure. Oh, I believe it.

Victoria Mañón:

I got all that stuff taken care of, started working got my sedation permits, all that kind of stuff. It's you figure it out as you go, but ultimately like it's so nice to be on this other end of things. It's a good problem to have. So

Victor Razi:

did you know what you wanted to do? Like towards the end of your residency, as far as job position was like, where were you building up to this North Houston moment or?

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. I mean, like I mentioned before, both my parents are oral surgeons. They're, my parents are more so my dad, but he's ready to retire. So he's excited that I'm out. And so as I'm transitioning in, he's working on transitioning out. And you know, so the, I was very blessed in that I had those practices there. Yeah you know, I didn't have to think quite as much as maybe some of my co chiefs about, you know, where I was going to work and do all those things. Yeah, so it worked out nice at the end. It was always to work with them at some point and then eventually transition them out when they were ready.

Victor Razi:

Yeah, I'm sure that was like, less of a headache to kind of have that. Opportunity as opposed to just like trying to figure out everything at one time, you know

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah, because you know, and you guys will see this You guys will recognize this when you're graduating from dental school is you know The trying to find a job or figure out what you're going to do, you know You have so many options as a dentist or as a specialist, are either of you hoping to specialize or

Saad Alamgir:

Keeping the option open for sure.

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah, so you'll see you know, it's a good problem to have either way. You're going to have a great job that, you know, provide you security. It's just kind of choosing what's going to work best for you and that after time. And again, um. It's knowing the right people to ask, you know, because if you don't know what your options are Then you don't know what's available to you and

Victor Razi:

right Yeah, that makes sense. So like taking it back a little bit with your art stuff did you have that on like your residency application? Was it ever talked about?

Victoria Mañón:

No again. I wasn't illustrating at all. I mean I had picked up or anything art wise in About 8 years when I applied for residency. Complete absence,

Victor Razi:

just nothing.

Victoria Mañón:

Nothing, no. I mean, what I had on my residency applications was all the typical stuff that you would see. On an application, you know, I had my grades and my CBSE score. I had my shadowing hours in the oral surgery clinic, my externships. I was involved with extracurriculars in dental school, like clubs and, you know, those sorts of things. No, it was never in my wildest dreams. What I think that ARC would be incorporated into something like that. Right. Because, you know, you would think Oh, who cares? Like how could you possibly like. Integrate that or convince somebody that's like important, right?

Saad Alamgir:

More important than just like a hobby,

Victoria Mañón:

right? Yeah. And you know, it's funny because I've been contacted by dental students who are phenomenal artists, you know, they're beautiful work and they'll say Hey, should I put this on my application? This is what I've done with it. And I've used stuff from the ADA and I've, you know, also been asked about illustrating books for books and things. And I'm like, yeah, of course. Like, why would you not incorporate that? It's a skill. It shows your dexterity. It shows that you can think differently about the work that you're doing. I mean, You know, if anything, the people the people that I'm working with now on these illustrations, you know, it would be kind of weird if they were like no, we don't value that, but we're still going to hire you to help us with this. You know, I, if that's something that you like and that you do and it, you know, I would include it. Why not?

Saad Alamgir:

Yeah, definitely. Switching gears here a little bit. You mentioned that during Residencies when COVID affected your schooling, how did that affect where you're still going into the clinic and you know, doing y'all's on call hours or how did that whole process end up working out during residency? Cause for us, we were still in college. So all of our classes just moved online, but for residency as in depth and you know, as hands on as OMFS is, it must have changed it in ways that you know, Okay, it didn't affect us.

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. So I was like, excuse me. I was like, you guys medical school is almost completely online. Anyway, you know, you have a couple of hands on things that you go in and, you know, you either practice on a mannequin or like a live actor or live patient, you know, But the year that coven hit and the quarantine hit, I, everything was online for me anyway. So It didn't really affect me that much. I know it impacted the upper level residents and that, you know, the hospitals were then only doing emergent or urgent cases. You know, cancer, trauma, infections, those kinds of things. So I know those residents were affected and that, you know, they didn't maybe didn't get to do as much as they wanted to you know, I haven't seen those numbers myself. So it's hard for me to accurately say, I just, you know, I heard the rumbles about it, if you will. The medical students, I know they had to do their clinicals like on an iPad. So they were basically like Webexing from somewhere else. Funny enough. It's funny. You mentioned that because I remember when I was rotating on pediatrics, the masking also affected the cases that we were seeing in medical school. So at least for Memorial Hermann in their children's hospital, They were having to do like online simulations for pulmonary diseases because kids weren't coming in with as much flu or RSV as they had been when people were not masking. So I know it, there was some funny changes to it, you know, so by the time I got to third year and it was time for me to start clinicals, everything was in person again, but I know different levels were affected differently because you know, in person contact was more limited and

Victor Razi:

Right.

Victoria Mañón:

You know, that's what those sorts of things.

Victor Razi:

Yeah. I'm sure you're thankful in the regard that it didn't change too much while you were just studying all the time and medical versus that would have been brutal.

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point is to see patients and to learn and you know, you can only learn so much from a textbook, but yeah I feel really lucky that I was in the year that I was in because again, everything was academic and online for me anyway.

Victor Razi:

Yeah, did you did you always know that you wanted to do the dual degree route or what kind of inspired you to do that?

Victoria Mañón:

I was, I only applied to six year programs. So for me two extra years for a medical degree, two years goes by like that. And you know, if you're already taking the time to do that much education for me, I'm. I'm kind of, I'm kind of a book nerd anyway. Like just more school doesn't, you know, it, that appealed to me quite a bit. Plus most of the people I talked to not most, a lot of the people I spoke to, they said, Oh, I wish I would have done the MD. I never met anyone who did the MD and regretted doing it. So You know, I was like, okay, well, it kind of sucks when, because at least at Houston, you, they take 3, 4 years and 3, 6 years. So it kind of sucks to watch some of the people that I started with graduate. And 2 more years, but I loved the cohort that I was with those 6 years. Those guys are just awesome. I practicing with 1 of them now. Yeah I mean, for me, I, two years for a medical degree instead of, and I didn't have to take the MCAT and, you know, for me, that was a no brainer.

Victor Razi:

Yeah, well, that's awesome. I'm really glad it worked out for you too. As we're wrapping up here. Do you have any final advice for dental students who are inspired to, to do hobbies outside of dental school and outside of residency and have advice on like, How they should pursue those hobbies.

Victoria Mañón:

Yeah. I mean, so my first advice is to go for it. You know, you'll have people that tell you what they think, regardless of whether you asked for it or not. But you know, ultimately, if it's something that. Makes you happy and you're well you were, you know, people need balance in their life. You know, you work hard in dental school. I remember how grueling that time was. If you have something that makes you happy and it balances you, you know, there's something to be said for wellness and for, you know, maintaining your own sense of self as you go through this process. You know, And, you know, mine happened to be productive and contribute to my career, but hobbies don't have to be productive hobbies. You can do stuff because you like it. And I encourage people to do that because ultimately, you know, think things they don't get easier. They just get more complicated. So it's important to you know, it's important to, you know, be true to yourself, to take care of yourself and, you know,

Saad Alamgir:

That's good advice. Cause I know I'm sure it was for you. You mentioned during dental school that you would kind of just let go of the art that you've been doing and during a time where you're stressed out as much as you are, especially in a time during dental school. It's so easy to forget who you are and like the hobbies that you have. And you almost forget the person that you were before. Like I could speak from experience, like the things that I used to do before, call it before dental school and then versus now it's so different, but it's important to try to cultivate those, you know, those hobbies just to remember who you are. It's all about finding that balance.

Victoria Mañón:

Exactly. And, you know, honestly, I think there's something to be said for being a well rounded person, you know, and for being an interesting person, you know, again, once you graduate from dental school, life is And, you know, being able to reconnect with yourself and the world around you and I think it's incredibly important because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of other people. And ultimately, I think that's why most of us got into this. You know, you may find that as you're doing what you're doing, other people are, you know, quietly inspired by what you're doing. And, you know, it's good to be that positive force for other people and that, you know, if you're happy, it's easier to do your job better,

Saad Alamgir:

right? Well, yeah, well, that's all we have. Thank you very much for coming on. I mean, we really appreciate the time. I know that took a little bit of planning on, but I'm glad that we're able to get this done.

Victor Razi:

Yeah.

Victoria Mañón:

Me too. I'm very flattered that you invited me to talk with you guys. This was a lot of fun for me and I wish you guys the best of luck. So let me know if y'all need anything.

Victor Razi:

For sure. Thank you.

Victoria Mañón:

Okay. All right. Y'all have a good night. Thanks.