Hear Honest Opinions in Our San Pedro Patient Testimonials

Well, I was really blessed to be here. Someone told me about her and I, from the very first day I came, I thought, “Wow, I’ve made a good choice.” I had an implant done, painless. Walked me through all the steps. My teeth just got bad. I had an infection and she fixed that up for me. I didn’t take care of my teeth when I was young. The implant was, oh, it’s just been a blessing. No pain, whatever, now I can chew on that side. It’s awesome and the crowns. She does awesome crowns. She just wanted my smile to be better. In fact, my little granddaughter came here and I’ll tell you what she said was awesome. I asked her, I said, “Well, so did she give you a shot?” She goes, “No, she didn’t give me a shot.” Like I was, “She didn’t give you a shot? I thought she did. She told me she did.” She was, “No, she didn’t.” Well, she did. But it was so painless that she didn’t need to think about it. The very best of what she does and she does everything really well, she cares a lot. She’ll take you if you’re in trouble, anything happens, just like that. It’s hard to find people like that nowadays. She’s wonderful.

The major dental work problem I had started in 1971 after I returned from Vietnam. While I was in Vietnam, I was directed to seek dental care after discharge through the VA. I went to the San Francisco Fort Miley Hospital. They had UC Med Center residents treating there. They put in major permanent gold bridges on both the lower right and lower left. I had those for years, but the underlying supporting teeth, over the years, were deteriorating.

I came to Victoria because I had, again, sought treatment through the VA, this time in Long Beach. They had put removable partials, but they were made of chromium. They were heavy and clunky and it was not a pleasant experience. They didn’t feel real—they didn’t feel normal. The solution on Victoria’s recommendation was, “Let’s try to do …” I asked her, “Can you do permanent bridges?” She said, “To span that space might be difficult, but I think I can do it,” and she did it.

It’s been some time now and I’m very happy. I feel like I have my own teeth, and that’s important. At my age, I don’t want to be taking my teeth in and out every morning.

We found Dr. Shook at her first little practice in West LA. I was working in West LA, we needed a dentist, and found her at that time and we’re so happy with the way she treated us and the care we got that we’ve been coming ever since. She moved her practice down here to San Pedro and we live an hour away by car so we’ll drive a two hour round trip to have our teeth worked on. I think that’s because we can’t imagine finding a dentist better than Dr. Shook, honestly.
She’s never disappointed. The work she’s done, whether fixing a new filling or repairing an old filling that’s gone bad. Just keeping track of our teeth and gums and making sure we keep taking care of our teeth and gums. She’s fun. She’s nice to visit while she’s working on us. She’s always pleasant. I’ve had several dentists in my life up to the point where we found Dr. Shook and I never want to have anyone else work on my mouth from here on out. I wish all of my doctors that we have to go to were the same as her. Just the intelligence and the detail and the kindness that she’s exhibited.

I came here for years when she began and had a little dentist work, you know, a little cavity on this or cleaning and that type of thing. But I’ve had a problem with my upper teeth since, oh my gosh, I was a kid. I was always self-conscious, that was the big one for me. To put my trust in her that way and have her do that, that changed a lot. I smile more now instead of keeping my mouth closed. Having veneers done was a little easier than I thought. Not knowing what I was going to come into, I was a little worried. I thought, “Oh there’s going to be some pain in this.” Nothing, nothing. You know, I mean, you do have to sit there a little bit and it takes a little time, but my expectation was, “Okay, let’s just see how this is going to work. Let’s see if it turns out.”

It was really kind of … I wasn’t as nervous, let’s put it that way. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be. She’s very mellow, she’s calm, she keeps me calm—not that I was ever afraid of a dentist. You come in and she talks to me like I’m here every day. She’s honest about stuff. It’s her mellowness, her attitude, that type of thing. Puts me at ease.

I have a history of dental issues, and we’ve done everything from just typical cavities to tooth replacement, crowns that she’s handled, and I’ve had one very difficult tooth transplant, an implant that was a tooth that had gone through years of issues from a chipped tooth, to a cap, to a post, and then all the way to an implant. Each stage along the way she’s gone to, “What can we do now? What can we do next? How can we make this right?” Really, it’s been a tremendous improvement. It’s one of my front teeth, and it’s very difficult to tell from my smile. You can’t tell that that’s an implant, but she just did an amazing job keeping that thing alive.
We were trying to save the tooth as long as possible to keep it the natural tooth, and so that’s when we started with a root canal, and then a post in there, and keeping the natural tooth and repairing the chip, and then eventually, that tooth failed. When it failed, then we had to go to the implant. The implant was a more significant procedure. I had to use an oral surgeon for that, and she did all the prep work, and the replacement tooth is what … that’s what she provided, which was this color-matched, form-matched, it’s just like my original tooth.

Dr. Shook, she’s a consummate professional. She has a very good … I don’t know if it’s appropriate … bedside manner for a dentist. She’s always engaging. She takes interest in her patients, I know that. I just have found her to be a … I’m 74-years-old, so I’ve been to a lot of dentists in my lifetime, and I’m a retired Marine so I had a lot of military dental care too. She is far and away one of the best dentists I have experienced in my life, and I will never change. I will always be her patient.
This is their new office, and I must say that they planned it very carefully, I know, and I’m very impressed with the space that they have here. It’s much larger than the old office, but even in the old office, they were always very welcoming. It seems that all her staff have just these personalities that are engaging and connect with you, make you feel at ease, make you feel comfortable, so I enjoy coming here. It’s not clinical, it isn’t antiseptic. It’s warm, and they make you feel at ease. Not that I’ve ever had any apprehensions being treated for dental work—I’ve required so much. I would recommend Victoria and her staff to any friend that asks for a dentist referral. She would be the first person to come to mind.

I had some multiple abscesses due to the fact I had lots of … Most people are familiar with the pocketing issue. When they do the measurements, twos and threes are good. Well, I had some that were like 10s, 12s. She was able to keep the integrity of my teeth really well with all the deep root cleaning, but they were so far gone for so long. I had some loose teeth, I had a couple more abscesses. She had to do a couple more extractions. That was not on her at all. That was completely on me and my gum issues. She made a beautiful denture for me that fit wonderfully. When I snapped it into my mouth, you could not tell that I was missing four teeth at all. Cosmetically, it was perfect. Eating with it was a little difficult.

Finally, it got to the point where I’d gone to her for so long and I started thinking about the implant issue. I thought, “Okay, I’ll take a little bit of a leap of faith here and we’ll try a couple of implants.” She has another fine dental surgeon that she works with and she came out with a plan for some implants. It was probably the best thing I ever did for myself. I’ve had them now for two or three years. They work wonderfully. I’m able to eat normal. I’m able to eat apples, I’m able to corn, something I couldn’t do from the time I was a kid. I’ve been nothing but satisfied with them ever since.

I had had a partial denture in. It didn’t fit properly; I had problems with it. I didn’t feel good about my smile at all. When Dr. Shook proposed the hybrid procedure, I felt that that was really the best thing for me. I didn’t want to have dentures that came out because your smile is everything. When you don’t feel confident because you don’t feel good about yourself, it really shows in so many ways. Although it was a pretty major procedure, I decided to move ahead. I felt that that was the best for me, at this point. Maybe if I was 90, I wouldn’t have done it, but I feel I have at least a good 20 years to go, so we decided to move ahead with the hybrid procedure.

I feel so much better—so much better. It’s really the closest you could possibly get to having your own teeth. You don’t feel any movement, everything is secure, and it’s great. It’s the best solution to the problem that I had.

One of my teeth had a cavity and it had been filled. Went back, filled it a little bit more and eventually, there wasn’t enough tooth left to fill. So she rooted the rest of the tooth, and then she molded me for the crown, made sure that the color of the crown was going to match the rest of the teeth, then she put it in. I think one thing I remember, too, was that I had the temporary in and had foolishly eaten some cookies with nuts in them, and so cracked that temporary crown. She had me come in right away, fixed that, put something back—temporary—so I would not be walking around with a gap in my teeth for a week.

Then came in, set the crown and everything was done. I’d like to be able to tell more, but it feels like such an established practice for her. She goes in, does what she needs to do. You have to wait a week for the final product to arrive, but then it comes in. Always very careful to make sure that this crown is going to fit in with the rest of your bite, and it always does.

I had had a partial denture in. It didn’t fit properly; I had problems with it. I didn’t feel good about my smile at all. When Dr. Shook proposed the hybrid procedure, I felt that that was really the best thing for me. I didn’t want to have dentures that came out because your smile is everything. When you don’t feel confident because you don’t feel good about yourself, it really shows in so many ways. Although it was a pretty major procedure, I decided to move ahead. I felt that that was the best for me, at this point. Maybe if I was 90, I wouldn’t have done it, but I feel I have at least a good 20 years to go, so we decided to move ahead with the hybrid procedure.

I feel so much better—so much better. It’s really the closest you could possibly get to having your own teeth. You don’t feel any movement, everything is secure, and it’s great. It’s the best solution to the problem that I had.

I decided to get Invisalign because my bottom row of teeth have shifted since I was a teenager. I had braces and, like a lot of teenagers, I wasn’t very deliberate about my retainer and wearing my retainer and my bottom teeth shifted. As I went through adulthood, it didn’t seem as pronounced, but now that I’m older, it was just one of those things that was bugging me and I wanted to take care of it.

Because I’d been seeing Dr. Shook for so long and had a really trusted and loyal relationship with her, I couldn’t see myself working with any other practitioner to straighten those teeth. I didn’t want to develop a new professional relationship with an orthodontist, so I talked with Dr. Shook about what my options were and I was really delighted to find out that this was something that she could handle inside her practice.

She talked to me about Invisalign. We talked about how long it would take, what she could do. I had a consultation with her, and it was really a no-brainer to me when I found out that she could handle it—done deal, I wanted her to straighten my teeth for me.

Everything that I’m going through right now is very gentle, very comfortable. It isn’t very invasive, so I’m really glad I made this choice to use Invisalign and not any other form of correction in my teeth. I love this choice that I made and I can’t wait for the process to come all the way through to the end, but even in the meantime, not a big deal.