Dealing With the Nightly Grind
Share with others:
A FEW weeks ago, Tom Lelievre, 46, who owns a home renovation business in Westford, Mass., noticed that he'd "chipped" a back tooth and so he visited his dentist, Dr. Thomas Connelly.
Dr. Connelly examined him and saw a sight all too common in the mouths of his middle-aged male patients during this Great Recession. "His molar was smashed, and his front teeth flattened," Dr. Connelly recalled.
"Tom, you under a lot of stress?" he asked.
A lot of stress? Mr. Lelievre used to do the finish work on a dozen homes a year; in the last year he's done two. He used to employ three men; now he hires subs as needed. He used to have a waiting list of eight months of work. "Now they call me a week before I'm scheduled to start, 'Sorry, I lost my job, I can't go forward.' And I'm thinking, What do I do for the next month?"
"I'm not sleeping well," Mr. Lelievre continued. "I wake at 1:30 and think, How will we pay the bills and keep the kids warm?"
In the market downturn, he and his wife lost much of the money that they'd saved for their three children's college educations. "That thought keeps coming up," he said.
And now his dentist was explaining that the stress was leading him to grind his teeth -- and that was just half of it. "I'm grinding at night," Mr. Lelievre said, "and clenching during the day."
Stress?
Alan Beck, 63, who owns a New Jersey-based cosmetics company named Beauty Bridge, knows it well. "Yes, lots of stress," he told Dr. Irwin Smigel of Manhattan.
Until the recession, Mr. Beck's company had a staff of 33 and 100 independent contractors nationwide. Before that, he was the president of the United States subsidiary of Jean Patou, the perfume company. Now he works as a solo consultant.
"Last year was a disaster, just a disaster," he said. "People wouldn't commit. Lots of talk, lots of proposals, and no one wants to sign on the dotted line."
Nine months ago, he started having toothaches but did not go to the dentist. "I used to provide dental insurance for 33 people -- now I don't have it myself," he said.
First Published February 14, 2010 2:00 am
