Blood: for yesterday's post

Class II's

A day of class II's. Lots of blood with reports of excellent home care. Both of my patients said they brush 2 times a day and floss daily... then where is the bone loss, deep pockets, calculus, and BLOOD coming from? This was the predicament of the day. I approached my instructor about it and we decided that there is no way that they are really doing that well in their home care. So what do you do about that?? Well my strategy for next time will be to ask them to show me how they are flossing and brushing. I will say maybe there is something that we can fix to get a better result. And then I will teach them how to do it correctly. My instructor said that when you keep at them like that they usually confess their sins of not really flossing everyday. I am glad that there isn't some crazy phenomenon of excellent home care accompanied by extensive bleeding. Slippery little guys, aren't they? They had me worried!

Both my patients needed anesthetic. I am super excited to be the one to do the injections!!

My first recare appt.

So today I saw my first patient twice. Does that make sense? ha ha. For the first time today, I cleaned a mouth that I cleaned last semester. Some things made me really happy about it, and others a little sad.

He got some dental work done!! WOO!! He had class 5 caries along a bunch of his max anteriors... now he has some class 5 caries along his max anteriors. So that is bitter sweet. He got some work done... but he still needs more work. Maybe he can't pay for it all to be fixed... maybe they are arrested caries now so there is no problem besides esthetics.... I don't know the reason, but I would feel horrible as a dentist letting my patient go after only fixing part of the problem.

I don't really think his home care has improved. Which makes me sad cause we talked about that a lot! I introduced him to the little hand held flossers and he really seemed to like them and I thought he was going to start using them. Oh wells.

Ending on a good note... I finished him in one appt! ha ha which is way better than the 2 or 3 appts he had last semester!!