A day of cancels turned into a positive day.

So my afternoon patient cancelled the night before, and when I came into clinic today I realized that Stef had the same patient scheduled for the morning. FART! I pretty much wanted to cry.

All was made amends though. My husband came in this morning and one of the translators called my mockboard patient and she was able to come in the morning.

It was great to get back to cleaning a 1B this morning. I felt like I made pretty good time. I also used the ultrasonic and actually liked it! Weird! I need to get that fellow flossing!!

I was very nervous about bringing back my mockboard patient today! I totally bombed the mockboard and had no idea I was doing so bad until I got that blasted sticky back. I was excited in a way as well though, because I knew how much calculus she had and wanted to get it all off.

I asked for some help from Prof. Alexander and she was so great to sit with me and make sure I knew what I was feeling and could get it off. I struggle at exploring, but felt tons better about it by the end of the appointment. I think that I lay my explorer down too much and do not feel with the tip enough. I better get better at this quick!

I got a lot of help with instrumentation as well! I am starting to figure out the graceys's which is exciting! With instrumentation my biggest problem was my activation stroke. I keep pulling the toe out. I teach first years how not to do that every Wednesday and here I am guilty as charged! I was able to watch Pro. Alexander instrument and learned a lot. When will I know all the tricks? I do not know, but I am excited to know that there are tricks!

This lady had some really hard calculus to get off! I was sticking everything I could up there and still struggled.

I feel accomplished that I finished her!

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!!

WOW MOM COOL!!

Last clinic day! Shout for JOY!!!!

(We have a lot of WOW's but no MOM's. ha ha)

My last first year clinc day!! WAHOO!!!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....
The last clinic session of my first year! I can't believe it! It has gone by so fast!
I had a lot to do today! I had to finish 2 quads on my friend and then 3 quads on my husband. And I was supposed to take a PANO on my husband as well. I totally forgot about the pano! ha ha I had to have him come back after lunch so that I could do it.

Today was fun to have 2 1B patients back to back with so much scaling. They were just so different it was really interesting! My first patient had very smooth teeth and as explored I would feel the calculus chunk and then go back and activate over it and then the tooth would all be smooth. My husband on the other hand has very rough teeth! It is hard to decide what it calculus and what is just rough tooth, cause it never felt smooth. Pretty fun to have such different patients! I used the ultrasonic for my husband's complete mouth, then went over with the scalers. I can't decide if I liked it much. It took quite a while! I bet after I get my own technique down, it will go faster.

Well today was great! Isn't my hubby a cutie????

Class III completed!!

All four quads in one appointment!!

Today was great!! I was freaked cause i had to scale all 4 quads and I knew that I didn't have any more clinic days to schedule her for and she wouldn't be able to come back anyways. I finished and life is good! Instructor Demings taught me how to use the ulrasonic for real! ha ha. I didn't really know how to use it before, but she was great to help me with my technique. Clinic is rough when you have so much to do and when instructors are super busy helping everyone! We had to wait a few times for our instructor to come over. But it did give my patient some time to rest and sit up so that wasn't horrible. I got 3 PE's done! Way good!!

I had a lot of fun today and am happy with how the day went! One more clinic day left! woo woo!