Exam

I was excited for today because I thought my morning patient would maybe be a mock board. I saw his wife last week and confirmed the appt with her last night. So this morning I went out to the lobby to get him and he wasn't there. I guess he had to work but his daughter came instead. Phew!!! At least I had a patient!! Turns out she was 14 and a 1B. Yes.....another 1B!!!!! As of today I have 24 quads of a 1B completed. That is over half of what I need. And they don't roll over into spring semester. Ahh!!! The good thing is they will count towards my extra quads that I need so it's not that bad. I'm starting to get a little worried about getting a mock board patient though! My afternoon patient is the wife of a patient I saw last week also. She is a maintainence patient that has been coming every 4 months for 7 years. She has excellent home care and was cleaner than a 1B. All her probe measurements were WNL except for a 7 and a 5. I decided to have her as my class V exam and I'm glad I did. I was able to scale her whole mouth in 15 minutes and didn't miss anything. I think I'm getting the hang of it and hope I'm doing a good job. Tomorrow we are giving each other maxillary injections!!!!!! That should be interesting! :)

Thursday I was able to finish my class II patient that came in a couple weeks before. She had really tenacious calculus so it was difficult. My afternoon patient hadn't been in since 2004 and is a class III. I was a little nervous but it ended up being ok. I passed off my selective polishing PE and ultrasonic. Jen taught me to retract with the suction and also use it to get the saliva off so it doesn't fling all over the place. I kinda like that idea but it will take some practice to master it. I was able to finish 2 quads on my class III but I worry that I don't really know how to hand scale very well. I use my ultrasonic first and then my instruments but I don't feel like I'm doing much with the instruments. Jen said that's fine if I'm effective with the ultrasonic. I need to use more lateral pressure so I don't burnish calculus. I'm also still having a hard time distinguishing between calculus and rough root surface. Hopefully with time this will get easier. I'm still looking for a mock board patient and I'm kinda freaking out!!

Rough day

Well today wasn't the best of days and I hope it won't be a trend for this semester. First of all my morning patient didn't show up!! Mr. Saloman talked to him this morning and he said he'd be here in 10 minutes (after he got lectured) and he still didn't show up!! So no quads for me! My afternoon patient was quadraplegic so that was a new experience. It was very difficult to even look in her mouth because I had to stand the whole time. I did use the nomad on her to do a full mouth series of xrays which was actually fun. It's easy to use and I did it at my unit. She had really good home care and was very clean. It just goes to show that if you really care about your teeth you will take care of them. She has limited motion and can only move from about her elbows down but she is a good example of somebody that is limited but takes excellent care of her teeth. Hopefully I'll have better luck with my patients and schedule some that really want to come in!

Are you serious?!

Today was our first patient day. I had the hardest time finding 2 patients. I went through about 15 different people and either their number was wrong or I had to leave a message and they never called me back. I finally got 2 scheduled and of course....my first patient doesn't show up!! Ahh!!! It is so frustrating when a patient really wants to come in and sounds excited and reliable and then doesn't show. I should have known this would happen since I had the hardest time even scheduling them! So good thing I have a wonderful husband that is willing to come in last minute and let me poke around in his mouth. My second patient showed up in the afternoon so that made things better. Ok so today...Professor Wold helped me a lot today and told me to not be shy about going deeper into the gums. I get so timid and don't dare to go any deeper. This is something I need to overcome. I also need to lighten up on my grip. By the end of the day my fingers are killing me so I need to work on that too. My afternoon patient had no idea how to floss her teeth. This was a good time to do a little OHI so I am excited to see how her homecare improves from now until I see her next.