Let this be a lesson to everyone!

My morning and afternoon patients were both confirmed last night and then they were both majorly late for their appointments today. I am so annoyed!!! Its like c'mon...don't be mad at me if I can't finish your entire class 2 mouth today if you only give me an hour and a half and you're a new patient!!! AHH! and then I get in trouble for being late on check out...when I was done half an hour before but the instructors never came over to me. This morning we had 3 instructors...but only 2 were to be found and they were over in other pods that they didn't belong to...so I got left out...and therefore late...and therefore a got in trouble. Not very fair if you ask me.

Easy VA day

Another easy day at the VA. I'm getting pretty lucky that all my patients have been showing up. Some of the other girls haven't had very good luck with VA patients. My patient this morning was a very easy class 2 and my afternoon patient was a class 1b. He was pretty conversive. We talked about skiing a lot. He is profesh is sounds like. I didn't have any scaling errors but I don't credit that to my skill. I credit it to the lack of deposits on my patients. The big news of the day is that Staci and I beat Kami's own score at the Ragdoll game on her iPhone. ha ha I feel pretty good about that. ;)

Class 4

This morning I had the nicest guy come and be my patient. He ended up being a class 4! We gave him some anesthetic and the I started working on the LR quad. He was a really nice guy and very patient. I hope he's willing to come back next time so I can finish him up. I told him that once the anesthetic wore off he'd be pretty sore. I was down in pockets of 7 and 8 in most of the posterior. Then my afternoon patient canceled. He called at 12:05 to tell me he wouldn't be able to make it to the 12:30 apt. I guess I'm lucky that he even called. So I scrambled to find another one. Luckily my step-dad came up for me. What a nice guy!

Little Turds

Thursday I had 2 little kids from the same family come in. My first pt was 8 years old and was really excited to be here because he could look all around the place. He was a good x-ray patient tho and we got 2 good bwx. He was my 1A eaglesoft pt. Then his older brother who is 10 was my pt. In Prof. Perry's words, he was a little turd. ha ha. You would think that a 10 year old could handle a simple cleaning...but he was not very helpful. ha ha. Good thing is that I finished my requirements for 1As!

IT CLICKED!

So yesterday in class Prof. Hanson gave a little lesson on the instruments and how to use them. We all brought our instruments and typodonts and practiced and it made sense all of a sudden to me. Then today in clinic I was jsut able to recall what we had talked about. I was able to feel the calc with my explorer and pop it off. Its like the last two weeks all just combined at once and made complete sense. It was so awesome! My morning patient was a class II and I finished her whole mouth without any errors! Then my afternoon patient was 2 more quads of a class II that I hadn't finished 2 weeks ago. And I only missed one spot. So I felt so good about my progress today! It was just fantastic!

VA day

I have a love/hate relationship with the VA. I love the new building and equipment. I love getting patients that are higher classifications. I love that Prof. Hanson is so helpful. I love the low-stress environment. I hate the non-ergonomic computer screen and I hate having to wait and wait and wait for the dentist to come give an exam. My morning patient today had to wait over an hour total for scale checks and dr. exams. I try to be very professional in my interaction with patients even though I am still a student. But it makes me look bad when I have to wait around an hour for a simple exam. I mean I know they are busy but it seemed like everyone else got their checks and exams taken care of quickly and I was the last one done by far this morning! I felt bad for my patient. Luckily my fellow students are very cool and helped me out a lot throughout the appoinement by cleaning up my room and stuff. I do love the VA though. No stress at all. This morning my patient was 1 quad of a 3 and 3 quads of a 2 and my afternoon patient was a very easy 5. It was a fun day!

This is gonna be great!

So today my first patient came and turned out to be a candidate for mockboards which is great! She has really tenacious calculus though. I scaled half of her mouth today and I think next time I'm gonna offer LA to her. Then my afternoon patient was a different story. He is on a pre-med for a heart murmur and a type II diabetic. He came in with a BGL of 365! So I spent 2 hours getting the doctor's consult and all that stuff worked out. But I did get a FMX + BWX on him which was great.

On a different note...in all my years of working in the dental field I have never once gotten sick to my stomach...until today. My patient had plaque that was growing plaque. As I was exploring, chunks and I mean chunks of PLAQUE were coming off. It was sick. It makes me wonder how someone can walk around and be social enough to as least be talking to someone and not want to have a clean mouth. He wasn't really even that bad perio-wise...he was only a class II. But I mean chunks...the size of...well I don't want you to get sick by picturing it.