March 1, 2010

My long awaited, non-English speaking, never had his teeth cleaned patient didn't show up. I had my brother call to remind him of his appointment and he said he couldn't come! I spent last night and this morning trying to find someone to come in. I was unsuccessful but was able to schedule 2 future appointments. My mom had to end up coming and finished her cleaning from when she was my first patient. I think I learned something new...if I have had bad patients for a while and then a clean one, I need to be a LOT more gentle. I kept catching myself digging in way to hard into her shallow pockets. Good thing she is my mom and she will forgive me. I also learned about the different effects of the different prescription mouthwashes and the locally applied antibiotics. Cool stuff.

February 24, 2010

A CLASS THREE! Holy smokes, it's like I'd never seen calculus before. Everything I've seen before seemed so minimal to this guy. It was covering the buccal surfaces of his max molars and the lingual surfaces of the mandibular anteriors. I learned that if I'm not able to get accurate probe measurements because there is too much calculus, I have to do a gross scale. So that's all I did today...and take a set of BWX. I'm excited for him to come back in so I can do a proper scale and root planing. I saw calculus for the first time on one of my patient's x-rays. He spoke broken English, so I hope he was able to understand the importance of BRUSHING and FLOSSING and coming in every few months. I really hope he comes back too, first of all because we learned that gross debridement is not effective and also because I get my 4 quads of class 3!

February 22, 2010

Lucky day today. I had a patient from off the resource list and she turned out to be a class 2! I was able to do my exam on her and I finished her in 1 day!!! I loved seeing all her calculus chip off. Such a huge difference when it was all clean. I talked to her about coming in more regularly and she told me to call her when I started next year to schedule her again. Good day.

February 17, 2010

No patients today!!! Wahoo! Such a nice break from the stress. We learned how to do blood glucose testing, the diagnodent, and denture cleanings. I learned that I really need to get in to see a dentist about a cavity. The diagnodent registered a 52! Denture cleaning was a breeze, now I just need to find someone with a denture! Glucose testing was pretty simple and way fun. I got poked twice :S, but found that my blood sugar levels are pretty normal, even a little low. I even got to pass off my instrument sharpening PE. Yay!