The end is in sight

We only have FOUR more clinic days, awesome. Today I finished my grandpa, who I did an OD on the second clinic day. I love him, he is so patient. I worked very hard on my indirect vision today. I have been trying to stop ruining my ergonomics just because I struggle with indirect vision. It is getting much easier, I will keep at it until it is second nature. I also learned something about the daylight loader.
First: just shove your hands in. Do NOT try to stretch the hand things over your glove, Infection control people.
Second: Do NOT take your hands out until the x-ray is completely in the machine and the little light stops blinking. I may have, and by that I mean I did, ruin not one, but TWO pano's. Yes I am brilliant. Thank you Stephanie for taking time to help me figure it out.
Accomplishment today: Daylight Loader mastered, tray stayed clean, still improving on indirect vision
Goals for next time: Two patients, two quads each. Indirect vision. Don't take so long on plaque removal, I am over instrumenting

Class III, check

Today I finished my class III requirements. Such a cute patient. I love nice people. It worked out perfect because I did one quad and then Karen finished her off and finished her requirements as well. Thank you peer pal. I learned to love the Indiana which I have never fully utilized. I love learning new things. It was awesome.

Class III

Man did I ever get lucky, my awesome peer pal did an OD on a class III patient and then gave her to me. She is the cutest little Spanish lady ever. She speaks broken english and believed every dental myth that I have ever heard in my life. I wrote a novel on OHI and still didn't cover everything. I know we are not supposed to overwhelm the patient but she kept asking me questions. I tried my best to answer but I am not sure she totally understood me. I will try to convey the dilemma that what today.
Long discussion #1: She is missing all of her maxillary molars except #14 which is extremely mobile. It is also the last chewing surface she has left when eating. She has the worst gag reflex and has a partial she can not wear because of it. She also has an end to end bite that has made her mandibular anterior teeth ultra sensitive because of the pressure from chewing all of her food up front and the increased pressure that has resulted. She has no insurance. Should she get an implant so she has chewing surface or orthodontics to fix her end-to-end bite and sens. ant. teeth? I just don't know, try explaining that in broken English. I felt better when my instructor didn't know what to tell her either. After trying to explain everything to her I still don't think she understood my English.
Discussion #2: She just can't stand soft toothbrushes, they just don't feel like they are doing anything. I tried to explain the myth behind that with the sweeping analogy.
Discussion #3: She brushes with baking soda and peroxide everyday. Abrasive, that is all.
Discussion #4: She pushes so hard brushing that the bristles are flat against her teeth, pull out the sweeping analogy again.
Discussion #5: Yeah she LOVES the proxy brush! Score one for the students
Discussion #6: This was my favorite. She said "After you clean my teeth the gums will all grow back and grab onto the tooth" This was also the hardest one to explain. Perio is a hard thing to explain with pictures and hand gestures. I went on and on and on about it and thought I had it pretty thoroughly covered when she pretty much repeated the same comment. I think she zoned my English out cause she couldn't understand me. Yeah for google, I will be searching for the perfect Spanish perio sheet before she returns again. The most hilarious part is she is not a new patient to the clinic. She has been coming her for years and looking through her previous apt I found out that she has had perio explained every single time. I WILL find a way to get through to her!
She also needed to be inclined quite a bit and I had quite a learning experience not being able to see or figure out chair positions at all. There was more but I am sick of typing so to sum it up it was quite the learning day. I am glad I had it.

My new goal: LEARN SPANISH!!!

Spring Break is Over

Wow last week went by way too fast. I basically sat on my couch the entire week reading and doing nothing. The only time I left my house was to go hiking on the trails that have barely emerged from the melting snow. Can't wait til the weather figures out that it is Spring, I'm gonna hit the trails everyday. Then Sunday night came and I realized that it was all over. The relaxing, reading whatever I want, sleeping in, no worry life had come to an end. Bright and early Monday morning came and I am back in clinic. Luckily I knew I would be having spring break jet lag so I scheduled my adorable little sis for my patient. Best idea ever, I was relaxed and got back into the swing of things without too much stress. Helped that she didn't have any calculus too. I also achieved a goal that has been a long time in the coming. My tray stayed relatively organized, relatively being the key word. Still it's a huge deal to me. I also laid out a plan of attack for the rest of clinic and feel fairly confident in my ability to finish all the requirements. As long as everything goes according to plan, which it never ever does...New goal, faster, faster, faster, and become master of the ultrasonic.

Best patient ever

Today I had the best patient ever. Two of the best patients ever actually. My first patient has been coming here for years. He knows exactly how long it takes, offers to let me pass off any of my requirements I can, is pleasant, comes spare of the moment, and even reminds me of things I am forgetting. Today as I was going to get my instructor and he asked me if I was going to dry off his front teeth so that I could see if I got all the calculus off. How awesome is that. Then I had my adorable niece come in. She is so cute and it just makes my day to see her and visit with my sister-in-law. I love them so much. All in all a great day.

Finally a 1B!

So up until today I had the least amount of 1Bs done in the entire class. I hope that happens next year because I have too many class IV's! Haha I can keep on dreaming. It was nice to get some done though. Ever since we wrote down our requirements on the board in our classroom I have been in a constant panic about requirements. So my patient had class at 9:30 so I had to finish all four quads faster than I have ever done before and then lets me know at 8 that he is running half an hour behind. Fastest I have ever scaled. I missed a bunch of spots but I finished! Hopefully I can get to that being the norm. My goal for next time is to keep my tray organized. I have a tendency to throw all my instruments in a pile on my tray when I am in a hurry. Then I have to scramble and organized them when my instructor in on their way over to check my patient. But that will all change next time. Once again Todd came in. It is going to take all semester to finish him. One quad at a time I guess. Two down, two to go.

Goal=fail

I made a goal last time to not get frazzled easily. Guess I will just have to keep that goal for next time. Also I want to get better at telling the difference between a really pronounced CEJ and calculus.