worth the wait.

My patient was an hour late today!!! I am having the worst luck with patients being on time! I got to take 18 x-rays on her today and she has 3 quads class III and 1 quad class II, so she meets a lot of requirements for me. She was definitely worth the wait!! She is a gagger and I'll probably have to have an instructor numb her up for me, but I am way excited to work on her. Her probing depths were crazy! A healthy probing depth is 1-3 mm and hers were 7-9 mm deep!! It was crazy. She was super nice! I love her hair. I was making fun of how thin my hair is and she said that's because it all went to my eyelashes. It was so sweet! She said that I have amazing eyelashes, what a nice lady.

My first spanish speaking patient.

I worked on my first Spanish speaking patient today. He is such a nice guy. He brought his son to translate, so it went really well. He only has 13 teeth, but he getting a full upper denture. I cleaned his bottom teeth. He ended up being a class III. HOORAY!! I am excited because this fills a requirement for me. I wish that I could have taken x-rays on him too, but oh well. He is coming back next week to finish his cleaning. Hopefully he'll come in after he gets his denture, so I can pass of my removable prosthesis PE. Here's hoping!

A late start..

Today my patient was twenty minutes late, but at least he showed up!! I passed off two PE's today, anterior scaling and selective polishing. I scaled three quads and only missed one piece of calculus! Not too shabby. (although, he really didn't have a lot of calculus anyway..) I love the scaling appt's. I feel like I'm actually doing something and it's great!  Next time I see my first spanish speaking patient. I think this will be a bit of a challeng for me, but I am really excited about it. Wish me luck!!

Practice makes perfect.

Today I saw a 13 year old patient. She was such a trooper! What a great little girl. She had quite a bit of calculus for being 13.  I only got done with OHI today. I see her again in a couple weeks to do some scaling. I felt like I did a lot of waiting today (for checks from my instructors). I guess it was my turn though, because I haven't really had to wait for checks yet, i've been lucky! I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the routine of things. I can't wait until I get faster though, I feel so slow right now. Oh well, all I can do is practice, practice, practice!

First no show..

Bummer!!! I had my first no show. The patient even confirmed the night before!! Luckily a patient walked in the clinic to see about getting her teeth cleaned. I told her that I could see her today, so I got to do a little bit. Unfortunately, she had to leave really early to pick her son up!! It is just NOT MY DAY.. Oh well. I did pass of my instrument sharpening PE, so at least I got something accomplished.. Better luck next time..

mystery patient!

Today was the first time that I treated a patient that I did not know personally. I was really nervous about it last night, I barely slept!! My patient turned out to be such a great guy! He was super nice and had a great attitude. He's coming back in two weeks to finish his cleaning. Hopefully Wednesday goes just as well! (hopefully a little smoother I guess.)

Patient day!

Today I finished my patient from last time. It was great to actually do some scaling! I decided that I really like the ultrasonic scaler. When I couldn't hand scale the calculus off the ultrasonic worked great!! Brittney was my patient and she was such a good sport! I'm glad that I have great friends to help me through school.  Now, I don't have any more patients, so my goal is to find some. Wish me luck!!

I'm back!!

Today was the first day back! I should have studied more during the break! I feel like I forgot everything, luckily it is all coming back pretty quickly. I'm excited to see a patient on Wednesday. I will actually get to do some scaling. Now, I need to find some patients for the rest of the semester.  We are one step closer to graduating which is so exciting! Hopefully I will get back into the "school groove" pretty easily.