Simulation Day

Today is my patient simulation day. My first patient was my little sister who was super easy. I took a pano on her because she had wisdom teeth in her bitewings from last year. My second patient was a tissue eval who didn't show up. I think that is my biggest stress this semester that if I finally find a patient, they won't show up to their appointment.
This semester has been the hardest for me to find patients and for them to show up on time or at all. I hope I pass the simulation day even though that happened. My afternoon is two little girls that are adorable. They will be easy and then I have a screening planned but I couldn't confirm which makes me doubt that I she will show.

Tough Patient

My patient today was tough. He had some very tenacious calculus and I took over two hours on the two quads all together. I think the biggest thing I learned with him is to ultrasonic until you feel that it's smooth, then handscale, and then ultrasonic again and keep checking the teeth with an explorer. I had to take my gloves off and run my hands under cool water to get my tactile sensitivity back before I did my final check for calculus. I think I did a good job getting it all off in the end though. :)

good patient

Today I found a class four patient but he was so late that I didn't scale any teeth I only took xrays and did OHI and stuff. I think it is so sad that we wish for our patients to have terrible teeth. I think most of us are at the point in the semester where we are wishing for class 4 patients or else board patients and it's sorta sad.
Anyways this guy had the most calculus out of anyone I've seen and it was so hard to probe just because I would keep hitting calculus and couldn't get down in the pockets for some of his teeth. Maybe we should probe after we scale... but I doubt that would be appropriate.

mockboard

I love Alyse, she shared her patient with me for the afternoon!!! She qualified and I only missed one spot that I really couldn't seem to get off when I tried to scale it off. I guess I should've used my perio files or something but I started thinking it was the tooth that was making it rough. I got injections and I think today went well. I'm just glad that I got the experience and I passed :) I only missed one spot of calculus and didn't have any paperwork errors this time around so I got a 94%. Yay.

NO pt NO mockboard

I don't have a mockboard or an afternoon patient today and no one to screen and I don't know how I'm supposed to find someone to screen or anything. It's getting to be a really stressful semester because I can't find patients period. Most of my recall don't even wanna come back til later this semester so I am having a really hard time scheduling appointments. I know I'm not the only one with this problem which makes it even more frustrating and stressful because my grade depends on finding these patients for mockboard and stuff. I dunno what to do!

sore fingers

My fingers hurt, well mostly my fulcrum finger. My patient was tough this afternoon and I don't know what I did to make my fingers so sore, but I guess I just need to pay attention to how much pressure I'm exerting in order not to make my fingers sore.

bleeding

The last time I saw my patient that I saw today was a year ago and she was pregnant. She bled alot then, and I connected it to pregnancy gingivitis, but it was interesting because today she came back and was no longer pregnant and bled just as much as last time. I really had to explain to her that she needed to brush up by the gums and floss because I haven't seen anyone with that little amount of calculus who did bleed that much.