Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The time has come....

After much anticipation and waiting patiently, I was finally able to clean a tooth yesterday! I was able to hold a sickle scaler in my hand and remove calculus. It was great!

I feel bad for my first patient, he really took a beating! My typodont was quick to volunteer himself to be my first patient (what would I do without him?). He had a lot of calculus for me to remove as well. The bad thing with that is I started to focus more on removing the subginigval calculus than on my grasp, technique and posture! (Not good!) The poor guy probably has all his enamel scraped off! But I did get all the calculus so that has to count for something right?

My lab partner was my second patient, and considering she actually has feeling and can talk I was more careful with her! I started out very hesitant because I'm sure I've made her bleed enough these past few weeks with probing and exploring, and I didn't want to make her bleed again. After a little I felt like I was getting the hang of it and felt pretty comfortable. She did have a mandibular lingual bar which made scaling the lingual surfaces a little more difficult, but it was great practice since they are so common now. I practiced probing on her once again and I feel pretty confident with probing. I did get a 4 mm pocket and that was pretty cool! I was surprised at first because the probe just kind of dropped. I didn't have to push at all, it just dropped nicely! Her's is most likely as pseudo pocket since she have generally healthy gums, and is not a candidate for periodontal disease. 

Tomorrow we get to work on posterior scaling which I am excited about! Clinic just gets better and better, but more stressful as well. I have what feels like 20 PE's to pass off! They just keep piling up. Tomorrow I pass off my explorer and probing PE, and hopefully I get a few more passed off as well. But life is great and I am still enjoying every day of my dental hygiene experience!

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