{Instrument Classification}

The concept we learned today was not too difficult.  We layed out all of our instruments and learned the differences and what they are used for.  There are curets and sickles, tipped and toed, posterior and anterior, rigid and nonrigid.  It was nice to actually pull them all out and figure out what they are all for.  We then bagged them and got them set up to be sterilized.  I can't believe we will start using them on Monday! Exciting, but scary!  Then we had a set up race which Laken won!  Wahoo....go Laken!  Unfortunately our pod didn't win, even though we had quite the strategy going in to it.  Ha!  After the race, we were able to pass of the intraoral exam PE.  I was nervous going in to it, but once I started, I remembered everything I needed to and it went well.  Then we had a little bit of time to practice probing.  We are supposed to pass of probing and exploring next Wednesday.  I'll be honest....I'm freaking out!  I get the concept of probing....the angulation and adaptation to the tooth, but my speed is so SLOW!  I think I'm just not confident in myself and my ability to read the lines on the probe.  Ugh!  I just really hope my husband will let me torture him this weekend so I can get a quad done in 3 minutes.  That seems like such a long time, but when I get going, I feel like the time just flies.  And I'm nervous about exploring too, because our instructor on Monday only wanted us to stay supragingival and we need to go sub when we pass of the PE.  Well, I just hope and pray that there is a little time on Monday to practice that.  I'm wanting to get probing out of the way on Monday, because I don't think there will be enough time on Wednesday to do probing and exploring, especially because TAs can't pass off any kind of instrumentation.  I'm probably stressing over nothing, but I just want to be able to do these skills well so that I'm not completely lost next semester when we will be working on patients.  Well, at least Costley's test is out of the way and now I get to go study for her class tomorrow.  Yipee.