{Class 2 crazy!}

On Tuesday in the morning, I had my mockboard pt. come in so I could clean two quads.  I ended up cleaning his maxilla, and taking 5 PAs.  I missed a couple spots.  One of the spots I missed was on the mesial of 5.  It was in that concavity of the root surface that Prof. Alexander taught about in class.  So, she showed me how much you have to angle the tip of your instrument in and go up and down.  It was a good learning experience to go back and remove that small deposit.  Overall, the appointment went well, and I was able to get him done early and not have to rush so much to chart and clean up.

In the afternoon, I had a NP that came in and she was 100% spanish speaking.  Luckily, she brought her friend in who helped with translation.  Her HHX was super easy, so that made it nice.  I got 4 BWX, and determined she's a Class 2 as well.  The bad part...all 4 wisdom teeth.  Ugh!  I HATE wisdom teeth when they have perio.  It is SO hard for me to scale those teeth for some reason.  I was able to clean 2 quads, but by the end they were in a hurry to leave.  Because of the added stress, I wasn't as thorough as I'd wanted to be and ended up missing more spots than I'd like to admit.  Prof. Perry just told me to write them down and I could go over them next time.  Her calculus was a lot more tenacious than I was anticipating, and I hate having people look over my shoulder wanting me to hurry up.  Next time I am feeling like that, I just need to take a deep breath, and just get in there and go to town.  I have her coming back in a couple weeks to finish her up.

On Thursday at the VA, my morning pt. was such a nice man.  He forgot to premed, so that pushed us back about 40 minutes.  As I was cleaning his teeth, he was telling me how gentle I was being.  He told me that this was the first cleaning he had that he actually enjoyed.  It made me feel so good.  My goal from the beginning has been to be the gentle, kind hygienist.  I've never wanted to be the one with a heavy hand.  There is no reason that a cleaning should hurt if they don't have swollen, inflamed, infected tissues.  I was happy to know that I wasn't hurting him, but I was being effective.  I taught him how to use some OHI aides, and he seemed very interested and engaged with my instructions.  This appt. made me feel like I am doing something right.  It was such a great experience.

Then in the afternoon, I had a fairly young guy come in.  This appt. was pretty interesting.  He is extremely sensitive to eugenol, and anything with mint flavoring.  So, he doesn't brush with tp usually.  He brushes with baking soda, or just water.  You know what that means....plaque!  I hate scaling plaque.  Since I couldn't polish him because of our prophy paste being mint flavored, the ultrasonic came to the rescue.  Luckily, he didn't have much calculus at all.  He also had 4 aphthous ulcers all over his mouth.  It was really hard to maneuver around those and be conscious of all four the whole time.  I just felt really bad for the poor guy.  He had used a Burt's Bees tp that morning, which apparently contains some eugenol or mint, because he gets those aphthous ulcers all over when he has an allergic reaction.  It was good for me in the fact that I had to be very careful in where I retracted his lips out, etc.

On Friday we had our first LA lab!  We did the PSA, MSA, ASA, and the greater palatine injections.  My partner was Laken!  I was super nervous for it, but it was so much fun!  We had Prof. Perry as our instructor which made it so nice.  He is so calming.  He also explains everything SO well.  I can always understand things when he explains them.  It was a lot of fun actually.  It was a good experience for me because I got a positive aspiration.  It was good to know what you are supposed to do at the board exam if that happens.

Senior year has been SO busy, but I absolutely love it.  It's been so great to see my skills improve every clinic session.  I'm really starting to feel a lot more comfortable with everything, and what is expected of me.