Last day at the VA!

I bet that is a popular dental hygiene post title because it is so exciting. I guess its not truly my last day, but it is my last day until the end of February so that is pretty exciting. I have really actually enjoyed my time here at the VA. In fact, I definitely prefer this environment to WSU clinic just because you don't have to do forever-long ODs. But it makes for a super long week when you have class Monday, VA Tuesday, TA Wednesday and Clinic Thursday. It is really nice to be completely done with that busy, busy schedule. Today my patients weren't too exciting. I saw a 1B in the morning and a Class 5 in the afternoon. My class 5 patient admitted to not really doing any OH ever until yesterday. That's right, he started brushing his teeth yesterday, folks! As I hygienist I just think, how could this happen? And now I hope he is motivated enough to keep it up so he can keep what teeth he has left.

TA the day before Thanksgiving

Message to Prof. Costley: Do not forget that you need to change the schedule next year to cancel clinic on the day before Thanksgiving. It is the absolute worst day of the year to be in clinic. And another thing, with the students working on each other it was really hard to stay occupied as a TA. If you really wanted to be nice you could give the TA's this day off to work on their papers. :)

Okay so moving on... in clinic it was the student treatment day so I mostly sat around with loads of time on my hands. It was really boring to say the least. I thought everyone did a really great and thorough job on their student treatments. One thing everyone seemed to forget was filling out the patient encounter forms but that will probably get easier, especially when you are seeing real patients. Otherwise, good luck to everyone on their first day of real patient treatment. I am so excited to be able to see ya all in action actually applying everything you've worked your bums off to learn this semster.

3rd to last day of clinic

Today I am on the verge of completing my 3rd to last day of clinic and it feels great. I am going to be totally honest when I say that I really don't enjoy cleaning teeth. I enjoy the end product and sense of fulfillment in having cleaned a patient with perio or bad ginigivitis. I enjoy interacting with the patients and getting to know them. I also enjoy feeling like I am helping each patient and doing something good for someone else. But I really don't like cleaning teeth. I guess the other parts of the job are just more rewarding so it all equals out in the end but day after day I dread seeing another tooth covered in plaque and calculus. On the bright side, the aches and pains in my back seem to be getting less severe as I am getting used to it.

Radiology TA, again

Yesterday was my last experience as radiology TA, thank heavens! Nothing against the teacher or any of the students of course, you are all excellent, it is just a very boring subject to be a TA. However, I was thankful for my experience today as it was very enlightening. We were using the bisecting the angle technique and PANOs. It was a very good review of bisecting because I really didn't feel like I got a really good experience with it last year so I was learning more than I was teaching or assisting! The PANO was also a good review because our learning how to use the PANO machine was very basic last year so it was helpful to watch the video and see all the basics of setting up the Frankfort plane and everything broken down again. Its amazing how much I've learned, but at the same time, as I am reviewing things in first year clinic, I am seeing a lot that I have forgotten. So even though it has been painfully boring at times, overall it has been an invaluable experience.

Thank heaven for the VA!

I got another class 2 at the VA and it is so nice because without the VA there is no way I would have seen anywhere close to twenty quads of a class 2. I also got to take another pano and BWX. I love taking digital xrays and I never want to manually process another film as long as I live. To put it short, I love the VA. Except for the smell, I hate the smell.

Sharpening - TA

Today we did instrument sharpening and I felt really confident in my ability to instruct them on this thankfully! It is funny how last year I really didn't know how to sharpen or feel confident in it at all and then after the clinic we had this year I felt really great about it... plus I got a Gleason Guide which is AWESOME! I also am a big advocate of sharpening because I hate working with instruments that aren't super sharp so I sharpen frequently. You might say I am a sharpening queen. Totally kidding!

CLiNic DaY... A day of stain

Today was a very productive day and I feel really good about it. I got a class V in the a.m and two 1A this afternoon. Wahoo! I am closing the gap on these "requirements" quickly... they don't stand a chance. ;) (I know I am a dork). So anyway, my morning patient was a pretty standard class V perio maintenance patient and he was doing a pretty good job maintaining his perio as far as I could see. Looking back at some of his old charts, his probe depths had improved significantly and he was generally healthy. The biggest project I had on him was the heavy stain from drinking black tea & smoking a water pipe. He was from India and explained to me how it was a very big social custom... fascinating... but still not good for your health!

THEN, this afternoon the first 1A patient I saw was an 11-year old with black line stain on the lingual and facial surfaces of her lower anteriors. Crazy, huh? It was hard work hand scaling all that. Luckily, her younger sister didn't have any stain so it was a little easier. Only 4 weeks left!!

Party at the VA!

Today we had three no-shows, hence, here I am blogging my little heart out! We studied the AndyRDH board quizzes, which makes me really wish that boards could be taken as a group, and studied some of the hygiene decks too. I thought the AndyRDH site was a really good quiz to go through for sample board questions.

Mockboards... glad that is over!

So, lets just say that 37.5/100 isn't exactly a good score on mockboards so you can imagine how I was feeling for the rest of the day. I can comfort myself a little by knowing that Prof. Hanson told me he was an incredibly difficult patient that she wouldn't put in front of anyone as an exam patient but still... I only got like 2 areas completed and he has to come back for completion of the quad that I worked on for mockboards. I just can't help but think, what the heck is my problem? I feel like 2 hours should have been more than enough time and yet I know when I was working on him there was still a lot of work to do after 2 hours. So I guess I'd just like to know how much of it was him being a hard patient and how much of it was just my own inefficiency?

And even though I went home with a horrible feeling of dissappointment after this mockboard I am looking forward to the next one hoping that I will be able to redeem myself, at least somewhat. Anyway, it was a good learning experience and I'm glad I had a hard patient instead of an easier patient because I wouldn't be as aware of my limitations if that were the case.

The happy couple

This is me & Eric... I just thought this was a cute picture of us! :)

My engagement ring

By request here is a picture of my ring. My fingers look really big and fat in it though! I love it... Last night I had a horrible nightmare that I went to show it to somebody and all the diamonds had fallen out of it! Luckily when I went to check it this morning they were still all there.
And this is a picture of Eric, me & the "Doctor", whom I later found out was just an orderly,at the official proposal.

Universal imstrumentation TA

Today in clinic we covered universal instrumentation and I found myself getting a little frustrated sometimes because I felt like I would offer a suggestion to a student a either they wouldn't really understand what I was trying to say or they would try it and it wouldn't work for them. It wasn't something that was constantly happening but it did happen a few times and I just wanted to say "okay don't listen to me because I don't know what I'm talking about!" Anyway, hopefully I am able to give them answers which are consistent with what other TA's and instructors are giving. Otherwise, it was just another great day of Clinical TA-ing! Only 5 more weeks left.

Clinic TA - 10/18/06

I was the radiology TA for the second time today and today was really good for me. Mostly it was a good learning experience for me but also I think I was a little bit of help for the junior students as well. I learned how to do digital xrays, which I'd never done before and even got a chance to play around with it a little bit. I learned how to write on the films and put graphics on them (like circling a spot of calculus or something). Anyway, it was also a good review of technique for taking PA's. I think I'd kind of forgotten the proper technique for the canine film and as I was helping the students today things started coming back to me.

LAB & CLINIC

The lab this morning was really fun & as crazy as this sounds, it made me a little nostalgic of the good ol' days of first year when we didn't have the stress of patients and classifications and requirements. I heard we got some really good pictures of everything.

This afternoon I saw a class 1B patient, which is okay but I'd rather have seen a class 2 because I haven't seen any so far!! Eeks! Better luck next time. Anyway, my patient experience was good because he hadn't had his teeth cleaned in over 4 years. There was a lot of plaque and quite a bit of decalcification along the gumline. I encouraged him to buy Prevident but he wasn't interested so what can you do. It is hard to understand why patients don't take up these great offers we can provide especially when I understand how much he really could've used the Rx toothpaste.

Clinic TA

Sorry I missed clinic on Wednesday, I was home sick! But I made up my questions for my survey which will be handed out next week and I was thinking about which questions to ask I just realized that this experience has been really beneficial for me! I am also nervous about the responses I get on my survey because I don't know if the first years think I am stupid, too aggressive, too laid back, or what but hopefully I am helping them in some small way! :)

Mockboard patient

Yeah, I finally have a mockboard patient so I feel good about that! I was sick in clinic so it was nice to know I could just hurry and clean one quad of my class 3 patient and then schedule him for mockboards. I was totally stressing about it so I feel much better now... other than this nagging cold that just won't subside. But thanks to whoever gave me the tip about the cotton rolls up your nose, it really works! :)

Dent: 3 cavities

Today for the first time as a TA in 1st year clinic I got to be the patient. This was because we were doing Dent screenings and 3 of the 4 students in my pod had mouths full of virgin teeth. (I am insanely jealous.) So I let them practice charting my teeth and they all got to see/explore 2 of the 3 cavities that I was diagnosed with yesterday. :( It was somewhat difficult to act as patient and instructor because when they would ask "What is this?" I would have to strain to look inside my own mouth to try and tell them what they were seeing. Anyway, it is really a good experience to review this stuff each clinic session with the 1st years.

Probing with the first years

I have been dreading teaching probing since I became a TA but honestly, it wasn't bad at all. It is a lot better to teach probing than to actually probe anyway! The thing I really enjoyed about it was going over all the little technicalities because after a year, my grasp and fulcrum and all has gotten sloppy. Also, I passed off the afternoon sessions Explorer and Instrument Grasp PEs and they did awesome. It was also a food review for me because I honestly had forgotten that in the modified pen grasp your fingers are supposed to be in a "c" shape. As little as this seems, now that I am working on that habit I noticed my fingers aren't as sore today! :)

Whadda day!

Today in clinic I saw a class 3 in the am & my first class 4 in the pm. As tiring as it was, I actually really enjoyed the class 4 especially. It was really rewarding to be able to feel definite clicks with the explorer and then actually see the huge chuncks of calculus come out of the pocket after a successful stroke. Today I actually had the thought, "Yeah, I think I can do boards." Whereas, up to this point I've been like "I am never gonna pass boards!" Anyway, I am glad today is over but I felt really good about everything. I am anxiously awaiting my next class 4 patient... but not until next semester hopefully!

36 xrays later...

It's the lastest title of my new horror film. It's about me having to take xrays all day long on both of my patients and it was horrible. But what can you do? I finally get that thing that Prof. Alexander is always saying about how the xrays are like your bright lights when you're driving at night. My patient had some real issues and I really felt like I needed the xrays to see everything that was going on. It was difficult to tell whether his pockets were pseudo pockets or how much bone loss he actually had without seeing the xrays because he had a lot of gingival inflammation. Anyway, I got my xrays done and I hope to see some easy patients here pretty soon. The sad thing is, I've seen a few difficult patients so far, but no patients for mockboards yet.

Just like riding a bicycle

So hygiene is just like riding a bicycle... I was amazed at how it all came back to me on the first day of clinic. I thought I would forget a lot more than I did, however I did forget to probe the entire maxillary lingual quad of my patient. :) But really I think I did pretty dang well. I got a FMX done on a class V patient and I completed all 4 quads on that same patient. My class III was a little harder and I got a late start so I only got one quad done but still I am amazed at my progress from last semester. I'm not really sure what the difference is but I feel a lot more confident this semester than I did last semester too which makes a big difference. Hopefully it stays that way!

Instrument sharpening... I get it!

I am so so soo glad that we had that instrument sharpening review in our first clinic session on Thursday because I felt like I had no idea what I was doing beforehand and now I'm thinking, "Wow! Instrument sharpening really works!" I know its a very important skill to have and I honestly felt helpless last semester when I knew my instruments were dulling and I would make my best attempt at sharpening (which was TOTALLY wrong) but it didn't seem to work very well. :( Maybe it would've been good to actually check out that video last semester when Costley asked us to! Woops!

Orientation, CPR & Parking Pass Night!

Today was the "unofficial" first day of school. We had our orientation and CPR certification. (Hopefully someone finds that test that is lost! EEKS!) Anyway, it was fun to see everyone again. As you can see, we got some good experience in CPR!
I realized that there really were things that I've missed over the summer and today really helped calm me down about the next year. I guess it doesn't really count that one of the things I missed was hearing Jalene's "The Final Countdown" ringtone! :)
Oh yes, I am also posting some pictures of the good times some of us shared when we slept over for A6 parking passes a couple of weeks ago. I hope Aimee, my love, doesn't kill me for this next one! I just thought it was so cute that Eric was looking down at her. I know she's gonna be angry because I took this picture at like 1:00 a.m. And then Candance and Steph thought it was pretty funny that when their fingers and toes meshed together they were two very contrasting shades so we took a photo of that too. I think it might have been one of those "it's only funny at 2 a.m." type of moments.

Back to school

Wow! Summer of '06 flew by way too fast. Are all you ladies ready to start up hygiene again? I surely am...not! I have had a great summer though. I went to Chicago, saw a White Sox vs. Cubs game, went to some awesome concerts, had a delicious sno-asis snowcone, watched She's The Man about 10 times, finally got carpet in my newly remodeled bedroom, got a new bed, went hiking, running, fishing, river-rafting in MOAB, slept over night at Weber for a parking pass... and lots of other cool things. Alas, it is all over for the next 9 months of my life and I will learn to only care about teeth and gums once again! :0) But hopefully I will get lots of good pictures to post on here. P.S. I took this pic at the spectacular Indepence Day fireworks show in Chicago.

Andy Warhol

My favorite flower!

Have a great summer

Hey everyone, just wanted to say that really has been an awesome year getting to know all of you. I honestly never imagined I would have this much fun. The carpool has been awesome and I am totally looking forward to it next year. Carpool 4 life! Sitting on the back row of class with Aimee, Des and Jalene feels like a second home to me now. I can call same seats next year! So, I'll see you next year, or during summer classes, have a great summer, don't change. Have fun in the sun, get laid in the shade. Call me!

Class 3 done!

Its the last day of clinic and I finally got my class 3 patient finished! I enjoyed this time a lot more because I knew I only had 1 quad to get done and I really focused on my instrumentation. I don't feel like the ultra sonic did anything for me and part of that problem is maybe I wasn't going deep enough with it but its okay because I got to hand-scale some huge black chunks of calculus and that is pretty rewarding for me at this point. I hate class 3's because they are VERY hard work but it was a great experience for me to learn A LOT about calculus, instrumentation and clinician fatigue!

Pretty good day... for learning, not so much for me

My patient today was pretty difficult for 3 reasons: 1)she was a mouth breather so her max anterior tissues were swollen out to Texas and bled like a stuck pig 2)she had a lingual retainer that was covered with calculus and 3) she was EXTREMELY sensitive. I would just like to pat myself on the back and say I did okay. The only thing that is keeping me going at this point is knowing I only have one more day of clinic for the next four months!!

Busy Day!!

Holy cow! I saw two patients today and it was crazy! I had to set up my clinic area 2x plus set up/clean up radiology 2x. I saw my niece, a class 1A and my friend, a class 1B (I think) but I'm not sure because all I did was a FMX and BWX on her. I am now officially done with my PA requirements, my class 1A requirements and I only need 1 more set of BWX! 3 more clinic days left... good luck everyone!

Children's Health Fair

Last week we went to the children's health fair at the university and it was pretty fun. I had never done anything like it before so I just wanted to go and get a feel for it. I enjoyed watching how some of the second year girls interacted with the kids and I got a better idea of what to expect at something like that.

Done with class 2

I finally got my last two quads of class 2 done!!! I will be sure to pass any extra quads I come across on to someone else if I can though. I am very nervous about seeing my class 3 patient again though because the last time I saw her I had one heck of a time scaling her. I kept being told to go more apical but there was so much bleeding and I was just so nervous that I was gonna tear her gums right off. Wish me luck!

Back to school

How was everyone's Spring Break '06? Mine was great... I missed you girls in Vegas but I myself went to Wendover Friday night on the "fun bus" and who doesn't love Wendover? Today in clinic I got another Class 1B done with Bwx and I was happy that the BWX only took me about 5 minutes to actually expose... then there's developing, cleaning, etc. But I feel like I am getting better. I kept on schedule and the only thing I didn't keep my goal time was on scaling which was 30 minutes or less and I think I took about 45.

My first full-mouth

Holy crap! I got my first FMX of the semester done and it was HARD! It took me a whole hour to do the FMX and 4 BWX without any retakes. My patient had a really small mouth so I had to use size 1 films on all of the anteriors but it feels good to have one done. I can't believe I have to do another one of those. At least I have one under my belt so hopefully I will feel more confident with the second one.

Two quads of class 2

Well today I finished two more quads of a class 2 and got done early enough to have started a second patient but I didn't really have a patient that wanted to come in just to get started today. It was a pretty stress-free clinic day and I got three PE's done! I felt confident in my scaling today and I am getting more used to the Ultrasonic but I just don't feel like it gets rid of that much calculus and I am having a little trouble not causing a little bleeding.

Darn physician consults!

Well, today was pretty much a waste of a clinic day because my pt. had to have a physician consult and I couldn't get a hold of anyone so all I could do was the intra and extra oral screening. :( At least I know next time he comes back we are ready to scale. Hopefully Wednesday will be more successful.

Only one more appt. in Feb

We only have one more clinic day in February!! Yay! But also crappy at the same time because I feel so stressed about getting my requirements. Especially for radiology because it seems like most of my patients don't need xrays or some that do refuse to get them... ugggh! Anyway, today I did my class 1B exam and I think I failed it because I missed so many areas. I really feel like I can't do a decent job without taking a lot of time to do it. I tried to follow the instructors' advice and "risk" a few mistakes to speed up but then I just ended up missing what seemed like every single tooth in my patient's mouth. I just want to feel like I know what I am doing and be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. One good thing is that I did get this patient done in one appointment (without xrays) and he did have a lot of stain from tobacco. So I feel pretty optimistic about that.

The day before Valentine's Day

I couldn't think of a title for this blog so... there you go! Today I saw my first class 2 patient but he was a light class 2 with a bit of recession. The hardest part of scaling today was distinguishing CEJ from calculus deposits. Professor Alexander helped me learn how to distinguish the two by sound because the deposits have a scratchier sound to them whereas CEJ is just more of a definite clicking noise. Everyday I am getting more and more comfortable with things. One thing I am worried about is xrays because I haven't taken any PA's or Panos, and I have only had like 4 BWX patients! I better start getting patients that need xrays. Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Classifications?

Today I finished scaling my patient and I realized that patient classification often depends on the instructor you have. When I started my patient she was classified as a 1B but I thought her probe depths and tissues were more of a class 2. She just didn't have enough calculus to be a class 2. So the instructor put her as 1B. Then today the instructor I saw wanted to put her as a class 2 but couldn't because she didn't have the chance to see her initially... so she ended up being a class 5, which is probably about right. Either way, I took a whole hour to scale which means I am SLOW!!! My goal is to try and speed up just a bit. Maybe get my class 1B scale time down to 45 minutes.

No Habla Espanol!

On Monday I treated my first spanish speaking patient and today I did my Class 1A exam on a patient with ADHD! Its been a pretty interesting week. Monday I realized that I really should learn to speak Spanish because I am sure that in the future we will be treating an increasing amount of Spanish speaking patients. Luckily, my patient was very nice and understanding and Midtown was nice enough to help me out with translation. Oh and I borrowed Jalene's patient for a minute to help translate too! The good thing is she is supposed to come back at the end of March and she's a class 3. It was pretty fun probing around and feeling tons of calculus. I don't think I was able to get totally accurate probe depths though because it kept getting caught on the calculus. McConaughy suggested that when she come back I clean one area and then reprobe it.
The Class 1A today was pretty simple. I really liked not having to probe. My patient was very shy and didn't say one word to me but other than that, it was okay. I felt kind of rushed knowing that he was ADHD and worrying that he might freak out but he was really still for a 5 yr. old and I was able to get everything done just fine.

No Habla Espanol!

Another Class 1B

I have finished my second class 1B patient for the semester... YEAH!!! I feel pretty good about that. I could definitely feel spots with calculus and I felt like I knew what I was doing for the most part. There was a LOT of bleeding which kind of freaked me out at first because I thought I was tearing my patients gums apart. But when I got my scale check done, McConaughey commented that she noticed that the tissues bled very easily and that she might recommend the patient use Prevident. I'm looking forward to seeing my first Class 1A patient on Wednesday. Everyone says it should be easy but we'll see...

Slow like a turtle

How am I ever going to get done with a patient in one appointment? I don't believe that it is really possible. I saw my mom in clinic on Wednesday and I had already taken x-rays on her in radiology. Given that I had that advantage I thought "No problemo, I will get her finished up, right?" Wrong! I didn't even start scaling. I think I spent the whole time probing. I honestly don't know what else I did. Oh well, I guess I'll finish her next time. Otherwise the semester is just going right along. My goal is to do the explorer PE next clinic. I just feel so intimidated by all this stuff so far like the PE's, the exams, all the requirements. I totally understand why everyone says this is the worst semester!

Like Harrison Ford I'm getting Frantic!

(To quote the Barenaked Ladies)... Anyway, I am good at making bad jokes! So speaking of frantic, today clinic was incredibly stressful for me. What I learned from clinic today is that if you don't start out calm and collected, your day is shot! First of all, I got a little bit of a late start and from then on it was crazy. I was working on a good friend so that helped me to stay a little bit calmer. I think my goal for the remainder of the semester is to be in clinic at least 15-20 min. early to be sure that I will have more than enough time to get set up and collected.