Week numero quatro

Wow, where does the time go?!?! Honestly... SO busy!  I am loving my new chair in clinic, I get to have a window overlooking the west side of Ogden, its so pretty and makes me so happy!  I have had a lot of great experiences this week.  The VA was great and just kind of mellow and today was such a great learning experience.  I had the cutest patient this morning.  hahaha.. he was a 23 year old boy who was the BIGGEST flirt, but so fun to flirt back too.. I was waiting for him to ask me if I was married and I was dreading telling him I was.  He finally asked so uh are you married?  Not like it matters or anything, but are you? :)  yup... I am def. married.  He was fun and reminded me of why I wanted to be a hygienist in the first place.  I saw another patient this morning that came all the way from Park City and is terrified of the Dentist.  We got through an OD and he hopefully will come back to get his teeth cleaned.  I feel bad he comes from so far away so I hope I will be able to finish him completely next time he comes.  My THIRD... yes third patient ( I usually only have 2) for the day was a sweet lady and also so fun to work with.  I have been wanting a tougher patient that has a lot of calculus on the Lower anteriors and she did!  I was excited!  I whipped out the ultrasonic and used my indirect vision to get those teeth cleaned up.  It was hard!!! The calculus was in every nook and cranny, WATER was my best friend.. I scaled, then dried, then scaled, and dried I don't know how many times.  The hard work paid off because I only missed 1 spot and it wasnt even in the LA region!  Yay!! Prof Alexanger taught me how to do an oblique stroke with the SH6/7 on the mesial of the premolars which was so helpful because that is a tough spot.  What a great day!

3rd week in

Well, we have already been back in school for 3 weeks.  I feel like these have been the longest 3 weeks of my life, yet at times I feel like they have flown by!  This week was a good week.  Wednesday was good and I got to see a 1B and a class V.  I still haven't seen any class III's so I am getting anxious to find those requirements.  Thursday in clinic I saw a tough class II and learned alot about ultrasonics and how to not use them as a scaler, but to let them do the work.  My patient in the afternoon didn't show, but I was able to find another patient which I was super grateful for.  I am still slow at scaling,  I want to try and speed up my time a bit.  I feel like when I first sit down I feel so overwhelmed and have NO idea where to even start.  My cute pal Erin suggested I try starting on the linguals of the anteriors then finishing the mandibular teeth then moving on to the maxilary, so I am going to try that this next week and I will let you know how it goes.  Today we got to inject raw chicken, next week it will be eachother :)

My Ah Hah moment

Today I had a great learning day at the VA.  I  FINALLY feel like I am getting this whole teeth cleaning thing down.  As I passed off my calculus detection PE, one of my instructors taught me to "explore like you mean it".  I learned how to detect calculus and really get in there with the explore to see just where you need to be.  We also worked on fulcrums in the mouth and I just felt like today was a great learning day.  I had two great patients and am loving getting the opportunity to work at the VA.