First Patient Day of 2nd Year.

Well... today should be interesting. I'm sure I'll be able to complete my afternoon patient since he is relatively young and I'm not expecting him to be that difficult. My morning patient, however, will be a bit more interesting... the patient is in her 30's and has some kind of disability that requires that her mom do all the talking for her, although I'm not quite sure what that is, the best part is that her mom only speaks spanish! What a workout on my poor brain that tries so hard to be bilingual. We'll see how it goes! For now she's late because her mom had to take one of the grand kids to school and when I called she was thinking of rescheduling because she would be late today. I told her to just get here as soon as possible, so hopefully it's soon enough.

She came on time... but she was not an easy patient, she couldn't hear nor speak like I said and she was so sensitive that even x-rays were a bit of a chore with her. I couldn't probe until she was numb and she had some 6-7mm pockets in there filled with really heavy dark black subgingival deposits all over the place that I struggled to get out even with the ultrasonic!!! At least I got another quad of a class III done with a lot of help from Professor Kami Hanson who helped me realize all the crazy bad habits I have like fulcruming on my middle finger and rocking toward the heel instead of the toe... always room for improvement. She'll give me plenty of practice breaking these habits and working with the gracey's because she'll be back in a few weeks for a couple more and then again in October possibly for a Mock Board Patient!!! Yes! I hope that works out like it sounds like it could.

My afternoon patient was younger than I thought but he was also a lot tougher than I thought. He was a class II!!! He was a smoker and had a lot of build up and stain so I got some more good practice with the ultrasonic and some fine maneuvering with the hand scalers thanks to Professor Alexander. She also showed me that I am not reaching far enough interproximally nor am I rotating the tip toward the tooth like I should.