Let's call it...a good day for learning

Or we could just call it a bad day. Dr. Hanson says they are the same thing. It is true I guess, If we never had the bad days, we would never be learning or progressing. Still, I am a little discouraged. My morning patient no-showed, but a lady in the lobby waiting for Midtown wanted a cleaning. She was an easy 1B and everything went well with that appointment. My afternoon patient was a class III and I missed more spots that I would have liked to. But look at the bright side, I got a class III today! This patient has not been to the dentist in years and he was a smoker. He had a thick dark bar of supra and sub calculus on his mandibular anteriors, and plenty of calculus everywhere else. The calculus was very tenacious. He wanted all of his mandibular teeth cleaned because he wanted the visible stained calculus off. So, I did 2 IA's and a mental injection. As I was bringing the needle into his mouth, I stabbed his lip! AH! Dr. Hanson kept me very calm and told me to proceed with my injection. The unplanned "lip injection" threw me off a little because I totally forgot to aspirate on the IA and when I realized it, I said "Oops" ("Oops" is not the thing a patient wants to hear when I have a needle in his mouth). Thank goodness my patient is so nice and so patient. Dr. Hanson taught me to pop up under the contacts with my sickle. If I would have done this, she said I would not have missed the spots. She also told me to literally think "lateral pressure" in my head with my strokes until it becomes a habit. We also worked on the finger twist and she showed how to better explore the anteriors by using the end of the explorer that wraps around the tooth. Overall, I really learned a lot today. I wonder if I can count the lip injection as an injection toward my requirements??? :)