Last Clinic Day

It was a weird feeling today walking into clinic knowing that this would be my last time ever seeing patients in here. It was also crazy to think that these would be my last patients I see until I am out in clinical practice! My morning patient was not coming until 9:00, so I was able to do my air powder polishing PE on Stefanie (Thanks Stef!) My patient was a recall class V who had not been in for a year. I was anticipating a very easy cleaning but he actually had quite a bit of calculus buildup. Everything went really well with his cleaning and with his x-rays. I am proud of how much better my x-rays have been these last couple of months. I guess it really does just take practice. My afternoon patient no-showed, so I was able to see a walk-in patient. She had a lot of bleeding on her mandibular anteriors. She showed me that even when she pushes on her gums lightly, they bleed. She explained that she sometimes wakes up with blood in her mouth and on her pillow. I removed the calculus from beneath the gums and I explained that she should see improvement as I explained the etiology of gingivitis. I really am feeling more and more like a "real hygienist".

I want to thank all of my professors and instructors from these two years. I have learned so many things from each one of them. I am so glad to be graduating from such an amazing program with amazing staff. I also am lucky that I am part of the class of 2012. I love you girls, I could not have asked for more amazing and supportive friends to go through these two years with. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

BAM!

I miss you ultrasonic!

I passed my clinical DH board!!! I am so happy, I found out yesterday! We were not really supposed to find out until finals week, so I was very surprised to get the e-mail, and even more surprised when I saw the result. I guess I need to have a little more faith in myself :). My morning patient today was my board patient, I was able two finish his last two quadrants. I ran into the exact same problem I had with my board exam, his anterior teeth are SO sensitive to the ultrasonic no matter what I do. I did a pretty good job with his cleaning, but his calculus is just so tenacious and it was difficult not being able to use the Cavitron. He was a good learning experience patient for me. In the afternoon, I saw a new patient from the resource list. She had just had her lingual bar removed so there was tons of lingual calculus on her mandibular anteriors. Again, this patient was pretty sensitive to the ultrasonic on her mandibular anteriors. I used the ultrasonic on low for a minute, and then went to hand scaling. Marilyn taught me to always do a horizontal sweep in the distal of the back molars to smooth any roughness and to not miss those line angles. Also, she taught me to not be afraid to get out my little wimpy Nebraska for tight contacts in the mandibular anteriors. Doing that will help me get the little grainy pieces that the larger anterior scalers cannot get. I realized today how much I love the ultrasonic when I wasn't able to use it much at all. One clinic day left!