Saved!

I was saved this weekend by my mother in law. The patient i had scheduled was the fiance of the patient Jodie had scheduled and she ignored our calls for 2 days and then finally let us know Saturday night that they would not be able to make it. Grrr.... Okay here is the deal....
I am a perfectionist.
I like to have my life planned out.
I hate when plans change.
I cant stand the fact that my grade depends on random strangers.
Some days i literally wondering how the heck i am going to do this.
But somehow, by some miracle, things always seem to work themselves out. My mother in law so graciously offered to come in to help me out. I was actually pretty nervous, but it ended up going so well! I got to scaling one quad on her today and i felt more confident that last week with the whole OD proccess. I am thankful to Vining for being around to tell it like it is. I like the straight forwardness and helpful tricks that he gives. My new goal is to have a whole month scheduled out so i don't loose sleep over finding patients. Wish me luck.

One of those days...

Discouraged is all i am feeling right now. So ya i know he is only my third real patient but i hate getting errors! I had like 12 missed areas, most of them were subgingival which i am having a lot of trouble with. I wish we had more one on one time with instructors, they are so busy though running around back and forth for us. They do a great job, i just hope i can get them over there to help me so i can get my confidence. Thankfully, my new friend and patient Wally made me feel great. He told me i did a great job and would be back to see me in 6 months. Well i have some practicing to do and i am going to dust of old Nield and get down this instrumentation thing if it kills me.

Finally some luck...

Another wonderful patient, cutest old guy ever. I did not even call to remind him or anything. And he showed up, just happy as could be at 8:00 this morning even though he had to miss his volleyball class. His name is Wally and he walked into the dental hygiene building wanting an appointment while i happened to be in the office searching for names off the resource list! So i scheduled him and i am so glad that he was the one to be my first non-family patient. He was the sweetest guy you will ever meet and he is perio maintenance so he will count as a Class II. I did get to one quad today and i missed 3 areas. That subgingival calculus is going to be the death of me. But all in all it was a good day and he is free to come in for me on Wednesday so there is another stress gone. I can do this...

Cutest Patient Ever...Fastest Patient Ever

So like i mentioned earlier i was struggling big time finding patients off the resource list. After having no luck, i scheduled my two year old niece for today as a last resort, but i was way excited for her to come in! I had no idea what to expect out of her and the appointment was a whole 25 minutes but it was fun! She came in all excited and rode in the chair for a minute. Once i started to lay it back though, that's when the nervous whimpering came about. So i decided no tools for a little while and she sat on my sisters lap. I counted her adorable little teeth and she brushed them with the Ariel toothbrush i gave her. That is about all we did. I tried to disclose her, but she could not put her tongue to the roof of her mouth so the drop ended up on her tongue and she started gagging, it was sad! I don't blame her cause that stuff even makes me gag! I called my sister after the appointment to make sure she wasnt traumatized by it all. Apparently she would not stop talking about it. She reported that the gloves were yucky, the blue stuff was yucky, aunt Jamie gave her stamps as a prize, and she got her teeth counted and has 3 teeth (she actually had 20, but she decided on 3 i guess)! Great day in clinic. Next time i know that if i have a young child coming in, i need to have a 2nd patient scheduled so i can use up all of that precious extra time...i tried to call more people today, no luck.

Another 4 Quads...done

Okay so i am feeling like each appointment it is getting easier and easier. I still feel like i need a lot more help with my scaling, that is one thing that i did not have enough time to practice last semester i feel like. Okay so now that i think about it i need practice with polishing and flossing and probing too, but lets not get into all that. My dad said that i did great and i did not hurt him at all, which was great to hear cause that is my number one fear! But i ended up doing pretty good i think and i am glad i have made it through. The first two weeks have flown by though, its almost like i never left for the break. The only problem now is....FINDING PATIENTS! I have had no luck with the resource list whatsoever! But i just gotta keep trying, somebody out there has to want to come sit in my chair for a total of about 6 hrs right??? That's the problem, not many people have that kind of time to spare on a weekday. Wish me luck...cause i am freaking out.

Breathe....

So this week my patient is my cute dad, but i was still stressed out during the entire appointment and i did so many dumb things. I decided i need to just breathe. I will be alive at the end of this and i will be a RDH at the end of this as long as i breathe. My goal this week is to relax. If i have questions, ask. If i have a problem, solve it.
Maybe try to have a little bit of fun throughout all this? Maybe?
So we will see how it goes. The appointment went pretty well i think, besides the x-rays portion. I had so much trouble in there and its like i forgot every single thing i learned in radiology. I wish i could somehow get in there and get some more practice but i guess that is what these patients for the rest of the program are for. I hope that scaling goes well tomorrow and i plan on passing off my explorer PE. I love my family for coming in as my patients, my only problem is that between me and Jodie, (having the same family and all) we are pretty much out. Well on that note, lets do this.

Real Patient...Part 2

Today i finished scaling Kelly's teeth and finished his whole appointment. I feel okay about it, i was shocked that i had no missed areas of calculus removal. Kim is the instructor for my pod and i just love her! So kelly's gums were bleeding a ton and i hope it wasn't that i suck that badly, i am hoping he just has really bleedy gums. When i panicked, he kept assuring me that i was doing soooo good...and let's be honest he has to say that, but it did make me feel good. :) TalEval is taking some getting used to, but i am happy about the way were are going to be graded from now on, it seems less intense. My goal for this weekend is to practice scaling. I need to find out which tools work best for which patients, because today i wanted to throw the Barnhart across the room, its too fat to work with!!! All in all, today was good i am just so nervous to be working on anyone except my lying husband. However, I am comforted to know that we are all in the same boat here, i don't know what i would do without those 29 other girls in the program with me!

Back in Business!

So it was the first day back to school for Spring semester and i was dreading this day like the plague, but it actually wasn't too bad, it was fun to see everyone again! I had a rough time getting back into the swing of things but we jumped right back into learning and we tried out the Gracy's and learned how to ultrasonic scale. It was fun to get the ol' typodont out again today, we hadn't used them in ages it seems like. This day sure was 1 million times less stressful than the first day of last semester, i just hope that this semester i can get a lot more comfortable in the clinic and stop being so afraid to mess up, cause it will happen a lot and my patients are just gonna have to love me or hate me and that is life. :)