MOCK BOARD

Well, what can I say about today. I was actually feeling fine all day, not nervous. I can tell you that there was joy in my heart when I saw my patient walk through the door, but it wasn't relief of nerves just happiness.
I can tell you that it was interesting cleaning my patient. I thought that I was very thorough in my cleaning. I ultrasoniced for about 30 minutes then hand-scaled the entire area, and was feeling good about things until I went in with my explorer. There were four areas of radiographic calculus on my patient and I missed all four of those areas when I was cleaning. As I started to work on them it felt like they were a permenant fixture on the tooth. I didn't think that I was going to be able to get them off. Well, I worked and worked using lateral pressure like I didn't think was possible in order to get them off. Things were going okay until I got to the mesial of #14. My patient had very bulbous crowns- I know that doesn't sound like much but until you are in with a scaler trying to pull off a piece of "permenately cemented on calculus" from under the rounded, overhanging, contour of a bulbous crown it starts to mean something. I truly didn't think that I was going to be able to get it off. I tried every posterior instrument I had out on my tray and even a couple of anterior instruments but everytime that I pulled coronally it felt like I was hitting contact and I couldn't pull horizontally because of that little aspect called gingiva. At one point I thought that I would just send her over with the error and accept the fact that somethings are impossible. The more I thought about it, however, the more determined I was to get it off. Well, let's just say that I didn't think a 1/2 gracey could be angled quite the way that I did and I definately didn't think that I would ever use enough lateral pressure that I would be bending my instrument. I discovered that both of those things are possible.
The nerves came when I sent my patient over for scale check. I have actually never been that nervous since being in the program, and I must say that Prof Alexander has some kind of sense of humor when it comes to talking to people about areas missed when scaling. I will just leave that story alone for now...
All in all, it was a good day. I ended up getting my four areas of radiographic calculus off my patient. In fact, I didn't miss any areas which felt great!!!!
Good day, today!