Air Powder saltiness

So I've never even heard of an air powder brush before and now I know why.
First I'll explain what it is. Instead of doing a prophy, you would air powder brush someone who maybe has braces or who has extremely bad staining. What it is is a mixture of water and sodium bicarbonate and it blasts off the stain on the teeth. Yes, it sounds painful and it is painful!
Okay, so maybe not painful but just not fun. Salt gets everywhere and it bounces off the tooth and hits your tongue or lips. It just stings a little bit.
I worked with Ashley Nelson and she did a stupendous job! I felt bad because when I worked on her she had water and salt all over her face. Then she worked on me without any problems.
There is a difference between the feeling of being airpowder brushed and prophy brushed. Air powder is a lot smoother and gets stain and plaque off so much easier.

Ultrasonic!

Today we got to ultrasonic scale! I was so excited.
It's the thing that spits a lot of water into your mouth and tickles you at the same time.
It was fun to do because I really felt like I was doing something that I'll be doing everyday in the real world.
I worked with Ashley Nelson today. She's such a sweetheart. She kept saying, "Did I hurt you?" I never did feel anything but she didn't believe me.

I didn't do so hot on my OHI PE. I don't really know how I could have done better though. Sadly...
Man, I don't know what I need to do... I feel like I study all the time but I'm still missing a lot of stuff. Obviously, because I'm jsut not doing that great in everything. I'm passing.... but not amazing.

Last week

So last week was not the greatest week ever.
Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong!
My test scores definitely showed that. I am going to work extra hard and do a lot better on my tests from now on. I don't know if my scores are salvagable!

But last wednesday we did the whole appointment up to what we know right now.
It was awesome because it really put things in perspective of what needs to be done and how long it will take.
I loved doing OHI. It was a good experience to work on Jenny and get it down as best as I could.
I had a problem with her gum situation. I couldn't really see that anything was red or anything.

I really hope I get good at ecerything before I graduate! I want to be pretty much perfect when I go out into the world.

intraoral Camera

I loved taking pictures of our mouths. It was great fun.
Jenny had all sorts of fun things to take pictures of.
I think the intraoral camera PE is going to be easy to pass off.

So I found out about the instrument classification and why we use the different instruments for posterior and anterior scaling!
So you pick an anterior instrument when you do the anterior teeth and then depending on how bad their calculus is, you choose a rigid or non-rigid instrument! It's as simple as that.
So some instruments we will need to take off the really heavy calculus and some we will just need to take off light calculus.

Great fun for everyone.

Dental Screening

Wow... what a confusing day today.
I really thought I knew how to chart!
I've always charted for the hygienists that I work for and it's been good.
All of a sudden there are a trillion things that we need to be able to chart and it's SO overwhelming.
I have some teeth that are retroverted... I actually don't know the difference between retrovert and torsovert and mesiovert and distovert....
I know how to chart it though! haha

I was gone to Lake Powell for an entire week so I missed a wholel lot.
But I am catching up slowly but surely. I was a little discouraged today because there is so much that I need to learn! I feel like when I finally get a patient to come in here I am going to do everything wrong!
They are going to think that I'm retarded.

Universal Scaling

So we did anterior scaling, or scaling the front teeth.
Today we learned how to scale the back teeth. It seems pretty straight forward and just like the anterior scaling.
The only problem that I may have is that I still don't know the instruments!
I can tell a posterior from an anterior but I don't know which anterior instrument to use!

Maybe I'll let yous know what I find out in a later posting concerning this subject.

Treatment Planning

When a patient comes in and has a lot of work that needs to be done, we do a treatment plan.
This is a way for the patient to see everything that needs to be done and how many visits it will take to get it done. This is also a way for the patient to see how much they will be spending.

I'm glad that I was able to work in an office that had eaglesoft. It makes it a lot easier to navigate around the program.

Not up to scale

Today we did some scaling...
I pretty much suck. Well I guess I'm okay but I went after Marilyn who is, I don't know if you've heard, the genius of the group! She knows how to do everything and she's perfect at it. Today Kim came over and was like, "You were a hygienist in the pre-existence" HAHA!
It's true though.... She's a natural.

I had the most problem with pivoting on my fulcrum instead of moving my fingers up and down. Well, after the indirect vision thing but that's a given.

I passed off my Probing PE. I feel stupid because none of them were more than 1 off but pretty much every reading WAS 1 off. I don't know if that is considered accurate.

I just read the thing on the bottom of this that says if you push ctrl + B then you get bold text. Sweet! I don't even have to touch my mouse.
I love being lazy!!!!