Oct. 9, 2007

I had a pt. from mid town today. He needed a lot of work done. He was from Cuba and was very nice. I was able to start a full mouth set of xrays since I and midtown needed the xrays. I ended up paying for them. He couldn't afford them (which I found out after I had taken him up front to check out). But he needed them so I was happy to help out and now I am poor. I was hoping he would be a mockboard pt. but he had too much decay and too many missing teeth.
I had to have him come back since midtown took him for about 1 hour. And since he just had a tooth extracted I couldn't really do much on him. He had to stay biting on the gauze to help stop the bleeding and form a clot.
He was a little more difficult scaling. He had quite a few restorations everywhere and it was difficult for me to tell if it was calculus, plaque or just the boarder of the restoration. I had to look at the xrays quite a few times and go back over areas. I ended up missing 3 areas but I thought I didn't do too bad.
My afternoon patient was a great patient. He was a little late but he ended up being ok for my mockboard. I was thrilled. I actually had a returning patient in his spot but since he was new and I was told he never had cleaning than I wanted to hope and pray that he would qualify. I took xrays on him and I have never seen that much radiographic calculus. I was a great learning experience. Than I went in with an explorer and I could really feel the calculus. He had all four quads that could qualify so I wanted to share him with another student. I got to clean one quad to experience how difficult he was and than we scheduled him back on mock board day.
I am relieved I find a pt. for mock boards. I want to improve on scaling and try to prevent tissue trauma better. I missed 2 spots and damaged an area of tissue. I must have been alittle too aggressive.