10/5/07
Another day in the roller coaster called dental school. Just when I start to feel confident in my operative skills again (after the Melissa Veatch pulp exposure incident), something has to come along to take me down a notch (or ten). Yesterday was a good day- I did an MO on #21 on Ms. Harris that turned out well- Dr. McCants wrote “very good” on my compentancy sheet- and I made that lingual holding arch mostly by myself. Today, though, sucked.
I had to see a patient of Janelle’s who was coming in on an emergency. She had a huge restoration in #14 and the MB cusp had fractured off. The fracture line was sharp and it was irritating her cheek. First of all, the patient had clearly engaged in a little “self medication” prior to her appointment (her 9:00 appointment, by the way), because you could smell the alcohol on her breath a mile away. Anyway, I took out the old amalgam (MOL), dropped a distal box to remove decay and smoothed down the fractured cusp. There was a ton of sclerotic dentin under the restoration, but few caries. I had to place a pin on the DB line angle to retain the amalgam. That went fine, Dr. Shay helped me and it was much easier than I thought it would be. I was nervous about it, but it was no big deal and Dr. Shay is great about explaining and helping with things you aren’t comfortable with. So the prep went great, no problems.
The restoration, though, was a different story. It was freakin huge, probably 70% of the tooth structure- by far the largest one I’ve done thus far. It took forever to pack all the amalgam in, so by the time I got to carving, it was pretty set. I thought it looked decent, at least, though. But Dr. Sleamaker came over and he thought the M marginal ridge was bad- he said he “couldn’t let this walk our of here like this.” So he drilled out he mesial amalgam and replaced the marginal ridge (which by the way, I didn’t think you could add amalgam to amalgam that is already set. So it will probably fracture and I’ll get blamed for that, too.). I didn’t notice this problem with the marginal ridge. I guess a little of it broke off when I was taking the matrix off. He really reamed me on it though. He gave me a 1 on my restoration and a 1.5 on the professional conduct or whatever section. Suck. I guess I did screw it up, but geeze. I honestly didn’t think it looked that bad.
So yeah, today sucked. I felt like a total idiot. I’m sure Dr. Sleamaker thinks I’m completely incompetent- which I’m totally not. I guess in a way I’m glad he’s the one that came to check the restoration, instead of Dr. Shay or Dr. Haake- someone who’s opinion of me really matters. It was a freakin hard restoration, and my first one of that size, so I’m trying not to be too hard on myself. Just learn from your mistakes, right? At least I got the lingual holding arch all polished up and ready for delievry first thing Wednesday morning.
We’re off school Monday and Tuesday this week, which is nice. I’m just going to be spending the whole weekend packing though, which sucks. The kids are riding to Paducah with AL and UB tomorrow morning, so I can pack in peace.
Gabe has been a grump butt the last few days. I guess his teeth are bothering him. He was fussing constantly when we got home today, so I put him to bed at like 5:30 for a nap. He’s still asleep, I should probably go wake him up or he’s going to be up at the crack of dawn in the morning. I need to go clean up some, too. When I was picking Anna up, Gabe had a poop disaster. It came out the back of his diaper, all over him and dripping down my leg. Totally disgusting.
Guess I better go get the boy up.
