WTH!

My morning pt. has been comming to the clinic for several years and has been a class IV almost every time, as he was today. I used him as an exam and was able to do 2 quads. Didn't miss any spots and stayed within my time limit. The only thing that was kind of annoying is that he didn't want LA, but instead wanted to use oraquix. I don't really like to use it much now that I can do LA, but it seemed to work pretty well for him. I did a few teeth at a time and inst. Wold said that she wanted to watch me do it, so I had to wait every few teeth which was fine, but we kept her pretty busy today, so that was one more thing that she had to do.

Okay, so here is the kicker! My afternoon pt. cancelled yesterday, so I called a name that they had emailed me a couple of days ago. They had said that she was 36, but it turned out that she was 16. I figured that she would just be a IB, but after waiting forever for my turn to take x-rays (I think that the whole clinic needed to do them), she had radiographic calculus. She didn't really have a ton of calculus that I could see, but what she did have was really tenacious. I used her as an exam and missed so many spots. I don't think that I have missed that many spots in all of my pts. this semester combined (6 pts.) I did explore when I thought that I was done scaling, and I really had felt like I had worked really hard and had done a good job, but I was completely wrong. The spots that I missed were all interproximal. I could feel them after, but still couldn't get most of them off. I need to use more pressure. Jen ended up getting most of them for me and it seemed that she even had a hard time getting them also so that made me feel a little better. I guess it is true what they say about board patients, that pt. selection is the most important factor! Well, even though I did crappy on this exam, I am still glad that I got one more out of the way. I am also gratefull that I have been able to find perio this semester.