another life blog

In the beginning, it was just a three layered flat ceramic tile with patterns. I held my high speed gingerly in between my fingers, and thought about what I’ve been taught concerning angulation and positioning. Sitting in the proper posture and staring down at the tile, I began drilling/preparing/prepping. The burr, spinning at an ungodly RPM, went into the tile as if it was an Indian man making love to an aging porn star. Softly, I moved the tip about, and the tile gave away whichever way I tilted the burr. The tile offered no resistance and I prepped the first shape ever… a diamond that was supposed to be 1.5 mm deep.

I was excited ~ I loved the sounds that the drill made in response to the pressure on the foot pedal rheostat. I began to cut the tile and dug the little burr into it anyway that I wanted to. I had control, and I drilled as many patterns as I could’ve before we continued with the lesson. It wasn’t long before I drilled my first ivorine tooth on the Columbia Dentoform mounted on the SimuLab Dummy. It wasn’t long before I wondered, “how the **** am I supposed to see where I’m drilling?!”

A person’s mouth is rather limited. Though Briana Banks can easily swallow a 6″ kielbasa, I’m pretty sure she can’t open her mouth wider wider than the dentoform ~ and what’s worse, I can’t pull a real person’s lips aside like I can the dentoform. So even with the huge opening and really flexible lips - I couldn’t see through the side to see where the tip of the burr was going ~ thus, I practically drilled half the ivorine tooth blindly. To better describe the situation, imagine you’re standing behind a man working in the missionary position and you’re trying to see the money shot. What do you do?! You must go to the sides! Thus, the reason for the little hand held mirror - for the purpose of seeing where to drill.

The next two preps were maxillary premolar and molar… 3 and 4 I think. The mirror was definitely a requirement since no matter how I angled my head, I couldn’t see without a mirror. To understand why it’s difficult to operate a drill through the mirror ~ just go grab a little mirror, and try to write on a piece of paper legibly with your eyes focusing only on the mirror.

Certainly there isn’t much to dentistry at first. It is, after all, just putting a drill to a surface. However, there are certainly requirements: 1) Your drill must be parallel to the long axis of the tooth (thus, you can’t see the tooth at all if you’re looking straight down at the drill) 2) You must not drill too deep, too side, and too roughly (I do this all the time) 3) You must make sure… the pulpal floor is at least 1.5 mm, that the gingival floor is flat, that you break contact on 2 surfaces prep, that all internal line angle must be rounded, that cavo-surface angle is around 90 degree on the gingival, etc, etc… So, I sucked. Hard.

It wasn’t until this past Thursday, when I totally ****ed up a MOD amalgam start to finish on #12. I failed to break contact (cause the damn tooth is almost cylindrical), I failed to create good cavo-surface angle, etc, etc… but ultimately, the biggest failure was that I did NOT restore mesial contact when I filled the prep with amalgam. Of course, I try to learn from my failure… so the next time, I’d be sure to jam the amalgam up against the matrix band until my face turns red. But, the best thing… rather, the quintessential thing that I learned, wasn’t to jam the amalgam… but that I can turn the patient’s head! It was the funniest thing, cause all the doctors who checked my work prior to the Thursday, all looked at my prep and filling without turning the dummy’s head! They would all stick the mirror in, look around while probing with the explorer and made comments. However, the instant Dr. McManama sat down, he literally did a neck breaking maneuver and I stood there in shock ~ realizing — I can ****ing move the dummy’s head! I mean, though I kind of cared when he said, “you didn’t restore contact. That’s clinically unacceptable thus you failed,” it was so much more important that he showed me I could ninja break my dummy’s head into the position of my liking!

Well, in retrospect, I may have been dimly aware of breaking my dummy’s neck to see better in my subconscious, but I never used it! I’ve been doing almost everything… blind! Well, not entirely blind, but just by turning the dummy’s head, I can see so much more! So this past Friday, and Saturday - that’s all I’ve been doing ~ turning my dummy to and fro, trying to see how I can see better. Well, I drilled a bit too - but, seeing is the most important thing and I can a bit more clear now.

There are still places I couldn’t see when I went to practice earlier today… I couldn’t see the buccal/lingual of the gingivial floor when I stuck in my high speed in the mandibular premolar ~ but I think I’ll figure more and more out as I go along!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 4:22 am and is filed under Year 1 (D1). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.