I remember my friend Maria telling me one day that working as a dental hygienist is awesome. She then went on to tell me how hard it is also. One night she got off work and could not use her right arm to steer her car. She had such a dead arm. I have been waiting these few months for that to happen to me. Today it did. Wed I worked for 3 hours on one scaling and root planing (S&R) patient. My arm was pretty dead after that. Then on Thursday I had the day off and I did everyday stuff-laundry, cleaning, blah blah blah- Today when I had 3 hours scheduled again with other S&R patients I cringed. Today my arm is pretty sore!
Also, one of the dental chairs fiberoptic light went out and since I am the one who does not use the fiberoptic light on the high speed I got sent to that room for hygiene today. Now I am used to jumping from room to room and going with the flow but this particular room is not able to have the ultrasonic hooked up to the water supply. I knew I had 3 hours of S&R and I needed the ultrasonic. I begged to be allowed in another room but today of all days all three dentist were there and fully booked and so I had to dig out the old school Titan scaler!!! I have never used one of these before. I had heard about them in school but never even looked at one. So here I am with dead arm and scary Titan scaler! I really am impressed that my office has a cavitron magnostrictive ultrasonic, a piezo ultrasonic, and a titan scaler! So I figured out how the Titan works. I brought my patient back and after getting him numb I started using the mighty mighty Titan! Holy Cow that thing in an animal! It is huge and quite aggressive! The calc flew off! I was kind of afraid to go deep into his pockets because it is such a large bulky thing so I did not at first, but after failing to get a deposit off after hand scaling I reached for the Titan and sunk it into his pocket. I am not sure how well it worked all I know is that the deposit came off during my next hand instrumentaion. I guess it loosened it or something. Anyway, I cannot wait until the new office is complete and I can have my own operatory stocked with the stuff I like to use.
I am really quite impressed with the amount of different things I am learning from ONE office. I am excited for the learning to continue!
5 comments:
Oh, the Titan, be careful with that bad boy, it has a sharp tip, I worked in an office for a few weeks that had them, and scraped my arm about 6 times on them (luckily only on clean ones) they are sharp guys! But yes the calc does fly off!
So you are enjoyting yourself eh? Hope you are- think of you often!!! I need to get back in the blogging world. We just hooked up internet to all op computers, so on my off time- i plan on catching up with the blog world!! You happy down south??
Whoa, Mary Ann, the real world out there's sounds pretty crazy! I'm sure you're handling it all quite well though, and that's cool you're learning new stuff! Good luck in your office and thanks for all your support!
It's so fun to here all of your experiences and it makes me totally jealous that you are done!!! I want to be done so bad. I can't wait for the day when I don't have to look for a patient ummm tomorrow! Sounds like you are enjoying working and being at home, that is so great and I'm so happy for you.
Jalene
Ouch.
P.S. I like your new page design. :-)
Post a Comment