2 Weeks

Gosh! It's really starting to get close! Well, TMOM went very well. When I got there on Friday, no one from Mandy's office was there yet, and there wasn't anything for me to do, so they sent me off to have lunch and return for instructions. It was so busy and crazy and it looked like each doctor had an assistant, so I didn't know what I was in for. When I returned, I found Lisa standing in the hall by an xray machine and I said hello and smiled and asked if anyone else was here yet. She said it was just her and Amy. I asked if she had been told what to do/where to go and she said someone said they needed an xray, but she didn't know how to use it. We glanced at the really cool new portable xray and shrugged our shoulders. I told her I was going to go find the lady I talked to earlier and that I'd see her later. No Mandy, no Ramona. That wasn't so bad. Upon finding Dr. Zinser, I was taken over to Dr. Doerre's chair. He seemed really nice and I asked him to help me get acquainted with the equipment. We were mainly doing restorative, so I was set. He was really nice, and once I got used to the new materials and his way of doing things we were on a roll! We worked well past five, including a quadruple surgical extraction with the very fast and very demanding Dr. Smith and around 6:30 it was time for dinner. Since Erik was working late, I stayed and ate and chatted with Dr. Doerre, listened to his advice concerning a practice, insurance, getting patients, etc. He begged me to return in the morning and help him out, but I told him I just couldn't seeing I needed to clean the floor for Erik. See, I forgot that when Erik is gone, I can't sleep, so getting up at 6:30 was out of the question. When I arrived at noon, he had a very faithful predent from Houston there and I was out of luck considering that there were somewhere around 40 predents from Houston and San Antonio vying for an opportunity to assist. I roamed and observed for a while, and feeling pretty useless, starting looking for something to do. I found my fellow orchestra member, Sandy, filing, so I joined her. In the midst of alphabetizing charts, the data entry team needed someone with dental experience, so I learned the Patterson software and started charting away. When things died down, I went back to the clinic area and continued observing, chatting with the other predents and making runs for instruments/materials when necessary. Overall, it was a great two days.

I left that Sunday for Dallas to visit Baylor on Monday. The day went very well, and I got my questions answered. I feel good about it now. I hope I didn't put Dr. Miller out by asking to come, but it's like Dad says, they need to let people shadow like I did, and it's a good thing I maybe started something new there. Heck, I'll let people shadow me next year! So Erik and I have some talking to do in two weeks. Two weeks, that's all?