End of the Road

I didn't post at all between January and gradauation in May and for good reason:  I had no time.  It was a sprint to the finish that turned into pleading for permission to cross the finish line.  Getting cleared for graduation was like pulling teeth, but I made it and it's all over. 

I ended up doing 39 crowns, no bridges (I know, right?), 115+ fillings, and 8 units of removable with my one crazy 9th case getting passed off to a 3rd year because it didn't seat 3 times.  Perio was a nightmare where they let me SCRP all four quads in one appointment and the patient cancelled their reeval appointment.  I still got credit.  They made me come back to seat two crowns the week before graduation, one of which did not seat all the way (are you kidding me?), so she got finished up this summer.  It was pretty much a worse-case-scenario kind of finish.  But I finished.

WREB is a whole other story.  I record it here for posterity, but I really don't think I'll ever forget it.  My operative patient had an MO on #31 and a DO on #29.  Perfect, right?  Same quad, could do both at the same time.  Only problem was that Megan had done a DO on #31 so I wouldn't have to worry about it a few months earlier for her progress exam. So all I had to do was take an x-ray before I sent him for approval so they could see the tooth as it existed.  So I had a folder of the images for #31 and another folder for #29.  Keep in mind that you can see both teeth in all the images, and I only updated the images in folder #31 because that's the one that mattered.

So I sent him for approval and he was approved.  I removed all the decay and he came back from grading with no pink slips, ready to restore.  I restored and sent him for final grading and he was down there for an hour and a half.  What was taking so long?  He came back with two pink slips: I had apparently prepped and restored the wrong tooth surface and my filling on the distal of #31 was unacceptable.  What?!?!  The head floor examiner calmly came over to ask for an explanation.  Once he told me what the problem was, I knew exactly what had happened: they had not looked at the xray I took that morning.  I showed it to him, he was satisfied and went to explain everything to the graders.  They had not even bothered to open my #31 folder since they could see it in the #29 folder!  I handled myself very well (I think I had used up all my tears a few days before WREB in the clinic) and it was so amazing to have Erik there during all of it.  They regraded him and there were no issues.  He had lost a marginal ridge on the DO on #31 that Megan had done so that needed to be fixed by her but that was it. Everything else went well. Hallelujah.

I started this post a long time ago, but since then I've been busy working part time for Dr. Stuart, getting ready for baby and then taking care of Miss Audrey. It's good to finally close out this diary of dental school!

Dr. Abby Mann, DDS