Survival

Well it is over.  I survived the first semester of dental school, not to mention the longest finals week I think I have ever had.   6 finals in a row, one a day since last Thursday.  I would take a test in the morning and then spend essentially the rest of the day and evening studying for the next test just to wake up the next day and do it all again.  But I made it, and I did pretty well on all of them I think.  Here's to being 1/8th a dentist.

Also here are some more of the pics from pre-clinic.  Thought people might like to see them.  Click on the images to have them open bigger so you can see better.

Some stone models of impressions that I mounted on an articulator.  In the back is our typodont (pink teeth model) that we put int he mannequin heads to practice doing fillings etc. (Actually this picture shows the amalgam and composite fillings pretty good too, on the left by the blue pill case.)

I think these were some composite fillings I did.  The flash on the camera washed out everything.

These are a handful of amalgam fillings that I did as well.  It is a little blurry and so hard to see.

Two more composites that are hard to see because they blend right into the tooth I am holding.

These are the acrylic provisional crowns I did.  The first one is a 2 unit crown and implant.  You can see that one part fits on an existing tooth, and the other would fit onto an implant post where the patient was missing a tooth.

This one is a single provisional crown in acrylic.  I really liked how this one turned out, but the picture is too blurry to really see the fine details.  

Well now that the semester is done, we are just getting ready to fly back home for Christmas.  We are both excited to have a break for a few weeks and to see family.  See you all soon, and for those we won't see, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Weekend Update

Well we had a pretty uneventful weekend.  It did snow, really just a dusting.  Today was pretty cold too and windy to make it seem ever colder.   27 I think was the temp when we checked.  Oh, well nothing we can't handle, and it isn't going to last. 

Aside from that not too much else going on here.  I have finals beginning the end of this week and running into next week then we will be heading home to Oregon for a nice long two weeks of vacation.  I can't wait.  

Also we got our Wii all hooked up to the internet and were able to play some Mario Kart online races with Dane, Jamie, Rhett and Stephanie.  It was pretty fun to be able to go head to head online with them.  

So yeah, that is about it.  Not too much going on really I guess.  Hope all you out there are doing well too. 

Fall in Philly

These pictures are a couple weeks old. Ashley went out to check out the leaves and ended up in the city. We found some cool stuff to take pictures of, but we were losing light so some of them were a little blurry. We did find the "LOVE" statue and then even a plaza that had a bunch of giant sized game pieces from P{arker Brothers games. I don't know why they are there, but they made from some cool pictures.

Another Dental School Update

Hey all. Well the semester has been cruising along, we are past midterms and really don't have any more major tests until after the Thanksgiving break, which will be finals. Yep, finals. It is hard to believe how fast things are going here. But it is good, and I am really enjoying school. In lab we are well past doing wax-ups now. I finished that acrylic crown, but had to start another one that was like a 2 unit bridge. One tooth was done as a crown prep and the other was an implant post. This one is going much smoother and I think it is going to turn out great. We have also learned to mount our articulators and do face bow transfers. I will try and get some pictures of what we have been up to to post on the blog again. Our next big section in lab will be actually doing restorations. We have these fake teeth that the preps are already cut into, and then we load them in the practice heads and do either amalgam or composite fillings in them. I am pretty excited to do that as well. We have about 4-5 of each to do, and those are the final projects of the semester.

Also, I am thinking it is time to get some loupes. They are the little microscopes that most dentists wear when working on patients. There are only a a few problems. I can't decide what ones I want. I need ones that I can have my prescription put into, but I also think I want to have ones that flip out of the way. I have a few catalogs to look at, but I am still not sure. The other thing is that they are dang expensive. Near a thousand dollars for a pair. But I will need them for 2nd semester, so I need to make a decision here soon and get something ordered. They take a few weeks to actually arrive because they are custom fitted.

So that is what dental school has had me up to lately. Things are going well and I feel like I am learning a lot about dentistry.

A funny story

It has been a crazy weekend. I have a big test tomorrow in BioChem, so I have been doing a lot of studying and it has worn me out. (Hence the study break now) Ashley also had a long afternoon of work on Friday as well as a long day Saturday. So we were both pretty worn out this weekend. We didn't even get around to carving the pumpkins we bought this weekend.

Anyway, this morning (Sunday) we were really tired and we decided to sleep in a little longer and then show up for church right after sacrament was over. Ashley has to teach in primary and I have stuff with the Young Mens, so we needed to go and not just blow it off all together. So we drove into church an hour later than normal and walked in to the chapel to find that we were right on time. We were so confused, and we thought maybe they changed the time of church for some reason, until we realized that it was Daylight Savings this weekend. We both totally forgot to fall back last night.

So that is our funny story about how we showed up to church an hour late and were right on time. Go figure.

Phillies Phever

Well the entire city here has turned their attention to the Phillies and their bid to win the World Series against the Tampa Bay Rays. They even lit up the Cira Centre downtown with the Phillies logo. It is pretty fun to be in a city where the baseball team is in the World Series, everyone here has some sort of Phillies paraphernalia up on their house or car. They won game one last night 3-2, and they are playing game 2 tonight and they are down 0-3 right now. So it looks like it will be a good series that could seesaw back and forth a little. So for now we are Phillies fans rooting along with the rest of the city. Go Phillies!

A dental school update

Two interesting things about dental school. First, the thought never crossed my mind prior to actually attending dental school that every test that we will take is a multiple choice test. Yep, multiple choice. I haven't had all multiple choice tests since high school, or maybe even earlier than that. But I guess it makes sense since the board exams are all multiple choice tests just like the DAT was to get into dental school. I just thought that was kind of an interesting fact about dental school that you all might like to know.

The second is, Acrylic is frustrating. Today in lab we were making provisional crowns out of acrylic. To mix up the acrylic you mix this tooth colored powder with a liquid and the reaction hardens it into a hard material that would work as a temp. crown. The only thing is there is no real recipe to follow to mix up the stuff, just trial and error. So I mixed up the first batch, too runny. Second batch looked promising, but pulled out of the contact areas when I tried to remove the crown. Third batch, same as the second. Finally the 4th batch actually worked and I will be able to use the crown to trim up to the right shape and polish into a working temporary crown.

So there you have it, two little tidbits about dental school that you didn't know before you read this post.

New Name

Our blog now has a new name. "The Schappers" reflects that this blog is about Ashley and myself and not just me. Everytime I bring up the blog Ashley would complain that it was "my" blog and not "our" blog. So now that problem has been taken care of.

As for the other things in life we are doing well. I had my first round or midterms this last week. They all went well and I feel good about them. I have one more to take care of this tuesday and another wax up practical on thursday then I will have a few weeks that are test free.

Ashley is doing well. Her tennis is going well and she is getting more lessons there at the club where she is working. Now that the weather is cooling down more people should be heading indoors to play tennis, and hopefully that will increase the number of lesssons and classes that she will be able to teach.

Oh, and the Phillies ended up beating the Dodgers. I was sads to see the Dodgers eliminated, but it will be fun to root for the Phillies while we are living here in Philly. I guess I will have to go get my self a new Phillies hat to wear around.

Aside from that not too much else going on. Things have been going well for us and we are enjoying life here on the east coast. Maybe here in the next week or so we will get out and see some more sight and have some more pictures to post.

Dodgers update

Well for those of you who are not following baseball, here is an update on how the Dodgers are doing.  In short, not good.  They are now down 2 games to 0 against the Phillies.  They just can't seem to catch a break right now.  They are scoring runs, and have scored first in both games, but it seems like the Phillies always score right back to even things up or get ahead right after the Dodgers do.  It is a little frustrating.  But now the series heads back to LA so the Dodgers will have home field advantage for the next 2 games (3 if needed).  

Aside from that not too much else going on here for us.  Ashley is at work right now. That is still going very well for her and she is enjoying it still.  School has been going well for me, though the next 2 weeks are going to be busy because it is midterm time.  Hard to think that we are at about the halfway point.  It is going fast, but I am having a good time.   I need to take my camera into school with me one day and get some shots of the school and what I have been working on in lab since I am all done with the wax-ups now.  Our next big project is making provisional or temporary crowns using a thermoplastic matrix.  It is a cool project, but I am not too sure how practical it is going to be in actual practice.  You have to have a mold of a patient already taken prior to them needing a crown in order for this to work, and I know that isn't alway possible.  But then again if it is a patient I have been seeing for a while chances may be good that I would have taken an impression in a previous visit.  

Anyway, I will have to take some pics and see if I can get them up on here with a little bit of an explanation. 

Well until next time.  Go Dodgers!!

October Baseball

Go Dodger Blue! It is 1:30 am here in Philly and I just finished watching the Dodgers sweep the Cubs to move on to the National League Championship Series. They will either play the Phillies or the Brewers. I think it would be pretty cool if they played the Phillies, but then again I would like to be able to wear my Dodgers jerseys out of the house with out fear of getting yelled at or something. There are some pretty diehard Phillies fans around here. I guess we will have to wait and see. All I know is that the Dodgers are looking pretty good right now.

Wax ups

Here are the other photos I promised. Theses are the lab wax ups I have been working on. We practice these in lab and then we get tested on them. We have about 3 hours to wax up a tooth from scratch in lab, then they grade us on how good they look and all that. So far it has been going well for me. I really like how this molar turned out. (Blue wax at the bottom) The first tooth here is multicolored because on the frist project they had us use different colored waxes for different things. So the red area is where it would contact the other tooth next to it in the mouth, then the green on the sides, or margins of the tooth. Then the blue wax on the lingual and facial surfaces.