Almost a Senior

Well apparently I only get on and post once a semester these days. My last post was at the end of Fall semester and it is now the end of Spring semester (I am taking a study break). Just a few more days and I will technically be a 4th year dental student. The time has flown by.

School is going well, just trying to stay busy in clinic and get all my patients in for what they need so I can get requirements done.

The twins' arrival is imminent and Ashley's belly is getting bigger and bigger by the day. Here is the latest belly bump pic...

She is doing really well though, but she does get uncomfortable at night trying to sleep. All her doctor visits have been good and the babies are growing and healthy and just where they need to be for all the measurements. Hard to believe I am going to be a Dad soon, let alone with twins.

Well there is a quick update of what is going on. Just a few more finals then I will be done studying (thank goodness).

Oh the craziness!

Well it has been too long since I posted anything on here. Our first semester in the clinics is coming to a close. It has been busy and crazy, as expected, but I have really enjoyed being in clinic. I am learning a lot of practical things and getting better at a lot of things that we had only been able to talk about in class up to this point. I still have a long way to go, but it is coming along. I have some really good patients who have been coming in and I am getting some good work done on them.

I haven't had too many crazy things happen to me yet in clinic. I did have a "screamer" in Oral Surgery one day. The lady was in pain when she came in, and that got her all worked up so when it was time to work on her she was taking ever little thing and making it seem like it was the end of the world. Just all sorts of drama. But I got her all numb and on Nitrous to try and settle her down, but she was still being a baby about everything. Any little push or pull on her tooth elicited screams, but when I would ask her if it hurt she would say no, and that she just felt pressure. (For those who have never had a tooth pulled, the local anesthetic that we use takes away the perception of pain, but not the perception of pressure. So when extracting a tooth, the pressure from the pushing and pulling to loosen the tooth can still be felt, but not pain. However some patients will still link this with what they think is pain.) Anyway, it got to the point where I had to give the lady 2 options:

1 - Be brave and give me another minute of uninterrupted working time to get the tooth out. (It was loose by this point)

2 - We call it a day and she goes home with the tooth still in her head.

I though for sure she was going to call it, but she decided she was going to try and be brave and let me get to it. I told her to let me know when she was ready and I would begin again. She took several second to psych herself up, all the while asking me if I was ready as well. Finally she gave me the green light, and 30 seconds later the tooth was out. At this point the patient breaks down in to a crying blubbery mess because the whole ordeal is finally over while simultaneously apologizing to me for her behavior and telling me I did a good job, followed up by a round of profuse thank yous.

Quite the ordeal, but I was proud of my self that I was able to stay calm, keep some control on the situation and ultimately get the tooth out so the patient would be in less pain. But man it was a crazy time with that lady.

If any other crazy clinic stories come up I will try and share them on here before I forget them.

In other crazy news, Ashley and I are going to be parents...of TWINS! Yep, yeah read it right we are skipping right over "parents of one" and going for "parents of two", or as we jokingly call it "Man on Man coverage". Here are our most recent ultrasounds.

We won't know the genders until Jan when Ash is up to 20 weeks (she is 15 weeks right now). Just for fun we went over to Babies R Us to look at a few things. We got down the twin stroller that we like from the display and loaded up the 2 display baby carriers on it. I didn't think to take a picture, but it was pretty much like trying to maneuver an 18-wheeler. We also looked at cribs and all that other fun stuff, but until we know if we are having boys or girls or one of each we aren't going to be buying anything. Still, it was fun to start thinking about it more and looking at how our lives are going to change. It is going to be pretty crazy!

Anyway, I am going to end here. Look for another Schapper Babies update in January.

Into the Clinic

Well this last weekend we had our White Coat Ceremony. This signifies our transition from the pre-clinical part of school to the clinic. We should be getting our first patients at the end of this month. Look forward to some good stories there.

In the mean time, here are a few pics from the White Coat.

Adam, Eve and I

Dray, Bryan, Me, Derek
Travis, Paul, Steve, Jon, Eve, Kevin, Rae, Me, Adam
Adam, Me, Paul

Dentures

Well we just finished up our full denture course at school. Now we have moved on to partial dentures. I thought I would put up a few pics of making a denture. We didn't take it all the way to processing, so the rims of the denture base are still blue. But you can get the idea.

The bases are a blue acrylic called Triad. You fit that to the models with out the teeth to make the base. The Triad cures up hard when exposed to light, so once you form them you "bake" them in a light oven for about 10 minutes. Then we added the pink wax to the rims, and place the denture teeth into the wax. We do this on the articualtor to simulate the patients actual bite. Once everything is lined up and ready to go, we would have invested these into stone, and then heated them up to melt out the wax. This leaves a void in the shape of the wax and blue base, but the teeth stay stuck in the stone (plaster). Once all the wax is melted out, we would add into the void a heat mold-able acrylic that is pink. This pink acrylic locks in around the teeth stuck in the stone, and fill back in to a prefect replica what was in wax. Then you break it out of the stone, trim and refine any problem spots ad you have a denture to deliver to the patient.

So that is what we have been up to the last few months of school, making dentures.

They say you always remember your first...

Well, as you know, sometimes when you go to the dentist you have to get an injection before they work on you. That means at some point in dental school we learn about giving injections. We talked about how to do them and the technique, but once that is said and done, it was time to actually give an injection to someone. So instead of using a patient, we give injections to each other. Last week was my week to learn to give injections, and also receive an injection from a fellow student. Fun right?

Actually, it wasn't too bad at all. Giving injections is a pretty simple process, once you know what you are doing. We just didn't know what we were doing. But that didn't stop us, and in the end it was just fine. No one died, no one got facial paralysis, but we all got numb. Also as part of this lab, we administered Nitrous Oxide to each other. I have never had "laughing gas" so it was a new experience for me. It didn't really make me laugh, it just felt like I was heavy, and everything seemed to slow down a little. My voice sounded funny, to me at least, and my fingers and feet were tingly.

Anyway, it was a good experience and getting to do something hands on is always the best way for me to learn anyway. I just won't tell my first patient that they are only the 2nd person I have ever injected.

Here are a few pics of the injections. They are a little small, but you get the idea.

Getting some instructions on injection technique.

Prepping the "patient", Jill. She was in good spirits considering she knew I had never done this before.

"Bullseye!" Success.

My first paying dental gig

Yesterday I had my first dental related job that I got paid for. I helped out a Senior here at school with his North Eastern Regional Board Exam (NERB for short). I spent the day sucking saliva and handing him instruments that he needed in order to help him work quickly and efficiently and in turn he paid me for my time. I think it went pretty well and I am pretty sure he passed. All his work looked good. I had assisted for NERBs before, last year, but I enjoyed it more this year because I knew all the stuff that he was doing and why he was doing it. It was a good experience to get me ready for clinic and taking my own board exams one day.

Well I am officially on SPRING BREAK!! I am looking forward to a little time off to relax and recuperate. We leave tomorrow to spend the week in Florida. We are pretty excited to get to the beach and enjoy some warmer weather. It should be a fun trip. Look for some pictures to appear on our blogs in the near future.

The 2nd Year

Well they say that the 2nd year is the busiest, at least when it comes to non-clinical stuff. I have also found that it seems to go the fastest. It is now March and the Spring semester will be over in April.

I haven't posted anything on here in a long time, so I am going to try and get better at putting some stuff up at least every few weeks or so.

It has been crazy February. I had about 10-11 different tests and quizzes that I had to study for. We had about 2 a weeks and sometime 3. All I can remember about the month of February is looking at the wall above my desk a lot. I spent the whole month studying and cramming. But all in all I have escaped unscathed. I did well on all the tests and I am doing well in all my classes, and despite all the studying that has to be done I am enjoying school. We have a pretty tight knit class and we all help each other get through. Plus we usually keep ourselves pretty entertained in lab while we joke around with each other.

I was thinking the other day that it is going to be kind of sad to go off to a practice somewhere and not have these friends around right there to talk to and have a little fun with.

The other crazy part about Feb. is that we got hit with 2 big snow storms. It pretty much shut the city down for about 3 days. I have several pictures and things to put up and I will try and start doing that more. Look for future posts that have mostly pictures.

Also, since I have been doing such a bad job at blogging, Ashley decided that she was going to start a blog for us to keep people up to date on stuff. Look for that at theschappers.blogspot.com

She will up date there too, and I will focus this blog more on what I am up to with school and those things.

Anyway, just wanted to put something up since it has been so long. Look for more to come soon I hope.