Get rid of the fried chicken !!!

I have had enough of turning my computer on and seeing that weird grossed out picture of sutured up pigs feet. I have been to occupied and tired to post anything other wise. Now I have new content. Time to take a breath and to think of something not exam related. If only I could watch TV without studying the profiles of all the actors and diagnosing their likely skeletal class and orthognathic discrepancies.

Fried Chicken?

We are in a very interesting phase of our dental education. We are somewhere between diagnosis and working in the clinic. We have a few (2-4) exams every week. Much of the information repeats itself and thus we find diversion in dissecting chicken and pig feet. Suturing is rather exciting and it helps us look toward the future of the clinic. There are a few different ways of suturing and different materials that are used. I took special note of the esthetic technique that I am for sure going use when necessary. (I don't like scarring.) When everything was said and done we were proclaimed as being proficient in suturing up dead chicken thighs. Does that mean a whole lot?

Lost in our own little world.

No wonder as dental students we feel secluded and hidden in a different world. Not only are we fenced in on a small portion of the University we have our own language. We communicate amongst ourselves forgetting that the acronyms and dental terms mean nothing to the real world.

This is what happens when you cross a optometrist student with a dental student. - What test do you have today? Fixed. What ,your test is fixed? Yes my test is fixed. So you know all the answers. No, it is in fixed pros. I mean fixed prostodontics. You know crowns, bridges, etc. O' ok. . . .Sure sounds like fun (trying to hide the sarcasm).

Dentures at 3:00 A.M ?

Reality hit me like being sacked by a swarm of blitzing linebackers. It was 3:00 A.M and I was only in the beginning stages of setting dentures for a recent lab project. My mind wandered and I thought of what my friends that chose different careers were doing right at that moment. They are making money. They do not owe more in student loans than their home and at the time they were most likely comfortably asleep while I was creating dentures. I repeated the thought in my mind, . . dentures. Of all things I was making dentures. After feeling disappointed for several hours more, I realized that dentures have a bold, spunky spin to them. It takes a high level of science, art and mental focus to properly design and create a new set of dentures. There is an actual science to the art and it is very challenging. While the world moves on I remain in my little bubble paying large sums of money to fabricate all sorts of toothly objects.

Internal Medicine Lecture . . .

As I sit here in Internal Medicine lecture I fight to not let my mind race ahead to the denture examination tomorrow. After hearing something so many times it becomes easy to tune it out and focus on something new. Fortunately for this lecture we have several example cases complete with diagnostic photos at the end which prove very valuable and entertaining. If only all courses were as simple as the data exemplified below. One statistic that I found interesting is the currently in the U.S 20% of oral surgeons have been infected with Hepatitis B. (Is it really that High?)

Checked In . . .

I have now officially checked into school, Mentally!
After Christmas I have been taking my sweet time to get back to the nitty gritty of Dental School. A few tests this week and having to catch up on lab projects has woken me up from my long restful dream. Or rather the endless nights have left me longing for a long restful period of time long enough to dream. Have I mentioned that I am getting tired of tests, quizzes, and examinations. O' well. If it weren't this it would be something else. Life just keeps on moving with or without us.

This semester is packed with relative and practical information that directly impacts what we do as dentists. There tends to be less fluff (text book boredom) and more of "this is how it really is". We have been practicing anesthesia on one another with some success and failure. Can I say ouch! It is best that we torture one another and get all the "bugs" out of the way before administering anesthesia in the clinic in a few months. Don't worry, we know exactly what we are doing. . . . . . In theory.

Smiles Around the World

Since being back in school I have had no desire to post because I have been busy juggling school world and building a new website. Smiles Around the World is a non-profit organization that has been established to assist a group of friends and associates at Nova Southeastern University fulfill service missions to Brazil. The organization is separate from the school and began as a group of friends wanting to organize their own dental missions. The group is now in their second year of service and as part of my desire to contribute to the success of the group I have worked on creating a new site (www.smilesaroundtheworld.org). I have experience in building sites with HTML but never before have I endeavored to create anything using flash or active scripting. The site is entirely a flash movie and the learning process has been slow but rewarding.

Smiles Around the World enriches the lives of dental students and patients alike as smiles from around the world are brought together. Check out the site and our cause. Let me know what you think. -- admin@smilesaroundtheworld.org