Thursday, August 25, 2005

We had another operative quiz today. I did well. After the quiz, we had a lecture on cutting a class II prep on a premolar. Almost identical to a molar, but since it's a smaller tooth, we had to modify some of our measurments.

We finally got down to cutting the preps. My touch was a little rusty. It had been nearly a week since I did any kind of cavity prep. It took me until after lunch to finally establish a nice soft touch with the handpiece.

We cut preps on a mandibular tooth and a maxillary tooth. Oddly enough, my prep on the maxillary tooth was much better than the prep on the mandibular. In fact, I'm seeing a trend. You'd think that using indirect vision with the mirror would create uglier preps, but it doesn't. I'm starting to like the upper arch more than the lower arch.

In the afternoon, we placed our first amalgam filling. Up to this point, we were only cutting the holes. So, today we got to mix the amalgam and cram (condense) it into the hole. I recreated all of the surface anatomy, and when I was done I had a pretty good looking filling. Our professor told us that we had just earned at least $150 for about 40 minutes worth of work. But she reminded us that at her level, she would have earne $150 for about 10 minutes worth of work. Not bad, not bad at all!