The makings of a dentist

Well anatomy is done, but the hard stuff has only begun. My work load has quadrupled since anatomy. Luckily I have already had biochem and molecular biology, so hopefully that will help me when it comes to learning the material. I thought it would help for anatomy, but I don't think that it did.

Oral Anatomy has been very difficult, yet very rewarding. It is our only class in which we are doing anything dental related, not counting getting test questions for our boards from biochem, histo, and anatomy. Lately we've been waxing up the maxillary central incisor, or tooth number eight. Friday we have an annotation practical in which we have to assign numbers to the anterior teeth. This may seem easy, but when you just have a random tooth on the bench in front of you and you have to decide if it is maxillary or mandibular, incisor(central or lateral) or a canine and then you have to determine right from left, it is actually very difficult.

Waxing up a tooth is much harder than it sounds too. We have a partiallly cut down tooth and we have to build it up to fit in the mouth. It must touch the neighboring teeth at the exact points of contact. This means that the mesial and distal convexities must have their crests at exactly the right spot. Most people (including me) have a difficult time just drawing this, now imagine doing it in melted wax, that always seems to cool either too quickly or too slowly. Plus the terminolgy is still a little difficult. The fourth sentence in this paragraph is my new lingo. Everthing is refered to like this and the professors talk fast so good luck!!

As hard as dentistry has been I am really enjoying my time. Which is good, because this is how I spend all of my time. My days keep getting earlier and later. I'm not quite sure what Josh looks like anymore, but I could tell you the difference between and right lateral and right central incisor.