First filling treatment on a REAL patient

Today I did my first ever filling on a real patient! And...to make it even more special it was done onto my firstttt patient (back in January) It is something to be remembered okay. My first time giving local anaesthesia injection, first time drilling cavity on REAL tooth, first time doing composite restoration on a patient. Gaaaahhh..

So what did I do today in the clinics? My patient had carious lesion on her first upper left molar tooth. Two surfaces were involved, mesial (yang bersebelahan dgn gigi premolar) and occlusal (on the surface yang menghadap gigi atas)

something like this, tapi ganti kan the caries at the molar tooth (gigi sebelah yang besar sikit tu)

First off what I did was giving her local anaesthesia, to make the area I wanna work at numb. Because it is gonna be painful if I didn't do so. My oh my it was so smooth that it felt unreal. Smooth = the soft tissue in the mouth. I hardly feel any pressure on it that I wasn't sure whether I've loaded the L/A fully or not. With the help of Dr MC, it was done quite nicely without any mistake.

buccal infiltration opposite upper left molar

Next up is putting the rubber dam. It's like a mask that covers up other area that we don't need to work on, to make sure the targeted area is free of saliva, to make sure the patient didn't swallow unnecessary things, minimize infection etc etc (malas nak terang dah lols) It was quite hard to get the damn dam in because the space is tight.

this is what it looks like when a patient had rubber dam on it. Oh haritu kan, there was a fire drill training at dental school, so all of us had to evacuate the building. Unfortunately there was a patient who had to walk out the building with a rubber dam on. lols lols..he looked pretty annoyed though..because it's just a fire drill training!

After we are done with the damn dam, it's time for the funnn part Drilllinggg..you know that sound that makes people hates dentist a lot, yes, exactly. It was totally different from the training I had on plastic (mannikin's head) tooth. However I think it is in a way slightly easier because we know the extent of the carious lesion. Kalau during training we had to imagine it and we don't know when to stop. But on real tooth, the caries will make your tooth brown-ish and soft. Carious removal is done on the enamel-dentine junction - that's the crucial part because that is where the carious lesion starts. Because the carious lesion is at mesial-occlusal, we had to break off the mesial wall of the tooth and it started to bleed profusely. *peluh peluh cuak*

I was glad Dr MC came to rescue me whenever I'm at loss. Actually at first, she didn't quite like the idea of me doing this as my first filling treatment because she wanted me to start off with something simpler, say occlusal caries only (mesial-occlusal caries is considered two surfaces). However, because Dr EA (our course coordinator) had somehow pushed us around and kinda warned us about the requirements, Dr MC finally gave in and allowed me to proceed. We had to stop the bleeding and finally moved on to composite restoration. I was quite nervous because a micro leakage of the restoration will lead to caries recurring at the area so I was being extra careful with that.

Dr MC helped me to finish off the restoration by restoring the contact point of the tooth and I gave the finishing touch by polishing the newly restored (filled) tooth. She praised us for a job well done and I was so happy everything went smoothly. I was so relieved that I was skipping back home with a big smile on my face.

I think, I am somehow beginning to get my motivation back. I'm enjoying my clinical session and my lab work has so far didn't disappoint me. I just need to push a lil bit harder on my papers so I could move on and finish my studies on the dot. Ya Allah, give me strength to go through all of this, please make easy and do not make difficult