Letter Me Later

Hey everyone, I have found this way cool website where you can send emails in the future and you don't have to worry about sending them yourself because they are scheduled to be sent and then they are automatically sent. It is way awesome.

I am definitely using it to send birthday emails to my friends and family and then I can do it in one day and forget about it till next year!!! YEA!!

So everyone check it out!!! The website is LetterMelater.com

Some aids answers

I have done a little bit of research on aids and have found some really good resources that have answered some of my questions. So here are the links
http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/InfectionControl/faq/aerosols.htm
http://www.hivdent.org/DTC/dtcwadushsodd102000.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/hcwprev.htm
http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/topics/hiv/ethics.asp

They helped me to understand that there have been no known cases of getting aids from an aerosol, and there is no statements about using the ultrasonic instrument so I assume that it is ok.
Also, they state whether or not you can use extra precautions such as double gloving. Some patients could misconstrue these precautions as discrimination.

Also, there has been no reported cases of PT. to DR. transmission of aids. Universal precautions were set in place to protect health care workers from these type of diseases.

Some other questions that I have and have not found any answers to are:

• Does the Ultrasonic Instrument put the pt with aids at any risk because of their weakened immune system?
• Is there any sterilization procedures that need to be done differently with the instruments used on aids patients?
• How long does HIV stay alive when in contact with oxygen?
• How long does HIV stay alive on hard surfaces?

Aids patients

So I started a new job at an office that sees a lot of aids patients.
I am trying hard to remember all the things we learned about aids but I don't think it was much. I even looked it up in ou r dental hygiene book and there is not much there about aids.

My dentist has told me that it is very hard to get aids that it takes 250 inoculations and that as soon as the aids virus hits oxygen it immediately dies. He also said that if he had a bucket of the aids virus he would spread it all over his arm and it wouldn't bother him one bit. I definitely thought that was pretty strange.

Can you get HIV from inhaling aerosols? I wasn't sure and my patient needed scrp so I used the ultrasonic.

Should I double glove? Should I wear a face sheild over my mask and loupes?

I leave my lab jacket and scrubs at the office to be laundered there and I change into them when I get there and then leave them there at night.

Do people with aids heal less fast, like their tissues? Can they have healthy gum tissue?

Do they always have karposis sarcoma on the palate?

Is there anything that I need to ask them on their health history that would have any effect on treatment?

I am going to do some research on aids but I wanted everyone elses opinion also.


I have looked up the CDC website and some info from the adha and ada websites and they say that universal precautions are pretty much their only suggestions on how to be protected.
Also on the ada website it says that taking extra precautions like double gloving, etc. could be considered as discrimination. I don't know what to think about that.
It also says that HIV is not considered a disease but it is considered a disability so people don't even have to mention it on their HHX and since it is considered a disability, they are protected under the disability act from any type of discrimination, so if a pt. thinks they are being discriminated they can take the dentist/ hygienist to court and win.


If you guys have anything to add I would really appreciate it!!
Thanks you guys!!

No time!!

It seems like my life right now is just work, work ,work!! It is like I have all these little projects that I want to do but by the time I am home and shower and get ready for the day finally at 5:30 pm I am so tired that I just usually fix dinner and then crash in front of the TV and pretty much fall asleep until I wake up and go to bed for reals!!

Here is a list of things that I would really love to have time to do: in no particular order except the first one:

Exercise
visit family
visit friends
cook a good dinner, no more frozen dinners
blog
email
learn how to sew
read up on dental hygiene
play the guitar
clean the apartment
wash dishes
decorate my apartment- how can I make cinderblock walls look good, I have no clue!! (student housing at the university of Utah - Yuck!!)
get enough sleep
go outside!!!
get a haircut
go shopping for clothes

Yes somehow I manage to get in two super fun vacations this summer but of course do not have time for anything normal!!! One day though I will accomplish these many goals!!! And I will probably add more everyday!!!

It is so weird because I watch all these movies where people work all day and then they go party at night and then go to work the next day and are totally normal. I know I am taking my examples from movies which are not real, but still it looks really fun to be able to do that!!!!

I am discovering that a lot of hygienist are not members of ADHA, or do not attend the UDHA meetings. I was shocked!!! NO not really!!! I am member and I hope that all of you in WSU 2006 class are also!!!

Anyway, sorry that I have been blabbling about nothing, my next blog will be so much better and my thoughts will be more organized.

update on me!!

I just got back from a cruise to mexico and it was way fun even though I got sea sick!! It started in LA and then went to san diego then catalina island and then to ensanada mexico. In San Diego Lynden and I went to museums of ships like battle ships and pirate ships and then just walked along the pier. Then in Catalina Island we went snokeling and saw lots of fish then we rented a golf cart and went cruising around the island. there is only one town on catalina island and then the rest of the island is preserved as natural habitat so it was really pretty. Then in Mexico we went sea kyaking and we saw some seals and a lot of sea weed!! it was fun though to be out in the middle of the ocean in a little kyak, kind of scary too!! Then we went and bought some cheap stuff. It was so sad because they seem so poor and then are using there children to sell there stuff. There were all these signs that encouraged tourists to stop child exploitation. To not give any money to those little kids that came up to you trying to sell you Chickletts the gum!! It was hard to resist because they were like four or five years old. And we didn't barter with anyone about price because I just wanted to give them all I had because they were so poor, but the rest of my family did a lot of bartering and they got prices from $25.00 down to $10.00 so Yea for them!! On the ship I ate a lot of food that was so good, my favorite thing was Creme Brule, or however you spell it, but it was so good!! We went dancing and there was a formal night where we dressed up all fancy. We went to live musicals and watched dueling pianos. It was way fun. After I got use to the rocking back and forth motion then I wasn't sea sick anymore but now that I am home I still sometimes feel like my apartment is swaying back and forth!!!

My job is pretty fun but it is hard work. I feel so tired all the time and I sweat to death all day long because I am hurrying and working so fast that I have to come home and shower because I feel so nasty. It is hard to have to spend all day at work and then come home and only have like a few hours to chill with my hubby before I am totally exhausted and have to just crash and then start all over again the next day. I have been trying hard to keep good posture but sometimes I just can't see and have to lean over my patient. I don't think that my skills are improving. My indirect vision is still nowhere near good and my scaling skills especially on the molars are dwindling, it seems like. I feel so rushed everyday and I have an hour with each patient. It just seems like I can't really give my patients all that they need so I am having to do a semi good job. Is this just me?

I use oraqix a lot on my patients especially when using the ultrasonic, which I use on every patient. I have done quite a lot of full mouth debridements and then following that up with either quad scaling or half mouth scaling. I probe every patient but I usually don't write it down. If the patient has a few four probe readings I just mention it in my notes. If the patient has fives, and sixes then I do a perio chart. I give oral hygiene instruction while I am flossing my patient or while I am scaling because there is no time to do it seperate. I use a bitewing rin kit holder to take x-rays so I don't have to take retakes. One dentist that I work for only provides one instrument for scaling, usually a sickle scaler. The other hygienist in the office claim that they can do an adult prophy in 45 minutes. How the freak are they doing that and are they being thorough, are they setting up a rapor with the patients? No they are not!! And it seems like everyoffice I work in the front office person and the assistants think that they know so much more then me. Like the other day the front office person told me that I should be able to clean one of my patients in 45 minutes but she doesn't know. And one assistant was talking to me about apioectomies and then stopped in the middle of her sentence and aksed me if I understood and if I even knew what an apioectomy was. I do let the dentist teach me all that he knows but I do know that I know more then both the front office and assistants. I just don't try to be all knowing like they are!!!

It sounds like I don't like to do dental hygiene but in fact I do love it. I love when I can help people have better health, when someone really appreciates that I just taught them how to floss correctly and they understand why. I love getting to know a lot of different people. I love when I can share with a patient my knowledge of teeth and gums. I love when the people I see for the first time request to come back to me again.

School really was the ideal setting for dental hygiene. I wish that I would have used that time more effectively, trying to really perfect my skills and learn to scale with good posture. That I could have tried to make it how I would do things in the real hygiene world. I should have appreciated that we only had patients two days a week and only like two patients a day because now I see around 8-10 patients a day.

paid lunch?

The dentist that I am going to work for when my license finally arrives is paying me a specific wage per day, not per hour so I thought that was something that other offices did but I must be wrong!!! So I was way off on the paid lunch thing I guess!!! But that would be really awesome!!!

I went on to the DOPL website and it is pretty cool because you can look up licensees by name and see if they have their license yet. I looked up my name and sure enough it was on there but of course it is no good unless it is in my hand!! But I wonder who has there license already and who has already started working!!! That would be really interesting to know, so I might just look up everyones name!!!

Just a side note: It is freakin hot outside!! But yet I am no where near tan!! I better get on it!!

What are some dentists thinking?

Sometimes I wonder what some dentists are thinking when they start a practice. Do they really plan to screw people out of there money? Do they really plan to have a gross practice? Do they plan to not sterilize things that should be? Do they plan to schedule like a billion people all at the same time and think they get to them all? Do they really think that they can pay so little and give so few benefits and still have employees? Are we that desperate that we will take jobs where the dentist is like this?

I had another working interview and this office was so disquisting!! They don't sterilize there air/water syringe tips , they just wipe them off!! They dentist told me not to premedicate me patient who had a heart murmur. The office staff and assistants touched the charts with contaminated gloves. They had no schedule at all and people in the waiting room started to leave because they had been waiting so long.

I just heard that there are even some dentists who are so cheap that they only pay their hygienists when they are actually scaling. If you are there at 7:30 to be prepared for your patient at 8:00, that is prep time and is not payed for, if you take a lunch it is not payed for, at the end of the day when you are cleaning up and writing in charts, it is clean up time and is not paid for. How prickly can some dentists be!!!

I hope I am not the only person having super psycho working interviews but maybe I am just attracted to the psychos!!!