Category Archives: Crown and Bridge

1) We got this in our dental school email today and even though it is a year old I had never seen it and thought it was a very cool story. Cliffs notes: A SGT rounded the corner in a house being raided and came face to face with a 9mm handgun. The gun was fired at point blank range right into the upper lip of the SGT…

…well if you want to read more check out the story at Snopes.

2) I have also been introduced to another website that you can bookmark for further reading. It is called The Endo Blog by Dr. Jason Hales. It is new, so be sure to bookmark it or add it to your reader and welcome him to the world of blogging!

3) Also coming soon is the long write up of my gold crown. I finished it today! I have some other things to do before our projects are due on Thursday like finishing my provisional for #3 (the tooth we did the gold crown on) and finishing my three unit bridge. Just some minor adjustments like polish and occlusion. Here is an excerpt from my gold crown article:

“The polishing steps for a gold crown entail about 7 jaw clenching steps from start to finish. I was biting down so hard while I polished that I went through 3 acrylic mouth guards. After so much work with impressions, models, waxing, investing, and casting you don’t want to screw up the crown while polishing it. The sweat equity, tears, and blood devoted to this project would have been enough to kill an undergraduate student. Why do you think they make AADSAS so hard? It weeds out the weak and the timid, the faint of heart, and those with high blood pressure. Applicants like that couldn’t handle this type of stress. If you fail this crown you have to repeat the year. Needless to say the tension in the pre-clinic was thick. After finishing the first 6 steps I’ll admit I was disappointed. My crown looked as dull as a slab of granite. I felt like someone had painted it gray and then stabbed a knife into my back. The crown and the knife sat there, festering. I was a beaten man.
I had no one to reach out to, my classmates had their own crowns to worry about, my teacher had that glossed over look in his eyes that said “If another student comes up here for advice I will go postal�, and I couldn’t see an upperclassman anywhere. I am sure the upperclassman had enough problems anyway. They didn’t want to deal with a mere ‘D1′. What did I know anyway? After all, I wear scrub pants and don’t even work on real patients. I would be scoffed at. With no one to turn to I looked at my work area and saw Red Rouge. It seemed to look at me longingly.

“PLEASE! Pick me up and rub me on your gold crown with your low speed hand piece and a polishing wheel!�

Caught up in the moment I replied, “Okay�, as my classmates glanced at me clearly annoyed that I was talking to myself again.

I picked up the Rouge and started to rub it into my polishing wheel softly but with great purpose, like I had done it before. It felt right. The quiet, slow ‘whirrrrrr’ of my hand piece drowned out the moans and wailings of the classroom. I was alone. I began to gain confidence in the skills I had learned over the past 6 months. The feeling of complete and utter belonging overwhelmed me, and a tear fled from my eye and floated onto my polishing brush as if to calm the raging sea of red that had enveloped the polishing wheel. I lifted the hand piece to my gold crown, which was seated firmly to my stone die. The red bristles began to dance off the gold like sparks in the wind. Everything was moving in slow motion now. Some of my classmates looked up to watch the magnificence that was unfolding before their eyes like spring blossoms. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I were to say I saw tears of wonderment well up in their eyes. The dull gold, which had once been a nagging wound in my back, slowly subsided as the gold began to sparkle like the salmon of Capistrano. As I looked at my reflection in the gold crown I no longer saw a beaten man. I saw the chiseled face of a student who had been whittled and pruned by instructors. It was this moment that I had realized my true calling as a dentist. I have Red Rouge to thank for it.

Okay, well maybe that was a little overkill. I had fun writing it and there are some truths to it. The crown does look ugly until you add red rouge to it. It wasn’t as difficult as this excerpt claims to be, but there IS truth to every joke. DID ANYONE CATCH THE DUMB AND DUMBER PHRASE I USED? It also feels very good to almost be done with a class that has been going for 6 months. That is half a year (duh), but it is long. Our instructors are great. Dr. Boberick is also an excellent instructor in my opinion, although today he told us that he has been called every four letter word in the book. I am sure all of us have been. Here is my four letter word for this class: It has been pure ‘gold’. Stay tuned for the real article.