El Monte Health Fair

Hey peeps!

Last Saturday, UCLA's Pediatric Dentistry Club participated in a community health fair/screening in El Monte and I finally got to do more than Oral Hygiene Instruction (OHI)! Under the guidance of Dr. McCreedy from UCLA  Pediatrics, us first years and second years also provided oral screenings.

Interestingly, our neighboring booths included a cosmetology station that offered free manicures, pedicures, and facials (not to mention a beauty kit raffle), as well as an exceedingly active Zumba troupe lead by a fearless leader. Quite an interesting sight.

Although we were initially expecting mainly children, we also saw a fair number of adults. In addition, the health fair also provided us with the fantastic experience to work with an extremely diverse and receptive community. I probably spoke, or attempted to speak, more Spanish and Chinese than I did English!

The hosts at the local church were also tremendously generous. The lunch was a pleasant surprise and the hospitality was like no other. Thank you, El Monte, for a rewarding day!

E

Saturday all-day crew (9am-3pm) with Dr. McCreedy!

Keeping busy!

Baby Teeth

Heya folks,

Below are some flashy pics of my recent preparations (aka drillings) and restorations (aka fillings) on ... BABY TEETH! For those of you wondering, Baby teeth are also known as primary teeth, milk teeth, and deciduous teeth.

The first thing I noticed was how incredibly small baby teeth are. It's quite an intuitive and obvious thing to notice, but it was only when I began making my preparations that I realized how minuscule they were, and consequently how little room there was for error. For the past few months we've been busy drilling away at adult teeth. As such, when we switched to working with baby teeth, the transition was more challenging than anticipated.

Mistakes were magnified; boxes were made too deep; isthmuses (or rather, isthmi) were made too wide; plenty of these bad boys were bought. I probably ended up making at least 5 of each!

Restoration on tooth #I

Preparation on tooth #S

Also, these pics were taken with my iPhone 5 (random).

Getting there!

E