Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Post-Exam Lunchtime Breaks

Naturally, dental school is full of exams... Lots and lots of exams... We either have practical skill exams (more on than next week) or written exams featuring a gambit of question types, depending on the professor's like or dislike of our electronic exam software, QuestionMark. There's usually a written exam every week; some of these you can just study a day or two and ace the exam while others you can study for a week and still get your bum firmly kicked... But sometimes, we have an exam in the morning and then a large chunk of time to waste until something else, usually a lab.  So, what's a brain-fried dental student to do?  Go get yummy food that you don't have to cook! ^_^

Look at the delicious noms :-)
As you can see, today was one of those days... We decided to go to the Indian restaurant over by Lexington Market for their lunchtime buffet.  It's awesome because it's cheap at $10 for all you want (we dental students be poor or at least this one is, haha) and they have food for both carnivores and vegetarians (yours truly falls into this crew).  Only problem afterwards is the lack of wanting to go back to class...  And, for those of you that know a bit about Baltimore, this ending picture one of my classmates put together will give you a good laugh. 





Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Hotdogs and Oral Surgery??

I know, sounds really strange, but you have to start somewhere when you're learning!  Yesterday, we had our suture lab exercise in oral-maxillofacial surgery... Now, why put sutures in the mouth?  Well, when your tooth is about to be extracted and the dentist needs to open gum tissue to get better access to it, there's gotta be some way to close it back up!  So, we first start out really simple... practicing on a piece of latex which isn't too hard at all once you get your first stitch in...


Hey they stayed! ^_^

But, then you move onto a hot dog, which is supposed to simulate how fragile a person's gums are... And then things get slightly tricky.  The first time I ended up pulling out all my sutures! :-(  But, once you get your gentle fingers, it gets easier and you eventually end up with sutures that stay in...


Suture success!


Of course, add in the tongue, blood, spit, and the fact that we're going to be doing this in a cup-size hole and the skill gets immediately more complicated, but for now, we're doing pretty well. :-)

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Yay, first post!

I'm so excited, after months of telling myself I should create a blog, I've finally decided to get off my bum and do it!  Hopefully I'll just be able to post little ramblings on my life at dental school/graduate school and padding in between. Which also means I should start taking pictures of my projects more, haha!  So it'll be a bit bare here for a while, but I hope to post at least once a week! 


Picture from my Longwood Gardens trip, I'll eventually upload more! ^_^