I tried

couldn't focus on revision this afternoon so decided to do my 'homework' in 4th floor lab

after one hour of drilling and measuring with my back bending forward like a prawn

i showed my work to Prof Sam

"Good!You managed to preserve the occlusal morphology and get the right amount of reduction...nice prep!"

"but..it's not perfect" i responded automatically

Prof Sam looked at me, as if i was cracked

"There is no perfect crown prep. Humans are not perfect!" he handed the model back to me

*tongue sticking out*

It's not perrrrfectttt...sighhhhhhhhh

No more baby steps!

Mr Perfectionist : You're gonna do a crown prep next week, aren't you?

Me : Yes

Mr Perfectionist : I want to see a really nice crown prep with the exact axial and occlusal reduction on a plastic tooth. Make sure you follow the anatomy of the occlusal surface. A flat top is not tolerable and i want you to go into the lab, practise the crown prep in a phantom head. Do it as you would do in your patient. I want to see it before you get your patient in!

Me : All rightttt...

Does that mean i can't see the patient if i fail Mr Perfectionist's crown test?

Shit!

Did i tell you the last time i was assigned a task was in secondary school??

Anyway

I have changed my resolution (FORCED TO)

from

aim to pass

to

perfection is what you make of it
5 P's -- proper preparation for prevention of poor performance
6 P's -- proper preparation for prevention of pissed poor performance
(by Mr Perfectionist)

little miss no name

What's wrong with chinese having no english name?

no big deals

just a few things you should know...

• your surname becomes your first name

• your two-character given name is shortened to one-character

• people mispronounce/mispell/forget your name

• anonymity is maintained with zero effort

• If there is another chinese with a western name, say Mary who attends the same school as you, your name is conveniently interchangeable. So, you can be known as Mary or Non-Mary, depending on how well people manage to distinguish you from Mary. Either way, people still dun remember your name.

and one more thing...you can even change your sex!

This morning at ortho clinic the register went like this

Name	Attendance
Rose	√
Steven	√
Ronald	√
Hilary	√
Tommy	√
Eric Kong aka Mr. ABSENTEE	√
Lee Yin Hui	absent

*speechless*

nervous breakdown

so much for a clinical test
i am having a fit!

*sob*

A little praise goes a long way

i was reluctant to go in this morning for one simple reason - i don't want to see that middle age cranky b***h!

"i thought you'd forgotten me!'' was how she greeted me when we first met, one year ago today
i was reproached for being 2 minutes late, thanks to our boss who turned up late and the first-line rule 'no tutor, no patient'
fine, i can take that blame
the following 10 minutes was a proper history of COMPLAINT, starting from her own dentist till her teeth.90% of it was how useless her dentist had been
then came my turn to be her next hateful dentist for what she called
''hurting my gums with that sharp thingie"
my first meeting with her started off rocky, ended up not any less rocky

in the second meeting, she was moody again
'Do whatever you want but mind you, i only have half an hour!'

Ookay...10 min for border moulding the trays, 15 minutes for impressions and repetitions, 5 min for the beeline to show Dr. N my work, not surprisingly, he turned his nose up at it
Ding! Time's up!
'Not good?' She looked at my disappointed face
'Blimey!I gotta go to work!" she stomped off without even saying goodbye

That was why i loathed Pros so much back in 3rd/4th year

One year later which was the day she came back, the day i dreaded
turned out she was late for 15 minutes and she APOLOGISED
Of course, i din expect her to say hi but i suppose a SORRY from HER is worth 10 times a friendly greeting
Thinking that she might need to rush for work as usual, i sped up the reassessment and got down to primary impression. Very lucky for me, both impressions worked out well in one go.
Most importantly, she didn't grumble at all this time.
Just before she went off, she surprised me with her words
''i see you work more efficiently now. You must have got enough practice over the past year."

Wowww!! For a split moment, i thought i was dreaming
''Thank you!'' was merely what i managed to squeeze out from my mouth

Why overreact to a compliment??
Well, a compliment from someone who moans about every single thing is a big deal

Suddenly i feel appreciated :)

hate is the new love

a big sigh of relief, finally

the second i sent the denture off for final processing, i felt like yelling at the top of my lungs,''Woohoooo, i've done my first denture!!!"

Looking back on all my prosthodontic misfortunes, it wasn't easy for me to come to this stage
While people happily delivered their 4th denture, i was still cracking on my 1st and worse, i had people who had completed 2 or 3 dentures come up to me, complaining of having trouble meeting the requirements.
Most of the time, i just agreed or joined in the whinge coz i din know how to console them when i was already in deep mud. I know it's human nature to fret and enjoy talking about oneself so i dun really blame them for being insensitive. Rather, i throw the blame at my own bad luck which my clincial partner once described as incredible and partly, myself for being a quitter..no, i shud say for being MADE a quitter. Why? Take a look at what i have done in 2 years of Pros - 2 discharged patients with zero denture made and one partial denture in stagnant progress. What an achievement! I'm totally stressed out everytime i think of Pros, not only the fact that i'm way behind in my work, also the fear that i dun understand what i am doing in Pros.

When my friend told me the 5 stages of grief, i somehow see myself fitting in all stages

1. Denial
   I din wan to admit how lost i was in pros lectures and even in lab dems. They were mostly taught b4 we started pros clinics so i thought i would pick up along the way once we got a patient.
   
2. Anger.
   My first patient kept missing his appointment and the second patient decided to put her treatment on hold for medical reason. Both left me in fury over wasting one year for nothing
   
3. Bargaining.
   The frustrating me made bargains with the power from above, asking, "If i do my work religiously, will you let me sail through Prosthodontics?"
4. Depression.
   hopelessly miserable when i was stuck at my first partial denture..Why am i still trapped in this ill fate after what i have been through..why????
   
5. Acceptance.
   Before today, I was at this stage where i simply accepted that i had no choice but to knuckle down on Pros in the remaining time.

Now that i have passed all 5 stages so what's next?
whatever it is, i hope it is a good one
at least I dun hate prosthodontics like how i used to
Gosh, how one denture changed everything!!