The Drilling Begins

The Drilling Begins----------often heralded as the start of our life's work as a dentist ,my love affair with the drill got off to a shaky start. Guess we can't be naturally good at everything :P

It was a hot 35 degree friday afternoon when we met. It was lying in a shiny metallic box, newly oiled and slippery to my gloved hands. Oh the feel of its smooth lines and little bumps on the grip gave me the shivers. I was finally getting to know its tunes and vibrations! ---Alright, before I make your flesh curl to the point where your knees go weak in 'anticipation', I'll lay off the overly dramatic language and get to the clinical view.

We are entrusted a high speed drill and a low speed drill. The high speed drill has to be used with water while the low speed drill doesn't need water. Drilling through enamel, one is adviced to use the high speed and the low speed drill is for the dentine most of the time. I learned to use the low speed drill in the gruelling 3 hour session ( my arms still ache on saturday morning ) because we were to drill simple patterns in the acrylic base to adapt to the controls. It was then I realised that drilling with a rotating instrument is no child's play.
Due to its rotating bearings, it tended to move towards the left ( not desirable when we are trying to drill a straight line!)Thus more force was needed to guide the drill. Depths of the pits were hard to judge and i'll need to work on that. My patterns came out worse than I had hoped....to the extent the tutor could hardly find anything good to say....---all he could say was that I was conservative in drilling! (meaning i did not remove too much from the allocated area)
Hope I perform better in the next lab session.

Friday night, me and my pals went to the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts to watch the Sky dance . It featured some great orchestral pieces and some eerie contemporary pieces accompanied by ballet in the sky LITERALLY!! The dancers were suspended in mid air above the river and they were seen 'floating and flying from one end of the river to the other illuminated by sky lights. The evening was enchanting....and fantastical.....

Hmm....Adelaide seems to be coming to life this year with so many festivals ---now i see why it is called the Festival State!

Its off to work now---studying embryology at the moment ......

The singing dentist,
June