Endodontology Practicals: In Need Of Molars/Jolene Vs. Green Bugs

Endodontology practicals are starting real soon! For now we’re only trying to collect an entire set of teeth for our practicals. That’s 32 teeth for each and everyone of us. It’s SUCH a headache. Everyone’s in a panic about not getting enough teeth. We’re asked to go out to dental clinics to collect teeth (note to juniors and anybody who plans to study dentistry: If you haven’t already, start collecting teeth now. You’ll be happy you have a whole jar by the time you need it.) and then mount them in plaster of paris with saw dust to resemble your jaws. The saw dust is to act as the trabeculae of the bone when you take your radiographs later on. I also don’t know what’s going on, so let me share some of that question marks with you. ???

So yeah, pre-molars are easy to get because a lot of people have them taken out before putting braces on. Tons of beautiful pre-molars. Canines are a little tricky. Strangely, anterior teeth are also easy to get. Makes me wonder about the poor people who have toothless grins now. 🙁 MOLARS! We ain’t got enough molars to go around! Anybody got grandparents or parents(we’re not that young anymore either…) who are getting dentures? Taking any teeth out? Please keep them for me? THANKS! And you can keep your wisdom tooth. Thanks but no thanks. Tons of that as well as everyone and their dog are getting their wisdom teeth taken out(and cracking super stale wisdom tooth jokes. Enoughhh.)

After getting bored of my perio notes, I decided to rearrange my teeth collection.

was using my ear digger to melt bits of the wax to stick the teeth onto the wax sheet.

Tada! Screw tidiness.

At the lab today, my tutor passed me what’s left of Alex’s teeth collection. Alex is my junior who has a whole jar of teeth that I wanted to look through to see if there are any molars. Sigh, but a few of my classmates were ahead of me in getting to the teeth. 🙁 Sorry Alex. I managed to find a few though. I owe you a SUPER huge one. 🙂 Let me know when you need help okay?

Without them molars, this means that I’d be zipping around town when I’m home to collect all the teeth I can find. Thinking of going from Subang to PJ old town to Klang(just randomly drive lah, I don’t know where I’m going also if I’m there) to Damansara(but probably just a whole bunch of premolars and nothing else from them rich suburbs) to even Bangsar. Bangsar, because I saw a government clinic near First Coach’s office.

Here’s a pitiful dental student’s plea to anyone out there, who:

i) Has a grandparent/parent who is in the midst of removing his/her teeth before getting dentures.
ii) Other dental students with teeth to spare.
iii) Bored dentists who love reading blogs about future members of the profession. Help an ally, pluck more molars! (Just kidding, just kidding. Be ethical in your work..)
iv) Teeth sellers in India and Africa. (believe me, I googled them. Cool photographs of stalls selling teeth and all.)

Pleeeasseee contact me if you have teeth sitting in a bottle. Or better! You can start collecting for me~!

We are given little rubber moulds to put our teeth into. The wax bits on the roots are to resemble periapical lesions.

Poh Yee’s finished product! Her molars will come after the CNY holidays.

YAyy, I got my tutor’s approval. All teeth are usable for our root canal therapy(endo) classes. As you can see, I’m mostly missing molars.

Sett and Ee Chean take a break from their work to pose for me.

Andy and Maxis mixing some PoP(plaster of paris) with saw dust.

Here’s Bala heating his wax sheet to get the teeth to stick on real good.

And here’s Brenda cleaning her model after removing it from the mould.

Still getting our tutor’s approval on some of our choices of teeth.

After an eternity of waiting for the moulds, I finally got an upper jaw mould. The two holes look so sad. 🙁

Saw dust for bony trabeculae. It’s amazing how they think of such things.

We’re good at this plaster of paris thing.

Upon mixing, this is the result. Looks like McFlurry Oreo, don’t you think?

Classmates huddling in various corners of the room, working together. 🙂

However, if your teeth appear sunken then you got to break the whole model into pieces and redo. Super super sien.

Zhu Zen brushing her dirty tooth.

Uncle Andy comes in on his day off to get some work sone. Hor Hor Ta Ta Yo, Andy never wear labcoat. 😛

Steven here is hard at work getting bits of PoP off the tooth surface.

L-r: Sett, Andy, Maxis and Chwan Horng.

I love Maxis’ teeth! Um, his real teeth is alright too, what with him getting braces and all. 🙂 His models occludes damn well!

Ah Thong and Chwan Horng laughing at Ah Thong’s teeth.

The silly boy applied sticky wax onto each and every tooth. We needn’t do that because it was supposed to resemble periapical lesions and was only supposed to be done on about five teeth.

And here’s mine. 🙂 So nice right? I’m so proud of it!! I remember the days when I sucked pretty badly at making models.

The other side.

I insist that you have to have a good look at my work.

A close up.

Another close up! This could go on forever.

I would then have to pose with it.

One more!

“Say what?!” – my model is SUCH a gossip queen. *rolls eyes

Oh fuckanathan!! I forgot to etch my name on the reverse side. Damn it damn it damn it.

Here’s a photo of the student centre from the study area at night. Nice eh?

You can see my classroom in this photo. 🙂

The bug problem has been resolved as I think the season is over already. However, I would love to share some tips on how I manhandled the mofos.

This was the last straw.

This is a typical night in Sungai Petani during bug season. Try driving at night and turn your high beams on. Super scary.

More for the shock factor.

The after effect. They die the next morning!

Sitting on the wall.

The thing is, these bugs don’t come out in the day. They usually enter the house at about 6pm to 7pm. I’ve been told that by turning off all the lights and closing the windows and curtains, no bugs will want to come in. Keep it that way until slightly pass midnight and you’ll be fine.

Of course, a trusty bottle of Mortein will definitely help.

However, I took it a step further by sealing all possible bug-access. The sliding door still has a small gap, small enough for the bugs to come in. Masking tape is the way to go! I spent one whole afternoon sealing the door and the windows and even my toilet window! It was worth the trouble as there weren’t any bugs that night.

Oh alright, there was one or two. But not like the usual thousands that swamp into my room and everything. These bugs are FIERCE I tell you. I could hear them tapping on the masking tape with their keratinized bodies to gain access. It was like tiny cracklings throughout the night. 🙁 So violent. The damn bugs can even find HOLES amidst the layers of masking tape AND crawl through. So scary and smart. But quite stupid also because they crawl in a little and realise “damn, this shit is sticky..” and then get stuck onto the masking tape and die.

I’m not removing the masking tapes till I graduate. How cool right? Imagine, when I pluck those masking tapes off, I would be a full fledged dentist by then! Go me!