Lip Service

Today I had a rotation at school where I was supposed to go into the dental clinic and assist a 3rd or 4th year student while he or she worked on a patient. Most of the time on these rotations our entire afternoon of "assisting" consists of holding the suction in the patient's mouth, but this time was different. Since I am no longer a lowly 1st year student but rather a slightly more knowledgeable 2nd year student, the professors encourage us to help with more procedures on these rotations. Today that meant that I got to do some injections.

The first two injections went fairly well, except that the patient jumped while the needle was about 2 inches into her gums. Not cool. Then she started to complain that she could feel the warmth from the injection going all the way up her scalp.

Just in case you didn't know, we are not supposed to anesthetize the scalp during routine dental procedures.

As it turns out, the patient didn't really have any problem from the injection, and only the parts of the mouth that were supposed to be anesthetized were anesthetized. I don't know what the whole "scalp warming" thing was.

Feeling quite proud of myself for doing the first two injections well, but a little nervous from the scalp warming panic, I went for injection number 3. It was a type of injection I'm not as familiar with, so I was a bit more nervous than usual, but I gave the shot and then the 3rd year student asked me to get an instrument for her from another room, so I left.

When I returned in a few minutes, my heart almost stopped when I saw the patient. Her bottom lip looked like this...
Oh. My. Goodness.

I sat in my assistant's chair, stunned and wondering what I did wrong. I didn't know what I had done or if this Octomom look was going to be permanent for my poor little patient. Then I started to think about all the other job options I have besides dentistry (because obviously they weren't going to let me pass if I was doing unlicensed, unsolicited, and accidental plastic surgery on people's lips).

Then I noticed that while I was gone the 3rd year student had put a big, fat cotton roll in the patient's lower lip. Hence the swelling.

Yay! I can still be a dentist!