Stick It!

Today, I saw a 13 year old patient that I learned the most from. He was a 1B and didn't have a ton of calculus build up for me to clean off. I found a few spots with the ultra sonic. It was the perfect day to work on my instrumentation, including my adaptation with the ultra sonic. I have been having troubles getting to the distal on the back teeth. It makes more and more sense the more I work at it and really think about what I'm doing. I have to remind myself that although I think I am adapted, I'm probably not so I need to adapt more. I have also been having trouble identifying decay with an explorer on the occlusal surfaces. I might just not be pushing hard enough into the surface, because I won't feel anything and then Instructor Bunker will come in and find one on every tooth. Instructor Bunker helped me a lot today be telling me where they were and to go back and feel them. I tried to push with the explorer as much as I needed to in order to feel that stick. I am understanding more and more of what a "stick" is and what it is not. Appearently you have to push a lot harder into it to see if that stick will happen or not.