"There are going to be days...

when you think you can't do this, but you can." I have this written on the inside of my appointment book and I look at it whenever I start to feel really overwhelmed with school and clinic and pregnancy symptoms and baby stuff. I'm really not a gung-ho mantra-type person (whatever that means), but I need something to get me through days like yesterday. Something that reminds me how hard I've worked to get here, and that I know I'm capable of doing all this!

I had a treatment planning session with a new patient yesterday, and I really had no idea what I was doing. With clinic, it's never the dentistry that causes me problems, because I absolutely love all that-- it's the stupid piles and piles of paperwork and thousands of signatures I need to get after every single thing I do! And treatment planning requires signatures from every doctor and their mom. Anyway, about 15 minutes into the appointment I almost passed out in front of the patient (I am having this awful dizziness lately), so that was embarrassing because I kept having to put my head between my knees. Then, the faculty member on duty didn't help me out at all even though I had no idea what to do, and on top of that he made my patient cry because he was too rough with her tongue during the oral cancer screening (yeah, I don't know, she was a little weird). So she demanded that he not come back in the room. I guess he wasn't being that much help anyway, but then I was completely on my own. Anyway, I ended up not getting anything entered into the computer and my team leader informed me the next day that I might as well not have done anything, and I'll have to bring the patient back in to do it all over again.

And it is just so frustrating!! I love talking to my patients, I love doing procedures, I even love filling out their charts and getting things done and making plans for their care, it's so satisfying to me. But all these stupid signatures are making me crazy, because I have pregnancy brain so bad I can't even remember people's names, let alone that I'm supposed to get this signature here and that signature there. I know, I shouldn't blame it on pregnancy, but I swear I am not normally this scatterbrained.

So I have that written in my planner, and I look at it whenever I feel like running screaming out of the operatory. Today was a better day-- I had a patient for a cleaning, and I've pretty much got that down now. Although, if another male patient teases me about how I'm bringing his blood pressure up while I'm taking his vitals, I might fly into a rage and tell them that hitting on pregnant women is in poor taste. (Not that they can tell under my scrubs... yet.)

And I'm sorry I've been such a bad blogger-- meaning I'm a total slacker about posting my own blogs and reading/commenting on others'. It's tough to find the time lately, but I am hoping it'll get better when I get some energy back in the 2nd trimester and start to get the hang of things at school. At least, I am counting on that energy coming back soon... little baby, don't let me down!! [:)]

12 weeks pregnant tomorrow-- I promise I'll have belly pics since I skipped last week!