Highlights from the past few weeks...

• A young man sat in the dental chair, opened his mouth, and I was perplexed to find what looked like a  lower canine that had erupted at the midline!  He had the correct number of lower anteriors present; however his 3.3 looked tiny, so maybe he had a retained 7.3, and the 3.3 had decided that rather erupt at the curve of the arch, it would take a spot right in the middle.  It had a mind of it's own.
• Gums.  Most of the African patients that I have seen have either pink or brown gums, but I have also seen mottled pink and brown gums, as well as blue gums!  I don't know what causes the blueness - at first I thought that it might be due to decay or infection, but I have since seen blue gums in fairly healthy areas of the mouth.  (Reminiscent to an amalgam tattoo, but all over - especially anterior.)
• So far - I have not seen too many surgical extractions.  Most are routine with luxator, forceps and possibly a handpiece to remove a bit of bone around a stubborn root.  But the other day, we came across a root that was so solidly fused to the bone around it, that we got to see some real dental action!  I almost started to feel queezy, which is saying something.  My dentist pushed/peeled back the gums all around the tooth in question as well as the surrounding 2 teeth on either side to obtain really clear access.  I then had to hold this skin flap back while she drilled the buccal wall bone away from the tooth.  The skin was so creepy, flapping in the breeze of the drill.  I was quite relieved after she placed the sutures and everything was back where it should be!  
• On a similar note, my dentist was doing a relatively simple anterior extraction (anterior clearance)- she had loosened the periosteal ligament from the root, and had loosened the tooth in the socket with the luxator, then went to grab it with the forceps, but apparently, the periodonal ligament hadn't been loosened enough on the buccal surface, and when she began the pull the tooth from the socket, the skin gums began to stretch, being pulled along with the tooth.  Because we were removing many adjacent teeth, this piece of tissue that had covered many teeth was fairly large.  It was like elastic - stretching skin - that gave me a queezy shiver!  In the end, the tooth came out, and the gums were left intact.