Asheville VAMC

Hey guys,

I would like to thank Elise for this great idea :)  It's so nice to hear about everyone's experiences.

I came to Asheville on Sunday May 8th, the day after we got back from our 1st yr anniversary to Puerto Rico.  The cool thing is that I've already found many similarities between Asheville & PR- waterfalls, forest, yummy food, etc.

Anyway, I am staying at MAHEC housing and when I first got here I saw that someone had moved in already.  It turns out that I have a roommate (literally sharing one room) but it's not bad at all and she is an anesthesia nursing student and a very nice girl.

My first day at the Asheville VA was amazing.  The dentists and assistants are so friendly and helpful.  The VA is going through some dentist shortage at the time because 1 dentist retired a month ago and another one just announced that he is retiring, and one was out for his birthday, so the clinic only had 2 dentists working and they tried to use me as much as possible which I was very happy about.  I observed a surgical extraction and then the dentist asked me to do many extractions on different patients.  He even had me anesthetize one patient and then go to the other room and anesthetize the next pt, extract multiple teeth and go back to other pt and extract his teeth.  He also really likes to quiz me which was intimating at first but I have learned so much from him. Oh, one thing that is definitely a big change for me is that the dentists and assistants all call me Dr. Hoda or Dr. Bassiri!  At first, I told them that I'm not a doctor yet but they continue to introduce me to pts as Doctor.  I also had a funny experience with one of the assistants while I was extracting four teeth.  She was such a cheerleader and the whole time she would say things like "You are doing such a great job doctor" and I think she even clapped once hahahaha.

The patients are all very nice veterans who have to be 100% eligible to be seen.  However, a few veterans showed up that are not qualified but they used me as an excuse to treat them for "educational purposes".

Today was slow especially because the dentist who is retiring came and the dentist who was out for his birthday also came to work.  So I spent a lot of time observing them do their thing.  One dentist basically finished all the requirements we need for removable in one day.  They do a lot of partials and complete dentures.  I got to also observe one of the dentists do a root canal today using Brasseler Endo sequence rotary files and gutta percha.  The root canal looked so beautiful at the end and he did it in only 20 minutes.  Finally I saw him deliver TAP 3 which is a mandibular advancement device for tx of snoring and sleep apnea.  After delivering, he asked the pt to try to snore and the pt. could not.  Then he asked him to take the device off and try to snore and wow his snore was really loud.  The patient was super happy and he told me about his wife who hates his snoring and the CPAP which he had already tried and hated.

OK so I'm talking way too much as usual and I'm going to stop now.  Look out for more pictures and hopefully less words in the near future :)

Love,
Hoda