success

I passed! I passed! hallelujah I passed!!! 

i got the results from my clinical boards yesterday and I'm happy to report that i passed with a 94%!!

it was such an incredibly stressful process.

step one: I had to sign up months in advance and pay a non-refundable $1200 fee.

step two: I had to find a patient that met ALL the criteria for the test, that would be willing to miss work several times for pre-appointments and for the actual test day, would be reliable, would be willing to take 4 hours of people poking, poking &scraping his teeth/gums, as well as a bunch of shots in the mouth, and who preferably spoke english.

step three: actually take the test and pass.
for this to happen your patient needs to show up on time for the test, your patient needs to be accepted by the examiners, then you need to do a kick-a job of cleaning their teeth and taking probe & recession measurements, and then the examiners check the patients teeth again to see just how clean the teeth are, and check your measurements to determine if you did a good enough job to pass.

let me tell you how this worked out for me.

in February (months before the May test) I signed up and paid the $1200. at the beginning of March i found a patient who met the requirements for the test. YAY! but he wasn't the most ideal patient and he was a bit of jerk and unreliable. still he was a boards patient. so I offered him the opportunity and the $100.

in the middle of March i found a better boards patient. this guy was money. he was super nice, reliable, spoke english, and had beautiful calculus (tartar). so i offered him the opportunity and $100 too. and i decided i would just keep the first patient as a back-up. i thought this would give me some peace of mind the week of the test...

three weeks before the test i received my letter from the testing agency giving me my specific date and time that i would be taking the test. right away i tried to call my #1 patient aaaand it went straight to voice mail, where the automated voice lady told me that this voice mailbox was invalid. hmmm oh well ill try again tomorrow, right?

The next day I got the same message.

and the next day.

and the next.

yeah, i was getting a little worried. so i contacted my back-up patient and gave him the deets and he told me that he had to check to see if he could get that day off work and he would let me know in a week. as in the week of my test. (no no no no no)

i randomly happened to have the e-mail of my #1 patient's girlfriend. so i e-mailed her and begged her to have her boyfriend call or e-mail me.

nothing.

now we are exactly one week away from the day of my ultra-important the fate of my future career lies in the outcome of this test and my #1 patient doesn't even know when the test is and i can't get a hold of him to tell him when it is.

and my back-up patient might have to work.

yes i'm freaking out at this point.

the next day like every other day i tried to call my #1 patient about 50 times. and my call FINALLY goes through. thank the holy mother. i tell him the info and he says he'll be there. but i told him that i would call him the night before the test to go over some paperwork, make sure that everything was ready to go, and just double-check that he would still be there.

that same day back-up patient e-mails me that he was able to get the day off and he'll be there.

whew. now i'm feeling pretty good. and we are six days away from test day.

two days before the test i e-mail back-up patient (he told me he preferred to be contacted by e-mail, that he has it on his phone, and that he would always reply right away. false.) and just gave him the info again and reminded him what time he needed to be there (7am) and that even if i did not end up using him as my patient that I would still pay him the $100 just for showing up, and to please just e-mail me back before the test day and let me know that he was still planning on being there.

day before the test. I attend test orientation, get my paperwork,badge, etc. then I decide its time to call my #1 patient.

 aaaand his phone is back to the automatic voice mail fail message.

no. this cannot be happening. not today. 

I called him over and over and over from 5pm-11-pm and over and over and over the call does not go through.

back-up patient has still not replied to my message. remember this guy is unreliable and a jerk. is he still planning on showing up? i'm not counting on it

my #1 patient is good, but in my 2 year experience at school with scheduling my own patients, if you don't talk to them the night before the appointment, they do not show up. And its cinco de mayo that night. is he out partying and getting drunk/not thinking or remembering about the test that he's suppose to show up at 6:45am for ???

i don't know. because i can't get a hold of him.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

by 10pm i lost it. at that point i didn't know if either of my patients were going to show up the next morning. and if you don't have a patient, you fail. automatically. you lose the $1200. you can't get your license. which means you can't work. which means your life is screwed. and all the hard work, stress, tuition money, tears, not to mention the other four licensing tests I had already taken, and frustration of the last 2 years was for nothing.

i cried. thats an understatement. I bawled, i had torrents of water streaming out of my eyes, i was sobbing SO LOUD w/ gross gulping wart-hog like noises, my eyes became red and puffy, and my whole face was hot and splotchy. this was not cute crying. i was a mess. my poor husband. he tried his best to comfort me.

this went on for a full hour.

as i sobbed into my husbands chest he continued to press the redial button on my phone.

and then mercy of all mercies just after 11pm on my 23847359th try, the call. went. through. i talked to my #1 patient. and he was still coming.

so i prayed and slept and hoped for the best.

day of the test. after all the drama my #1 patient showed up on time and we got everything going. no sign of back-up patient.

my #1 patient only had one possible submission so if he wasn't accepted I had to find some sort of back-up. so I submitted him and prayed. (there's was a lot of praying involved with this test)

and my #1 patient was accepted!! i started cleaning.

at 8am back-up patient shows up. jerk. unreliable jerk. he showed up an hour late for the test so he could claim his $100 'just for showing up'. i did not want to deal with this situation right now.

and luckily i didn't have to. another girl's patient didn't show up for the test (leaving her totally screwed) so she took back-up patient off my hands and paid him to be her patient. (i think he was a little ticked that he had to actually go through with test, since he was hoping to just show up late, claim his $100 and leave)

i then had a little less then 2 hours to numb my patient, clean his teeth and record the probe/recession measurements. I won't go into detail on the stress/drama of those 2 hours. it was stressful. it was hard. but i did the best i could and submitted him back to the examiners. (more praying)

then it was over. and i was told i would get my results within the next 30 days.

and then i waited.....


and now its really over.


its over. and i passed.


thank the sweet heavens.