Sunday, August 30, 2015

This past week seemed to never end! The Friday before last a pretty big storm went thru Stillwater and knocked the power out there so a friend came over and brought her dogs (since no power=no air conditioning) and we did a little art project in the barn...
Then we made little suture pads out of felt and this square stuffing material. Sunday I went to my parent's for my niece's baptism. She is getting so adorable and chubby! Also studied some... Bleh.
Monday was pretty uneventful. After class my friend and I ran three miles and went home and studied. Tuesday after class we went down and prepped our surgery packs, gowns, gloves, etc for our first cadaver surgery Wednesday, then had a bovine foot and bandaging lab for muskuloskeletal. After that I decided to go to a friend's house to watch videos to get ready for surgery and ended up taking until about 930, so instead of studying when I got home I zonked out. 
And then the stressful Wednesday came. I spent most of my classes ready junior surgery manual prepping for my neuter, celiotomy, gastropexy, and gastrotomy; but then we got an email saying that they weren't going to have enough dogs. When we got down to lab at 1230 they only had 1 make dog that was already castrated and a bunch of females, most of which had been spayed. I started freaking out a bit because I had prepared for a neuter not a spay. Well, I ended up splitting with my assistant surgeon because we didn't have a dog and joining another group that had a female that was also supposed to have a male, so we had 2 primary surgeons and an assistant surgeon. Once we got it we realized she was already spayed so that was good I guess, but I also lost a primary surgery and don't get to neuter a dog until we start on live animals :S. I only ended up performing the gastropexy, too. I closed half of everything on the abdomen though, and the surgery intern was impressed with my speed and how nice my patterns looked. I did an intradermal on the skin because of time, but apparently we were supposed to do simple interrupted. 
Thursday, I was assistant surgeon for spay, celiotomy, and chest tube insertion. Everything went pretty well, but all I got to do were some simple interrupted on the skin closure, which I realized that is my worst suture pattern. It is really hard for me to keep my spacing apart and from the incision edge as well as making sure it's not too loose or too tight. 
I got home exhausted Thursday night after spending 2 days in surgery for 5+ hours and had to study for our first exam (only 2 weeks into school, but we had double lectures for that class so it was like 4 weeks of info and 2 weeks to learn it).  I think the exam went pretty well on Friday. About 11 my friend and I were starving so we skipped therio and went to pie five and it was delicious! We went back to school and I met with my fellow surgeons and wrote up or surgery reports. 
Oh I forgot to mention I may have accidentally picked up another 2 hour elective, systemic pathology. So after our surgery reports I got together with another group to discuss the case for that class. The professor had told us not to jump to conclusions because it probably won't be it and we all jumped on chronic kidney failure and just kept circling around thinking it wasn't going to be that, and ended up being exactly what it was. It was super frustrating at points, but also felt really good putting everything together and coming up with a diagnosis. 
My friend and I went and worked out after that and didn't do much because we were too stuffed with pizza. I came home, barely studied, and crashed. Yesterday and today I pretty much have just been studying. Guess I better get back to it for the surgery lecture final on Friday.

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