Finals week left in my vet school career! Made it through this one alive and did well this semester. I still find myself comparing my grades to others and it makes me feel like crap sometimes. I know I shouldn't, but up until vet school I was always on top and now I'm not and it kind of sucks. I just have to suck it up and tell myself they worked harder than I did and deserve the grades we got.
I had my 28th birthday on Saturday and my mom got her friends, my sister in law, my friend, and me tickets for the nutcracker ballet. It was so beautiful and reminded me of going with my mom as a child.
In other news my friend and I went down to Jr surgery on Monday to get more experience in and I got to help with a couple spays and neuters and a cherry eye on a cute little beagle puppy. I didn't get to do a lot in the surgeries because the 4th years were almost done with the rotation and wanted to get as many surgeries as they could. On Tuesday we went to OKC and walked around the national cowboy and western heritage museum. It was really cool and had spectacular paintings. After that we went to the OKC outlet shops. They were okay, but our feet were pretty tired. We went by the mall after that and came home and I crashed. Yesterday we went back to surgery and I assisted on a couple neuters and a spay.
We finally got our 4th year schedules on Friday. It is exciting and terrifying to have our final year all planned out. I ended up with everything I asked for. My best vet school friend and I have all our electives together, but that's it. We have ranch therio, shelter, ambulatory, and ophtho. I still need to get my preceptors scheduled out, but they're not until March 2017 so I have a while.
We still don't have our schedules for next semester but I got both my electives, food animal surgery and advanced equine techniques 2. I'll be pretty busy still though because I have 10 surgeries left for small animal.
Next week and the week after I'll be pretty busy working overnights. But my last night is the 30th and I'll be done with the job! I don't have a lot planned for the break, except just sitting around and it will be glorious!
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Finals week is upon us...
I know everyone has been on the edge of their seat waiting for me to update... Sorry, I've been busy. Like busier than I've ever been in my life! I've already finished up a couple classes. First was my advanced equine techniques. That class was amazing! So much hands on. We got to practice suturing on some cadaver legs, bandaging and hoof casting (on real horses), practice rads, Abdominocentesis, passing nasogastric tubes, placing jugular catheters, and I'm sure I'm missing more. The weekend after we learned ng tube passing a colic horse was in the hospital for my overnight shift and the resident let me pass the tube. It was super exciting!
My systemic pathology elective turned out to be so helpful. It really cemented in common bloodwork abnormalities and clinical signs and coming up with differential diagnoses. I'm so glad I took it.
Bovine therio is also over as of Monday. We got to palpate more and ultrasound, as well as doing a breeding soundness exam on a bull (I'll spare you the details on that one) and do a tuberculosis test. Also, a guest lecturer came and talked about regulatory medicine and meat inspection and while I know that wouldn't make me happy in the long run it's really good money and set hours so I guess I'll keep that option open. The final went well, especially since it was a grade your own final.
All the while we were finishing up the cadaver portion of junior surgery. That ended well and the lab final went better than expected. We got to perform a dental, a hard and easy tooth extraction, dental nerve blocks, a temporary tarsorrhaphy, an eyelid tumor removal, an enucleation, half a spay and scrotal castration, and an intestinal resection and anastomosis. I've also learned how lucky we are to get to do cadaver surgeries at our school (explanation to come.)
Test wise, everything has been going pretty well. I bombed the first toxicology test, but got my head out of my ass for the next two and got mid to high A's. We finished musculoskeletal and the second test and final brought my grade down to just below an A :(. Next Monday we have dermatology, Tuesday ophthalmology, Wednesday theriogenealogy, and Friday toxicology.
Yesterday I had my first assistant surgery on live dogs. Nothing went wrong, but things could have been better (disclaimer: in no way am I putting any school down, just highlighting the advantages of my school and the confidence they have helped instill in me.) So, my primary surgeon walked in and was a 4th year from Ross on her first rotation (which is shelter medicine where you pretty much just do spays and neuters from shelters in the area all day for 3 weeks and I hope to get selected to be in that next year). She had never performed a spay and neuter on a cadaver, much less a live animal and had little to no confidence. She was unsure of how deep to go on the scrotal incision and how to push the testicle out so I had to somewhat instruct her. On the spay she couldn't find the uterus so the instructor let me get it with the spay hook, avulse the suspensory, and ligate and cut the first ovarian pedicle. I had to help along my primary with the rest of the procedure. Upon closing she couldn't get the right amount of rectus sheath without getting muscle and took forever to close a 4 cm incision just on the body wall. I got to close the subQ layer and she was suppose to do the intradermal layer but was unsure of where to place the suture so I did the first throw working towards my dominant hand (which isn't the easiest). She still wasn't getting it and the procedure was getting pretty long and the instructors were getting impatient since we were the last table still going. She finally got it closed and we added some extra skin glue just in case. After she left I had to stick around to discharge our patients to the proper shelter and the instructor found me and told me how good I did and how patient I was with her. It felt really good. I've never thought of myself as a super confident person. One of my professors gave us a speech Friday about how when she started practicing she was all alone and had to do so many things she'd never seen or done but she was a doer. It might not have been perfect, but she got the job done because she was confident in herself. That has to be my motto from now on. With our advanced equine class I walked in with confidence and performed a lot of things first try. I had to walk into surgery like that because it could have been a total disaster if one of us didn't step up. (That's the end of my I'm proud of myself speech). After surgery, I came home, slept until 2am then had to work from 330am to 8 am. I got some good studying in though, but had to mess with some babies with nasty diarrhea.
I'm sure a lot of people heard about it, but OSU experienced a major tragedy during the homecoming parade this year. Well, one of the sorority/fraternity groups put on a memorial run to support the medical cost of the victims and my friend and I decided to run. It was pretty fun and we kept pretty good pace with everyone in our heat.
A couple weeks ago the college held its veterinary fall conference for continuing education and one of our classes required attendance so we went and listened to a lecture the first day. The second day we were required to go, our other classes that day said we could stay and skip, but instead my friend and I only went for a couple hours then went down to OKC for the quarter horse world show. There wasn't a lot going on so after looking at the trade show we went to the mall where we just goofed off and tried on fancy, expensive dresses, ate at the food court, and got a crap ton of candy. It was so nice to just get away and do something pointless and fun. We decided to go back after finals and visit the cowboy and western heritage museum, the mall again, and maybe the outlet shops.
A couple weeks ago I saw a flyer at school that the parasitology dept was rehoming a bunch of research cats so I got in touch with them and adopted... 3... I'm not proud, but they were free (cost them $1000 per cat), they were spaying and neutering them, as well as heartworm and flea and tick prevention. I am using these as barn cats, but keep in mind these cats have never seen daylight before so it has been an interesting adjustment. There are 2 boys and a girl. They started out in the paved part of the barn for about 2 weeks and have recently expanded to the horse part. Dirt and horses were terrifying at first but they're getting better. Well, the boys are, they girl just hides constantly. We let them outside for the first time Thursday for a bit and they really liked it. Hopefully we can let them out full time soon.
And last but not least, my ole trusty truck took a crap on me so the hubs and I traded it in for a low mileage diesel. Not really wanting payments right now, but we knew the day was coming so we held out until a really good deal came along.
Well, that's all I can think of for now...
My systemic pathology elective turned out to be so helpful. It really cemented in common bloodwork abnormalities and clinical signs and coming up with differential diagnoses. I'm so glad I took it.
Bovine therio is also over as of Monday. We got to palpate more and ultrasound, as well as doing a breeding soundness exam on a bull (I'll spare you the details on that one) and do a tuberculosis test. Also, a guest lecturer came and talked about regulatory medicine and meat inspection and while I know that wouldn't make me happy in the long run it's really good money and set hours so I guess I'll keep that option open. The final went well, especially since it was a grade your own final.
All the while we were finishing up the cadaver portion of junior surgery. That ended well and the lab final went better than expected. We got to perform a dental, a hard and easy tooth extraction, dental nerve blocks, a temporary tarsorrhaphy, an eyelid tumor removal, an enucleation, half a spay and scrotal castration, and an intestinal resection and anastomosis. I've also learned how lucky we are to get to do cadaver surgeries at our school (explanation to come.)
Test wise, everything has been going pretty well. I bombed the first toxicology test, but got my head out of my ass for the next two and got mid to high A's. We finished musculoskeletal and the second test and final brought my grade down to just below an A :(. Next Monday we have dermatology, Tuesday ophthalmology, Wednesday theriogenealogy, and Friday toxicology.
Yesterday I had my first assistant surgery on live dogs. Nothing went wrong, but things could have been better (disclaimer: in no way am I putting any school down, just highlighting the advantages of my school and the confidence they have helped instill in me.) So, my primary surgeon walked in and was a 4th year from Ross on her first rotation (which is shelter medicine where you pretty much just do spays and neuters from shelters in the area all day for 3 weeks and I hope to get selected to be in that next year). She had never performed a spay and neuter on a cadaver, much less a live animal and had little to no confidence. She was unsure of how deep to go on the scrotal incision and how to push the testicle out so I had to somewhat instruct her. On the spay she couldn't find the uterus so the instructor let me get it with the spay hook, avulse the suspensory, and ligate and cut the first ovarian pedicle. I had to help along my primary with the rest of the procedure. Upon closing she couldn't get the right amount of rectus sheath without getting muscle and took forever to close a 4 cm incision just on the body wall. I got to close the subQ layer and she was suppose to do the intradermal layer but was unsure of where to place the suture so I did the first throw working towards my dominant hand (which isn't the easiest). She still wasn't getting it and the procedure was getting pretty long and the instructors were getting impatient since we were the last table still going. She finally got it closed and we added some extra skin glue just in case. After she left I had to stick around to discharge our patients to the proper shelter and the instructor found me and told me how good I did and how patient I was with her. It felt really good. I've never thought of myself as a super confident person. One of my professors gave us a speech Friday about how when she started practicing she was all alone and had to do so many things she'd never seen or done but she was a doer. It might not have been perfect, but she got the job done because she was confident in herself. That has to be my motto from now on. With our advanced equine class I walked in with confidence and performed a lot of things first try. I had to walk into surgery like that because it could have been a total disaster if one of us didn't step up. (That's the end of my I'm proud of myself speech). After surgery, I came home, slept until 2am then had to work from 330am to 8 am. I got some good studying in though, but had to mess with some babies with nasty diarrhea.
I'm sure a lot of people heard about it, but OSU experienced a major tragedy during the homecoming parade this year. Well, one of the sorority/fraternity groups put on a memorial run to support the medical cost of the victims and my friend and I decided to run. It was pretty fun and we kept pretty good pace with everyone in our heat.
A couple weeks ago the college held its veterinary fall conference for continuing education and one of our classes required attendance so we went and listened to a lecture the first day. The second day we were required to go, our other classes that day said we could stay and skip, but instead my friend and I only went for a couple hours then went down to OKC for the quarter horse world show. There wasn't a lot going on so after looking at the trade show we went to the mall where we just goofed off and tried on fancy, expensive dresses, ate at the food court, and got a crap ton of candy. It was so nice to just get away and do something pointless and fun. We decided to go back after finals and visit the cowboy and western heritage museum, the mall again, and maybe the outlet shops.
A couple weeks ago I saw a flyer at school that the parasitology dept was rehoming a bunch of research cats so I got in touch with them and adopted... 3... I'm not proud, but they were free (cost them $1000 per cat), they were spaying and neutering them, as well as heartworm and flea and tick prevention. I am using these as barn cats, but keep in mind these cats have never seen daylight before so it has been an interesting adjustment. There are 2 boys and a girl. They started out in the paved part of the barn for about 2 weeks and have recently expanded to the horse part. Dirt and horses were terrifying at first but they're getting better. Well, the boys are, they girl just hides constantly. We let them outside for the first time Thursday for a bit and they really liked it. Hopefully we can let them out full time soon.
And last but not least, my ole trusty truck took a crap on me so the hubs and I traded it in for a low mileage diesel. Not really wanting payments right now, but we knew the day was coming so we held out until a really good deal came along.
Well, that's all I can think of for now...
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