Life after Vet School

My blog really dropped off there. I guess I owe everyone an update. I graduated in May and boy was I glad to be done. But also terrified. I didn't have a job and no prospect in the future. I searched for over a month and finally came across a clinic in small town about an hour west of Stillwater. It was backed up with cattle trailers and the older vet was semen checking some bulls when I pulled up. I asked his wife/receptionist/office manager if he might be hiring and it was like both their eyes lit up. They definitely looked exhausted. They told me to come back the next day for an interview. I did, and sat in a recliner in the clinic"lobby/office/storage" and talked with the old vet. We toured the meager small animal side and the more expensive cattle area with hydraulic tilt chute and alley, multiple pens, and a nice loading area. They said they'd hire me, pay insurance, and a small salary with hopes that I'd buy the clinic from them in the near future. I took a couple weeks to think about it and said yes.
So fast forward a couple weeks and we move in with my mother in law since it is about half the distance from where we were living. Now, I've got a 45 minute commute every day until I decided if I like the job, we can find a place to rent, and my husband can finish up his old job and find a new one. Well, the first day of working I was flooded with small animal cases which they said never happens and within the first week I had 3 parvo cases. I thought I was in over my head, but as the summer went on things died down and I settled in to things. I got frustrated not having a great bloodwork options, not having radiographs, and not having an autoclave, but I pressed on until I found a human hospital close by that would run same day or next day bloodwork, some vets to refer to for rads, and convinced the owners to get an autoclave. I've increased prices quite a bit, but haven't had the clients really react. Everyone for the most part is very nice. I spend most of my days getting cow poop under my nails, and most my evenings cleaning it out from under my nails... vicious cycle. I do almost all the small animal work and I enjoy it for the most part. I still have days of frustration when I wish I had a real tech or receptionist. Or when I have to drag 3 giant bags of nasty towels crapped on towels to my house and use my own washer to clean them. If I really do get the chance to buy this place I'm going to make a lot of changes/updates.
By the end of August we were really looking for a rental house and not having any luck started seriously thinking about buying one, which is terrifying. Fast forward to end of September, husband has found a great job, and we look at a house on a whim (the only house for sale in this small town) and put an offer in the next day. After a couple weeks of inspections which wasn't the greatest news and getting the sellers to put up more closing costs to cover the repairs we closed on Oct 20th and are official home owners, ahhhh. We've lived in the house for just over a month and still have barely any furniture, but we did rip out some old nasty, stinky carpet and some crappily mismatched tile and decided to stain concrete... and that was ummm, interesting. We got everything cleaned and patched (cause when you nail carpet board to concrete in leaves giant holes when you pull it up...) Here are some before, during, and almost finished pictures.

 The picture above is the den (which used to be a garage) that had the worst smelling carpet. I didn't get pictures of the awful mismatched tile in the utility room, just trust me, it was horrid.)

 Want to know whats under your carpet... this dirt. #dontusecarpet #worsethandrugs.

 And here's the lovely paint under the carpet... and carpet glue and awfulness... and the cleaning was the worst part... it always is...

 Here's the dog saying we are insane... and telling us to take out that rickety top step... so we did...

 A view of the mostly scraped clean utility room.

 So what you didn't see was the hours spent cleaning the floor with krud cutter, and then something much smellier, and using a shop vac to suck up the multiple water moppings... like 10 times... like until the water is clear... which takes forever when you see the nasty dirt that's under your carpet. Then, make sure you tape something over the walls to protect from over spray... unless you don't have baseboards and plan to paint after wards like what we plan to do in the utility room... someday, maybe... The picture above was after lightly mopping the floors and using a metal free garden sprayer to apply the first coat of acid stain (vivid acid stain in Jade.) It dries all crusty and ugly.

 Next I waited for it to dry, put plastic bags on my feet, and in between the jade, applied coffee colored stain and let it dry for about 6 more hours. I really wish I would have let myself wait closer to 8 or 10 hours. I like it darker. After that you take a couple tablespoons of baking soda per gallon  of water and either mop (I tried this first then got lazy) or just pour it over everything and then proceed with the water and shop vac until all the excess stain is up. It took 3 times for me.

 Here is one of my least favorite spots... it didn't take the stain up well.

 This is after it dried and before the first coat of acrylic concrete sealer.

 Same...

 The sealer looks whitish when you apply. I used a paint brush for the edges and a roller brush on a stick for everything in the middle. I could only find 3/8 inch nape which doesn't leave a completely smooth finish. Not sure if there is a finer one that would look better, but maybe.

 More sealing.

Last picture of the first coat of sealer. I went the other direction with the second coat, but for some reason it still has some streaks of this direction. Just really try to make sure you get your coats as even as possible. Maybe I''ll get a picture of it finished and furnished.

Our next step is to buy furniture... but after that we are going to put new vinyl planks down in the kitchen/dining room... maybe in a week or 2, but hopefully before Christmas. 

Writing a post in 4th year is hard.  You can't really talk about your patients and you have no life really.  And, well, the life I do have is just kinda sad. A few weeks after my husband lost his brother, his dad passed away.  So we've been adjusting to that.  His mom is all alone and out in the middle of no where which makes it hard since we live an hour away.  My husband wants to move out there but it he doesn't have a job close enough yet and we don't really have the money to buy a house out there.  I've tried setting up my preceptors for this spring closer to her house but I've only got one nailed down. Hopefully one of them turns into a job offer.
Since last writing I've finished small animal surgery, equine medicine, anesthesia, vacation ( + navle!), and shelter medicine.  We got our scores back for navle last week and I passed which is a huge weight off my chest! Currently, I'm sitting in small animal isolation with a Parvo  puppy.  Starting Tuesday I have small animal ICU which basically entails doing treatments all day long, followed by preceptor in Texas for 2 weeks, 4 weeks of preceptor I'm not sure where yet, equine medicine again as an elective, and then 4 more weeks of preceptor, a week break then graduation! I have no idea how it all happened so quickly but I'm almost done with vet school.  It's terrifying and exciting at the same time.  I doubt I'll keep up with this blog once that happens but we'll see.

Not sure where to start. It's been a while and my little family has been through some tough times. After finishing up diagnostics which I really enjoyed, I started small animal internal medicine. We started out pretty busy. In the first week one of my horses hurt herself so I had to doctor her up for several days. Then on September 11 I was stillwater my back up emergency shift when i got the call that my husband's brother, who was a police officer in Kansas, was killed when a drunk driver ran into his squad car during a traffic stop. This hit my husband's family hard since it was my husband's second brother he's had to bury. I took a couple personal days and we went to Kansas for a visiting where we shook the hands with so many people that were touched by my brother in law. It was so moving to know he affected so many lives. They had a memorial service the next day and I don't think there was a single person who kept it together. When I got back my rotation mates had got us flowers and a card which was really sweet.
I ended up with another all night emergency shift the next week and was finally able to leave at lunch for a shower and a nap. I feel like a learned a little but not a ton on that rotation, but after the funeral I was a bit unmotivated.
Next a moved to small animal surgery and man it has to be my least favorite rotation. I started out taking an in patient that was a dog who had back surgery. Those patients are a lot of work. Then the middle of the second week a took a TPLO on the sweetest dog ever who happened to be owned by a vet. On discharge the owner offered me a job at his clinic because I had such great client communication and a good knowledge base so that was awesome. It was in an area that i don't plan on going though, but still nice to get. After a week my first patient took some steps back and ended up staying another week. The second Monday of rotation we had another back injury dog come in and no one else would step up and take the surgery so I scrubbed in and had to do after care of another back dog. This one had a few things during surgery that gave it a pretty poor prognosis which sucked because the owners and the dog we very sweet. We decided to keep going anyway and after 2 weeks he really started to improve. When he was discharged the owner gave me a thank you card and picture of the patient. It's my first one and it really feels good to know that all my hard work was recognized. But man am I glad to be done with that rotation.
I'm on equine medicine now and I love being back in the barn. I'm working with my favorite resident so that's an added bonus. We had a pretty busy beginning of the week and my friend brought in a horse we were rechecking from her clinic so it was good seeing her. On Tuesday morning I hit a deer the way to school. It messed up the bumper and grill pretty good, but we only have liability on the truck so I don't know when we'll that fixed. Then a girl on my rotation was in a pretty bad car wreck that totaled her car and she got pretty beat up in the face, but was still able to come in. We've been euthanizing and sending several cases to necropsy so we've been watching those. Kinda sad cases too that were hard to see go.
I take my national boards the beginning of December which is terrifying and scary and omg! Then in just a few short months I'll be a doctor! I still can't believe fast everything has gone.

Quite a bit has gone down since my last post. My last evaluation for community practice was that if I kept going what I was doing I'd be a great vet and it felt so good to hear that. Community practice ended with a bang... I ended up switching my emergency from Sunday day to Sunday night on the last day of rotation with a student going on preceptor. Everything was going pretty slowly until about 10:30 and everyone and their dog came in, plus a bunch of wildlife exotics which I had to call the zoo/exotics student in for. I didn't end up getting to go home at all and started radiology rotation the next morning with zero hours of sleep so that was fun.
So my first day of radiology I spent the whole morning of orientation trying to stay awake. The sent me home at noon and I couldn't have been more grateful. The rotation was ok. I feel much better about reading and taking rads but it was all self study for the quizzes and then after them the radiologist would kind of round us so that was not so useful. We got to watch a ton of small animal ultrasound and the new radiologist was amazing going over them. I really hope she revamps the rotation for future students.
I had my grand rounds on the last Friday of this rotation. I was super nervous going into it, but it turned out really well.
I'm on diagnostics right now which is a daily mix of clinical pathology in the morning, followed by parasitology until lunch, then gross pathology in the afternoon. It's kinda hard to keep up with everything on this rotation since it's basically like 3 classes every day. The clin path portion we are assigned cases that include bloodwork, blood slides, and urine slides and we answer some questions as well take quizzes on then discuss as a group. It is a great review, but also frustrating at times. Parasitology the first week we just had visual quizzes then went over parasite life cycle and visual review, and then this week has been more case based. Next week we have individual parasite presentations. Mine's over cryptosporidiosis. Gross pathology is where we get sent euthanized or dead animals to dissect and check for lesions and take samples for culture or histopathology or whatever. I really enjoy that part but then we have to write reports and it kinda sucks cause every week we have a new resident that requires different things so it's like a new rotation every week. Only one week left of this"vacation" rotation and then I start small animal internal med. I'm definitely not looking forward to this but I've heard you learn a lot and that's the point of fourth year, right? Well I better get started on my presentation.

Over half way done with my fourth rotation. When they said 4th year flew by they meant it. I can't believe it's less than a month until the fall semester starts.
Equine surgery ended well I guess. We did have a few cool cases towards the end and I got to castrate and do a dental on a donkey as well as assist with a fibrotic myopathy surgery.
I got grade for my preceptor and I was very blind sided. I got OK marks on most things but did get quite a few C's. And one of the comments I got was that I was indifferent towards cases and lacked enthusiasm for involvement. I really wish they would have said something while I was there so I could have at least tried to improve, but only heard good things so I don't know. It also hit my really hard because I felt like one of the clinicians on my dog who passed away second year was completely indifferent towards her case and I never want to be that doctor. It didn't help that I'm on the rotation where I found out her diagnosis and had self assessments right after. More about that later.
So I'm on community practice now. It's OK but I prefer large animal for sure. Not really because of the cases, but more so because of the paper work and lack of urgency by the clinicians to get that checked and sent out to clients. I feel like I'm getting better at my routine in the room and getting more comfortable. On this rotation we have weekly quizzes over our daily rounds topics, an average of 4 papers we're supposed to read every day, and every thing from the previous week. Not to mention that we have to switch off walking blood donor dogs every day at 5pm and 10pm. Oh, and we rotate emergency schedules so we have the potential of being at school until at least midnight if not later. It is exhausting and then we get reprimanded for not being prepared for rounds every morning. We also have to video record most of our client interactions and assess ourselves, plus allow the rotation mates and clinicians to assess you together, so that's fun. Any way, back to the self assessments which we have every Friday. So the first week I got that evaluation back and then had to go self assess with one of the clinicians and told her that was what I needed to improve on apparently and that i guess I don't show enough empathy and she asked if I ever had a pet die and wham, all that emotion I'd been holding in about that experience with my dog just comes flooding out and I end up balling my eyes out and I'm not one to really cry so I'm really embarrassed at this point. Luckily she was cool about it and almost started crying with me and it was ok. I ended up getting to go to the lake with my family on Sunday and that was super fun! They got a new pontoon boat that is so much more room than the last few boats.
Everything went much better this week until about Thursday. That morning I felt like I got something in my eye so of course I just keep rubbing it like crazy. By that afternoon I'm convinced I've scratched cornea or something so one of my friends stains it and it was fine. So I like, better put my big girl panties on and suck it up. Well, the clinician tells me to go to the doctor that afternoon and I tell her if it is still bothering me in the morning I'll go. And guess what, the next morning it feels ten times worse. So after grand rounds I head up to the school's health services and get diagnosed with eye infection he gives me topical antibiotics and nsaids. It doesn't really help that much that day but this morning it felt tons better. I do have some cloudiness in the vision of that eye and if it's still there Monday I'll go to the optometrist.
From 8am tomorrow to 8am Monday I'm on back up emergency which sucks because I have to be within 15 min of the hospital and the person's house I normally stay out, she going to be gone until tomorrow night. So I guess I'm staying at the school working on stuff until then. I may go to the pool with another friend and her daughter for a little bit. And I also have to walk dogs tomorrow night so that'll be fun... hopefully I don't get called in.
In between everything else I've been having to prepare for grand rounds. I'm presenting over a cow case I had that we did surgery on so I've been working with the equine surgeon as well as a food animal clinician. It's going well so far. I present next rotation which is radiology. I've heard it's pretty laid back.

So I had planned on blogging after every rotation. Well, this being my 1st week into third rotation that obviously isn't happening. So I'll start from first rotation.
Food animal
Crazy, busy, learned a LOT, built some relationships with classmates I hadn't interacted with that much, and had so much fun. Some of my case highlights were a goat kid with congenital deformities, copper toxicity, llama injuries, pig hernia surgery, cow orthopedic surgery, goat c section, goat c section, goat c section (did I mention goat c section?), Lameness and foot trims on cows, and helping with other's cases. It has definitely been my favorite rotation so far and I absolutely loved my rotation mates. We worked our butts off and it was pretty structured, but the organization of the clinicians and house officers made things run smoothly which was nice.
Equine preceptor rotation 2
I was extremely nervous but very excited to leave the hospital for a bit. I think the nicest part was not being in charge of patients and just being done once I left for the day. One of my best friends is a tech there so it was super awesome getting to spend 3 weeks with her. I ended up staying with her at her parents house and it felt like good old times like in middle and high school having sleepovers. The doctors were pretty great to work with, but there wasn't a ton of case diversity. I saw a billion lamenesses (mostly mildly visible ones on high dollar horses), a few leg injuries, a couple medically managed colics, a couple foals with diarrhea, and a few mares that were eventually AI'd after ultrasound and syncing. It really showed me that I don't want to do exclusively equine. I'm not sure I could stand the monotony. On my last day, the head doctor called me into his office. They ended up giving me a thank you card and a check for working so hard and that they thought I was really knowledgeable for it only being my second rotation and invited me back any time I wanted. It felt so nice to actually be appreciated for hard work. It definitely made it hard to go back to the hospital.
Equine surgery rotation 3
I've been in this rotation a week. My only case so far was a horse that had been injured in the tornados early May and was just waiting for the owner to pick up. We did get to see a colic surgery already. It was intense. I'm so far not a fan of this rotation. I feel like nothing is organized and us as students end up hurrying just to wait around. We do have topic rounds every day but the clinician gets off topic and it ends up taking much longer than it should. I don't mind the rounds, but I feel like we are having to memorize things that only equine specialist would have to know. Maybe it is national board material or something and I'm just being complainy but when they want us to commit to memory non emergency equine specific drug doses I feel like that's a little much. Especially when they have us look up the doses, then tell us it's wrong and this other dose is what you should really use. I'm really glad I had an equine preceptor beforehand because it's helping me answer quite a few questions so I don't feel so stupid. We are on emergency 24 hours if there is a surgery. It's a little nerve racking and I wake up several times a night just checking my phone to make sure I didn't miss a call. Hopefully it gets better and we aren't sitting around so much. Monday we are supposed to be super busy so that'll either be fun or really stressful, but hopefully it goes ok. Well, I'll try to update more often, but don't get your hopes up.

Holy crap

I'm done with third year. This semester grade wise was a little worse than last, but wasn't awful. I can't believe I'll be in clinics on Monday. I start in food animal and my best friend is on equine surgery so we'll be on the same side of the hospital which is better than nothing. I opted out of ranch therio for my second rotation because we were told it was just turning into mare foaling watch and I decided my time would be better spent on off campus rotation. So, I'll be going to Sapulpa Equine and my best friend from middle school on up works there so I'm pretty excited about that. I'm super nervous about feeling stupid because I'll be doing a preceptor before I have any equine rotations, but hopefully they go easy on me. My friends on equine surgery and I are going to go over cases every night so we learn a little more than our own species first rotation.
Horse update... So Sly, the one that got diagnosed with eye cancer that we decided to treat conservatively with topical chemo had his recheck a couple weeks ago and they couldn't find any evidence of cancer! We stopped the chemo, but he's staying in the mask forever and we're rechecking on my third rotation in June. My mare that choked last year has pretty bad arthritis and it seems to be affecting her more. Hopefully she stays mobile until I graduate so I can decide whether to inject joints or put her down. The school is under a lot of financial constraint so they decided to take away all student discounts which is kind of ridiculous because it's not like they were losing money on us and now they'll be losing all student business.
My final anesthesias and surgery went really well. I fell really comfortable with surgeries now and hopefully I can continue with the success on my 4th rotation with community practice and in December when I have shelter rotation.
After finals we had 2 full days of financial/business management. The first day wasn't too bad, but by the second day we were all a little antsy and ready for our transition ceremony. We had that last Friday and my parents and pretend grandparents came as well as my husband. It was pretty nice and we all went out to texas roadhouse for dinner afterwards. The next day was my niece's first birthday party. I don't really understand first birthday parties but whatever. Tuesday we were supposed to have bad weather so my friend and her dogs came over and stayed the night since we have a cellar and nothing ended up happening.  Wednesday we ran up to the mall in OKC then came back and did yoga with one of the equine residents and ended up getting froyo afterwards with her and talking for over an hour which was pretty fun. Only 3 more days of vacation left and I didn't get half the things done I was hoping to. I rode a couple times this week, but it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow so that pretty much ruins the rest of vacation.
Well, wish me luck and I'll try to update with anything interesting.