The Week in Review

     SAT.&SUN.:  I likely spent a total of 12-14 hours studying at the Pitt School Rd. Starbucks.  What I like about studying somewhere like Starbucks is that it allows you to fool yourself into thinking you aren't the saddest person on the face of the earth.  Why is this?  1. You aren't holed up in your house and are therefore usually forced to wear socially appropriate attire (i.e. you have to get out of your pajamas).  2. The people around you are at least going through the motions of normal life.  This allows you to somehow feel that you too are a part of normal life.  The harsh reality is felt most acutely when they actually leave the shop, and you remain.  3. You offer yourself something to look forward to in the form of both helpfully caffeinated and delicious beverages.  So there I sat, spending the majority of the weekend in denial, while studying both for surgery and the surgery and anesthesia final.

     

     MON:  Surgery day.  It is possible that in light of performing surgery the universe bestows on one a measure of confidence that they should not normally have.  That is how it came to be that it wasn't until I was scrubbing in for my surgery, my cat anesthetized by Dr. Surgeon-Anesthetist Jones, my assistant Dr. Surgeon-Anesthetist Smalls scrubbing in beside me, that the question finally came to me, "What the hell am I doing?"  I turned to Smalls, "Am I about to do surgery?" "Yes you are," she said with way too much confidence in me.  Apparently the universe gives other people confidence for you too.  

     I entered the OR and all that I could think was, "Act like you've seen other surgeons act."  So I asked Jones how the patient was.  The patient was stable.  I asked Smalls for my scalpel and I opened my patient's abdomen.  Luckily, that's what I was supposed to do.  I had a brief moment of panic when I struggled to exteriorize the bladder.  After that, Smalls and I followed the steps and before I knew it, I was putting in my last skin suture.  What a rush.

     

     TUES:  Surgery and Anesthesia final.  Not as bad as I was expecting considering it covered 6 labs and 20 lectures.  That night, exhausted as I was I went out to Sushi with some friends.  Several people in the class were celebrating birthdays and it was a great opportunity to have some fun, some good food and catch up with my friend Marianne.  Sushi was followed by a trip to the best frozen yogurt I've ever had, Yolo Berry.

    WED.&THUR.:  Two days of 8am to 5pm class.  Both of which ended with Neurology lab.  Neuro isn't my favorite subject to begin with and Thursday's neuro lab was an evil disguise for what was actually 3 hours of lecture.  

     FRI.:  Friday was a light class day.  So I took Poppy for a run in the late morning around our orchard and then came back to school for my afternoon Ophthalmology lab.  The lab was held in the OR suite and we were welcomed by the site of each table proudly displaying a dog's head.  Only the head.  We performed a total of 6 procedures.   The most involved was a lateral enucleation.  In this procedure, you remove the entire eyeball.  Yah, it was a little creepy but also sort of fun.

     SAT.:  I spent the day with other students and some awesome doctors in Glen Ellen performing equine dentistry on horses at a Thoroughbred rescue farm.  I am still incredibly sore from wielding the mighty power floats that we use to take down the points on the horse's teeth.  It is a lot harder than it looks to do dentistry, but I feel like I started to get the hang of it towards the end.  

     SUN.:  Saw a painful return to my pilates workout video.  My goal this time however is quite different than in times past.  Previously, I was seeking to look good.  Well, mission accomplished.  Ha ha, just kidding.  Seriously though, I need to have a strong core for the kind of veterinary work I'm going to do in my life.  So I'm getting ready.  I also went to see the new Harry Potter movie with my roomy.  It was awesome.  The best one yet.

So in Summary: Starbucks, first surgery, surgery&anesthesia final, sushi, friends, frozen yogurt, lecture, neurology, running, removing eyeballs, equine dentistry, movie, pilates and soreness (i.e. an average week as a UCD vet student).

The Results of My First Cat Spay