Turns out that my last post was my 200th post on this blog - woo! I'm glad I've been able to stick with it throughout vet school...I imagine one day I'll want to look back at my old posts and chuckle at my perceptions of the future. It's cute enough to look back at my pre-vet self trying so hard...imagine how I'll feel looking back at these posts about rotations, residency, etc. Life never goes according to plan, but I can hope it at least goes in the general desired direction.

Community practice is coming to a close this week. We have a day off tomorrow for Canada Day (the equivalent of the Fourth of July) and Friday will be a "Cat Action" day where we spay and neuter a bunch of cats that are either feral or owned by people who don't have the resources to get their pets spayed or neutered through the school "normally". So really, it's two days left of the rotation, one of which will be consumed (for me) by a "normal" cat spay.

I don't know if I've said this (I probably have, more than once...) but I really don't like surgery. I don't mind anesthetizing animals and I don't mind the sight of blood, guts, tissue, etc. I just don't like doing something so flipping important (removing internal tissue, causing bleeding) when I have very little experience with it. I like to see what I'm doing, have someone more knowledgeable confirm that I'm doing it right, and then do that thing very, very carefully. Keeping the incision small and reducing handling of the tissues is important for the animal, which means breaking tissue (the suspensory ligament, in a spay) that you can't actually see very well. Yikes. And when one of the biggest goals of surgery (aside from you know, removing the important parts) is to get in and out as quickly as safely possible...well, that doesn't jive with my approach to new skills. I like to go slowly and ask, "Is this right? Are you sure?!" at least forty-seven times. I'm sure my clinicians are going to be driven to the brink with my need for confirmation and assurance. I've promised myself I will try so very hard to be confident (and part of that will be a ton of preparation, reading, etc) but I'm freaking out about it on the inside. And I will continue to freak out about it until I either do a bunch all at once and finally feel confident in my ability...or I'll just always freak out about surgery ;)

At times like these, I repeat what has become my rotations mantra: fake it 'til you make it. Have I ever done an abdominocentesis in a cow? Hells no. But I will pretend as though I'm not mentally freaking and I will do it. What about a cystocentesis in a cat? Haven't done that either, but here's my cool-as-a-cucumber mask that I shall wear to perform this procedure. Can you run these QATs for me for this unstable emergency patient? OhmygodIneverlearnedthisPANICNOW says my brain, but outwardly I smile and nod and figure it out. And I've found that clinicians have yet to ask me to do something I can't figure out; it's all in my brain and it just takes pushing myself to get it done. I've surprised myself plenty of times and it's only been five weeks!

Well, I can finally say I've completed my first rotation! Manged to get crypto at the end of it (which is the most miserable I've been since I had the flu for a week last semester) and I have barely gotten out of bed since when I left early Friday and have eaten almost a whole section of honeydew from a grocery store fruit tray since Thursday at lunch. But my patient from last Friday who was facing a pretty poor prognosis is looking amazing and I couldn't be happier about that :)

So now I've had a shower, filled up my water bottle with warm water to make my stomach pain subside and crawled into bed for my nap. The windows are open, it's raining outside and I feel cozy. I've looked at what I need for my next rotation tomorrow (community practice) and I'm appalled that I have to wear a real bra instead of a sports bra and real pants instead of shorts under my coveralls and real shoes instead of rubber boots. Such is life, though.

Fourth year is tough. Starting on a medicine rotation has been demanding but manageable. After a while though (okay, it's been two weeks...) the long hours catch up to you. I'm a delicate flower when it comes to sleep anyway, so staying at the large animal hospital until 11pm isn't exactly my idea of a restful evening. Last weekend I was fortunate enough to have a bum weekend where I could sleep in, be worthless, etc. This weekend has been the opposite: at school until nearly midnight on Friday night, at school for half the day today, rounds tomorrow morning so no sleeping in and working the evening shift until 11pm. And then it's Monday. Suffice to say I feel a bit cheated right about now.

Anyway, as I suspected it's tough to write a decent blog post about life when you're essentially bubble wrapped in patient confidentiality. I'm learning a lot, though: how to think like a real doctor, how to use doctor words, how to communicate, how to do a ton of different technical procedures, how to manage on little sleep and smelling like cow...I'll sure be happy when my less intense rotations come around.