First Year in Review

As I sat on the couch, watching Friends (there's a marathon of 'best of' episodes every night this week on Nick@Nite) and feeling at loose ends, I decided I would finally try tackling a VT recap post. Part of what I like about blogging is that it serves as a sort of record of fun and important life events; as such, I should have been posting about my adventures in school and the clinic as they happened. Such posting would have painted a nuanced picture of my life as a vet tech student that I could look back on with appreciation as an older person. As it stands now I'll have one big spotty post that doesn't do justice to the blood, sweat, tears, stress, nausea, excitement and accomplishment that went into the first year of school. I guess that's better than nothing, though, so I'll scrape the corners of my brain and try to assemble a coherent, informative post that covers the stuff I haven't already touched on in earlier posts.

First up, grades. This was the easiest thing to assemble so it gets to go first. :o) Not mind-blowingly awesome but not too shabby, either. I hope I can do as well in the coming year.

I guess I'll tackle the clinic next, since it's the toughest to encapsulate and if I don't do it now, I'll just babble on until the post is 18 pages long. You all know me: I hate change and stress out about things way before they start so you can imagine all of the hand-wringing and whatnot going on at Casa de McCauley in the days leading up to my first day at the clinic. Well, that behavior pretty much followed me through the first couple weeks (at least), albeit to a lesser degree, because I like the knowable and clinic work is intrinsically unknowable. You just never know what is going to happen on a day-to-day basis and I HATE that. A lot. That's the stupid thing about me - it's not that the work is too hard. It's the fact that I have no idea what is going to happen that causes my anxiety to kick up to 1000 and then I can't think clearly. I make the simplest tasks exponentially more difficult because I literally cannot think past the fog that invades my brain when I'm stressed. It's completely ridiculous.

My supervisor didn't exactly help my nerves when he told me on two separate occasions that the clinic would no longer be accepting first-year students; they wanted 'more experienced hands only.' I asked if there was anything specific being done (not just by me but by the other two first-year interns) so that I could, y'know, stop doing that. Rof assured me there was no particular incident that sparked the clinic to issue such a mandate but I didn't really believe him and was freaked out even more after that. The practice manager and doctors weren't too warm and fuzzy toward the interns (and neither were the other veterinary assistants, for that matter) but I came to discover that my fellow Foothill Firsties were having similar receptions at their clinics, so I tried not to let it bother me too much. And Rof was actually a good instructor for all my mental-ness; after a while he could tell that I was a very competent and detail-oriented person who was hindered by a tendency to become "a fly on the wall." So he pushed me to jump in and forced me to participate when I would otherwise let my fellow interns do things for me. But he was friendly and did so in a non-threatening way so I wasn't constantly running to the bathroom and crying. :o)  (He actually never made me cry at all. I know that sounds like a very sad statement to make sound like an accomplishment but with me, it is!) 

My internship course required me to spend 15 hours per week in the clinic and I lucked out with my choice of clinic because a lot of my friends basically did housekeeping duties for most of their hours. Rof pretty much let me jump right in from the get-go, so while I did do my fair share of laundry and restocking supplies, I also got to help restrain, administer medications to both patients and boarding animals, perform nail trims and 9-point exams, clean and wrap surgical instruments, observe surgical and dental procedures and even monitor anesthesia (with supervision, of course). I did lots of blood draws, administered lots of subcutaneous (SQ) fluids and was even working in the rooms by the end of the quarter. My clinic also has its own mini lab on-site so I got to perform blood analysis every so often, too. Everything scared me half to death most of the time but I took copious notes and muddled through. There was even the odd day when I would come home and excitedly tell Robert about something I'd seen or done. Those days were his favorite.

There are two stories that stick out in my mind with regard to my time at the clinic and I have actually already done a little write-up on them both (for a class assignment). They're not long and they're not the best samples of my writing ability but if you're interested, they do give a little peek into what kinds of things I encountered as an intern.

I witnessed my first euthanasia today (in just my second week at the clinic) and it was hard. I have never had to put any of my own pets down; Ziggy, my only childhood pet (a Cocker Spaniel), was put to sleep while I was away at college so I was not present for the event. When I was asked if I wanted to assist with retrieving the dog from the room, my immediate reaction was to say ‘no’ but I knew I was going to have to do it at some point so I let out a teeny, tiny ‘yes.’ It was awful; the entire family was in the room and the three young children were literally lying across the dog on the floor, crying, when we entered.  It took every ounce of willpower I had not to burst into tears at the sight of the weeping children.  We put the dog on the stretcher and took it into the back; the family didn’t want to be present and part of me thought that was selfish while the other part understood. Molly was given a handful of wet food before the catheter was placed and just like that, she was gone. I petted her as much and as long as I could, then I had to excuse myself and cried in the utility closet. Watching her die was hard enough but the sight of the techs basically dumping her body into a bag and carting her off to the freezer was just too much. I know that’s what has to be done and I know it will (unfortunately) be commonplace soon enough but the first one was tough to take. It really makes me question if I have the personality to succeed in this profession.

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Good grief! Another sad one today. When I came in this morning I was excited to see that Savannah’s cage was empty – I assumed she’d gone home as planned. But as it turned out she’d taken a turn for the worse yesterday and had to be euthanized. I am heartbroken. Savannah had come in on Tuesday with a GI obstruction. She’d had two surgeries for the same condition in the past but the owners went ahead and had the doctors perform a third. Almost a pound of stuffed toys were removed from her abdomen! It was a long surgery and I was somewhat perplexed when the owners then wanted her to have a prophy performed on top of all she’d had done. Karen was in charge of her anesthetic recovery but over the next couple days I helped with her care. I coaxed her out for walks and spent a lot of time cleaning her and her cage, as she suffered from uncontrollable bowels for quite some time after the procedure. She always seemed depressed and a couple of times had a hard time getting out of her cage. She tried to walk on the tops of her paws, which made me nervous that she’d suffered some neurological damage while under anesthesia. After a few minutes we’d be able to right her, though, so I was optimistic that she’d be all right. When I left my shift on Friday night she seemed so much better – she was finally having firmer bowel movements and was eating more normally. She hadn’t thrown up for a day so the doctor said Savannah would likely get to go home sometime over the weekend. (Her owners had come to visit her several times over the past few days, which I thought was awesome.) Earlier I had overheard the vet talking to my supervisor and saying that these kinds of procedures often developed complications on the third or fourth day but I was willfully naïve and assumed Savannah would be fine. But she started bleeding internally on Saturday afternoon and nothing further could be done. I’m glad she’s not suffering but was still caught off guard by her passing. This was a sad Sunday indeed.

I know both of those were major bummers of stories but I got to see some cool stuff, too, I promise! I got to see a cat tooth extraction that was pretty great but you probably wouldn't be as interested in gum-slicing and tooth chiseling... ;o)

Yikes. Even with editing this post has amounted to quite a bit, hasn't it? I suppose I will lop it off here, then; I think you guys have a fair idea of how my actual classes went. School has its own stressors and the like but book learning really can't prepare you for real world experience. We are required to perform more and more complex duties with each successive quarter so I have a feeling I will be nauseous for the next 9 months. Actually, if I make it past the fall (Clinical Pathology and Radiology) and winter (Anesthesia - it scares the bejesus out of me already) quarters, I think I'll be in the clear. I hope.