First Spay today!

Whoops, I've already failed on my attempt to keep this thing updated. Started getting the hate text messages yesterday so I figure it's about time.


Third year has been insane the last few weeks. We had two exams last week: Surgery midterm and GI exam 1. Surgery went well, very straightforward, very fair. GI, well, haha- lets put it this way. There's a disclaimer in the notes that warns that we will get lower grades in this class than any class before it... and yep, that's pretty much right. He gave a 10 point curve right off the bat (THANK GOODNESS!), so the grade in the end is okay. Oh well. At least there are a few more grades in that class.


Over the weekend K, T, A, V and I went to the little fall festival at Sinkland Farms in C'burg. It was a nice break from studying- beautiful weather and the start of fall. We're going to go back at the end of October to pick some pumpkins before Parent's Weekend. Sunday Tahlia went to the DogSwim at my apartment complex. She was one of only three dogs to even get in the pool- everyone else just ran around like crazy people until their owners would toss them in. Crazy golden retriever.

This week continued the insanity. Monday we had a bone marrow biopsy lab for Small Animal Clin Tech. It was sort of stressful, because there wasn't a whole lot of preparation and we were sort of thrown back into anesthesia/pain management, something alittle fuzzy for most of us. Two of my group did BM bx, and then we all did joint arthrocentesis (joint tap) and lymph node biopsies. I was in the first section, and we were supposed to recover our dogs and then go to our afternoon Communication Skills butttt our dog Velma had other ideas. It took her almost 2 full hours to recover (we had given IV morphine for pain control) and eventually the staff had to reverse her to get her to wake up. So we missed the Comm Skills Lab and actually had to sort of do it in the lab, while recovering our dog.

Tuesday was the public health exam, which went suprisingly well. I say suprisingly because his questions have been getting more and more challenging through the years... and most of us had zero motivation to study given our hectic schedule this week. Tahlia also decided it would be a good time to get sick, prompting a good clean up of the apartment- evidently pool water does not agree with her. Poor puppy- she was fairly miserable... as was I.

Tuesday evening we had our pre-surgery exam for today's spay. That went well- our group works really well together and J had done a lot of the physical exam by the time we had gotten there. Our dog is super cute and very well mannered, more than I can say for some of the other dogs in the lab. We came back early this morning to check on her again and walk her.

I'm the anesthetist today, which I'm pleased about. I did a lot of it over the summer, and while I'm still very nervous, I feel prepared. It'll be good to have a lower-key role this first lab I think, to get an idea for how everything works and get over some of the initial anxiety. We'll start preparations around noon today, and hopefully be done by 5. Then I have a group meeting, check on the dog this evening, then home to collapse in my bed!!! Tomorrow I have to come in early again to check on our surgery dog, then it's my day to care for/medicate our bone marrow dog Velma both in the morning and tomorrow evening.

Let's just say I can't wait until Friday- entire day off :)

Okay, time to go calm down before surgery- wish us luck!!