What could and should I be doing?

I have learned one thing that I never ever ever thought that I would learn in vet school.

I learned that I really love getting up early. Ok that's not true, but I do love the feeling of being a little ahead of the game. I am at school and I don't have class for another 50 minutes. While I really meant to use this time studying for micro anatomy (because cartilage is kind of a pain in the butt), I am instead blogging while  listening to Pandora.com and drinking my coffee. My life is hard.

I had my training meeting for After Hours Clinic Crew (AHCC), which I never explained because I had to take my test. Which kicked my booty by the way. Like hard. Physiology and I are going to have a major duel this block, but I will be the victor..I think

Anyways! AHCC is basically being an assistant when the ICU is not actually open. For example, from 5pm-7:30am and on weekends. There are 4 different shifts you can end up on and you get one shift a week. You will either work 5pm-12am, 11pm-7am, or be on back up which means you help with the major walking shift at 6:30am and then check in again at 4:15pm and stay if they need you or go home and get called back in at any point during the evening, and surgery on-call which means that you check in at 4:15pm and if there is nothing to do then you go home until you get called in. I don't get paid unless I get called in and there are half undergrads and half vet students working on the crew.

Most of the stuff they have taught me I already know how to do in some form, but the clinic I worked for in Ohio, was a) not high tech and b) not an overnight/critical care facility. So learning to check on patients and perform certain things every hour is a whole new ball game. I am really interested to see how my first shift goes (I'll know when that is soon). I am nervous for my first overnight because I have never worked over night before and because it is just you and a technician unless something bad happens. Eep!

Oh yea some of these animals are critical enough that we may have some on ventilators (like when a person is a vegetable and has a machine breathing for them) and that there is occasionally a "code". Yea like where something stops breathing and people are running all over and shouting stuff. Just like ER. Scary but still, win.

I am going to get to learn where everything is in the ICU and the surgery suites which will be so incredibly helpful when I get to clinics, because all the vet students start out a little lost. I mean you may know how to do a treatment on a dog, but if you don't know where the equipment is or if you don't know the technicians, it will be much harder. So hopefully I can spend that time practicing not killing things instead of learning where we keep the gauze. Notice that I am actually starting to worry about the vet care part of this and not just the school work?

Yea. It may have hit me recently that I will at some point be the one coming in to DO the surgery, not just open packages and get stuff....

But anyways....Mike and Harv were here this weekend which was so incredibly nice! It was so great to just hang out and show him my school. Which was a shit show because there was a vaccine clinic and there were dogs and cats everywhere. I brought Addie and she must have felt really crappy after because for the first time ever, she holed up under a bed and didn't come out for a good 8 hours. But she's over it now.

And my dog was very well behaved considering he is a 2 year old Aussie and runs very fast. He and my roommate's dog had a blast and he slept the whole way home.

Mike and I were so happy to see each other! This long distance thing is totally working but it was still so nice to have him around. I even got some minimal studying done, showing that I can do it while he is around, so that was nice to know. We are both ok being apart because we are so busy and we talk at least once but usually multiple times a day so I was okay with him leaving. Mostly. Okay I got a little teary eyed. The dog was looking at me like "hey mom, get in the car!". Okay so I was kind of pitiful for about 5 minutes, but I got over it I promise :-)

Now I am actually going to study because even though this is one of the few weeks we have with no tests, I have So. Many. Meetings. 5 meetings in 4 days plus a training session at Raptor Rehab. But at least it'll be fun.