I'm starting to immitate the life of my cats.

So I haven't posted in a while and the main reason has been, well, there hasn't been much to post about. Because I'm only taking 7 credits of actual class this semester (I know, you hate me) I don't have class until Sept. 24 (which also happens to be my 25th birthday . . . but that's a whole other issue). Actually, I lied. I did do a couple of things.

I took an extra clinical rotation during two of the weeks I didn't have class. I decided to take Oncology again, and will probably take it for a third time when we go back into the clinic in January. I really like cancer. Maybe that came out wrong . . . I should say, I like treating cancer. The fact that we can help animals that would otherwise be condemned to death with drugs that we use in humans is pretty cool. Chemotherapy rocks my world. The best part is that you don't have to be a specialist to do chemo. You can do it in your general practice if you feel qualified. Somewhere in the future I would like to start a chemo clinic at whatever practice I'm at. Some of these patients need weekly chemo, why send them to a specialist that may be hours away if you can administer the drug yourself? Granted, it's slightly more complicated than that but as long as they still have white blood cells they're usually good to go.

Speaking of which, for the first time I lost a patient and had a moment of panic that it was my fault. A cat came in that was in clinical remission from lymphoma. He had had a reaction to vincristine (wooo peripheral neuropathy!) so he was set to get vinblastine instead. I calculated the dose, placed the catheter, and pushed the drug. Then I come in on Monday and find out that my little lymphoma kitty had died in the ICU the night before with a WBC count of 250 and a neutrophil count of 30. Yes, that's right 30 neutrophils running around his little body. So, naturally, I freaked out, checked my doses like 6 times and then came to the conclusion that it wasn't my fault and that is all part of the chemo game. Well, I found out later that he actually presented because he had neuro signs and the necropsy showed a rather large mass in the CNS. So maybe it wasn't the chemo that killed him. I still felt bad.

Okay so that was 2 weeks. What have I been doing since then? Well, to be honest, not a whole lot. I've been sleeping in, working out, and in general just being pretty lazy. I have started studying for boards (again, a whole other issue) and am working on my job search.

By the way, D-day is December 8th. The fateful day I take my board exam. Still a little weirded out by that.