I passed!!!

Let us all now gather and dance a dance of joy!

Haha, seriously though, I passed the NAVLE. I found out a couple of weeks ago while on my internal medicine rotation. What a relief! Now all I have to do is get through the next few months of clinics and I'll be a real doctor once and for all!

The last few months have been very hectic for me both in my personal and professional life, hence the non-posting. I did get to spend quite a bit of time with my family over the holiday break, which was nice. Well, except for the giant fight we all got in before we even were in the same house together. But thats how my family rolls, we fight and yell but in that really loving sort of way. I also got to see my grandparents which was especially nice. My grandfather is not doing so great and we all are wondering how long it will be until something happens. I will say though, for a man who has two hip replacements, a pacemaker, lumbosacral disease, and blue legs (yes, you heard me, they're actually blue), he's doing pretty well.

My first rotation back on clinics was Orthopedic Surgery with a clinician who is notorious for keeping an insane schedule. On our busiest day (which was not much busier than a regular day) we saw 19 appointments between 9:30am and 12:30pm, 13 of which were new patient evaluations. That day I saw 5 evaluations, 4 of which ended up staying for surgery over the next two days. Yeah, I had 4 inpatients at once. Insane. Over those two weeks I had 8 surgeries that were mine, plus I scrubbed into several more that they needed help on. That's unheard of on this rotation. It was so much fun though. I love being busy and moving fast and I perform best when things are crazy. Plus I had an awesome team, Jimmy and Laura were so much fun and really on top of their game. Oh yeah, there were only 3 of us, no joke. I got to drill some stuff and I was even allowed to do the lateral imbrication on a medial patellar luxation repair. That was pretty neat since most of the time on Ortho you're not allowed to do anything. It was pretty sweet.

I moved onto vacation next. I took this time to travel up to the D.C. region to interview at some hospitals. It went well but I still don't know where I'm going and truthfully the whole story is a topic for another post. I'll just leave it at that for now.

As soon as I got back from interviewing I went straight to NAVC. As usual it was awesome. I stayed with a couple of girls from my class at a hotel provided by our SCAVMA. Apparently I've picked up some new sleep habits. I was sharing a bed with Gretchen and at one point I sat straight up in bed, yelled "I'll lick your face!", and then went back to sleep. I also got up and turned all the lights on at some point in the evening. The next night I got up and tried to get into bed with the other two girls in the room. I woke up as I was doing this and was totally freaked out. My nighttime antics have now become a running joke.

The conference itself was good though. I got to go to some good talks, saw my friend Stic, and had a great time at the evening activities. One of our soft tissue surgeons made me slap him in the face at our alumni reception. He made fun of me then told me he was bad and grabbed my hand to slap him in the face. It was weird. But hilarious.

Murray and Lexy stayed with my parents through most of January. And of course my mother left tons of stuff out for Murray to eat. He destroyed a sweater, sweatshirt, towel, blanket, gloves, and other items. The towel blocked him up for a while and my mom was so worried she would hover over the litter box waiting for him to poop. I knew he was going to be fine because he wasn't vomiting but my mother was sure it was going to be surgery #4.

The last two weeks have been spent on internal medicine. Which has been awesome. We were pretty busy and I took as many emergencies as I could get. I had a lot of interesting cases and my clinicians were amazing. I totally rocked out hardcore while on medicine and it didn't go unnoticed. Our clinician pulled me aside at the end of the rotation to tell me what a great job I did and how he expects to hear great things about me in the future. This particular clinician is the one who introduced me to Ettinger and one of the "godfathers" of internal medicine. He was part of the crew at AMC back in the '70's who went on to write all the books we know and love today. So to hear from him that he thought I was ready for practice really meant a lot.

Now I move on to dermatology. So I will have much more time to relax, post entries, and work on job stuff. I need to post some of the cases from my medicine rotation since they were so interesting. I know I'm a posting slacker, I hope you all will forgive me!

I know, I suck.

Okay, so maybe its been 2 months since my last post. My bad. I think there are a few reasons I haven't been posting. 1) I didn't think life during classes was that interesting, 2) I didn't think anyone was really reading this, and 3) I'd rather just forget about most of what's been going on than re-live it on here.

Maybe that was a little dramatic.

Classes. Not much to say about them. They've been relatively easy and our schedule has been ridiculously light. For example, I had the last two weeks off because I didn't have to take any of the classes being offered. And before that I was only taking two classes, both of which had take-home exams. Although, this week, it seems we have a more normal class schedule. I'm actually taking two classes now (oh the horror) and I start a third tomorrow. And yes, these classes all have real exams. Too bad my cat isn't as good at helping me study as he thinks he is.

And yet, I'm busier than I've ever been.

This whole being class president thing has really started to suck this semester. It started with pizza sales. Our class sells pizza every Friday to the school as a fundraiser. Which means I have to be the one to order the pizza, send out the emails, and beg my classmates to volunteer to sell it. I sold the pizza myself the first few weeks while I was getting everything settled. And once the ridiculous bitching and moaning were over I managed to get enough people to sign up for pizza sales to cover the semester. And so far its been going fairly well. But then, there's still Open House to deal with.

Oh yes, the Dreaded Open House.

See, this event isn't the worst thing in the world. Its one day where we set up some displays, invite some rescue groups to come show their dogs, have some demonstrations and have an all around good time. The problem is that the administration has put our open house entirely on the students. The planning of the event is a huge headache. The worst part is getting our class involved. See, "They" tell us that it is required for our class to participate. But there is no consequence or incentive for students to help out. Nothing happens to them if they just choose to not help. And since our class had to do Open House our freshman year (don't even ask about that one, its a long story) no one wants to do it again this year. The end result is that its like pulling teeth to get people to participate and that we don't even have enough people volunteering to run booths so that all the departments are represented. Its pretty much the biggest pain in the ass ever.

As if that wasn't enough I'm also working on a retrospective study this semester, "adopted" one of our blood donor mares (although, thats not much, we just go out and brush her once a week), I might start working a couple of hours a week taking care of a research dog, and am taking care of any other random class crap going on (which is more than you would think).

Its not all work and no play though.

I went to NAVC again this year. That was, as usual, awesome. Plus, I got a scholarship so I got to fly out to Las Vegas for the Western Veterinary Conference. That was also an awesome conference. I'm not going to lie, there are a lot of stories that have come from that trip. But you know what they say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas ;-).

Actually, while I was out in Vegas I made a connection with Dr. Ettinger (if you are reading this and are a vet student you probably know who this is, I call him the "all-knowing god of small animal internal medicine") and now I'm going to go out and do an externship at his practice. I'm so excited! Of course, that makes 4 externships I'm doing now over the summer. I'm not sure I'll ever actually be home. Luckily, my parents are moving to Atlanta this spring so they'll be close enough that I can bring my cats to them to watch. I'm not sure I've ever talked about my cats on here, that'll have to be another post.