I have a blog? Really?

Okay, so it turns out I'm almost as bad at blogging as I am at writing in an actual journal. Oh well - either way I'm mostly writing for me. I'm still not sure who I really want to read this, anyway.

Since I last posted, lots of things have happened. Finished core courses (and went to corresponding party, where I got all dressed up and drunk in the presence of many dinosaurs), went home, got awesome digital camera, gave Mom slightly less awesome digital camera, watched many dvds with family while it rained outside, borrowed the parental station wagon and drove over 5 hours all by my self. Survived my first two clinical rotations. I suppose I should write something about those four weeks. I was so scared before they started - had trouble sleeping the night before I left. But it turns out that I'm tougher than I'd thought. I usually am (except when I think I'm going to be super tough, at which point I generally fall apart).

Anyway, I moved into the dorm (not too bad - nice big kitchen, lots of fun nights in the tv room - but I missed my cat and I'm glad to be home) and started my first rotation - technically, Large Animal Emergency/Critical Care, but actually the high risk half of the LA Med rotation (I hit the overlap between old and new foundation requirements). All the other students in the group were also small animal types, and were really nice about helping me out during the first few days when I was confused and a little frantic. Going into detail about those two weeks is just way too boring, so I'll just say that we mostly took care of colic cases. I got called in for two colics in one night when I was on call, which kind of sucked, but luckily neither went to surgery, and both eventually got better and went home. One was a really cute miniature horse. Awww. I also had a really cool case of bovine endocarditis.

After that, I had two weeks on Field Service, which were pretty fun. I got to help with a bunch of LDA surgeries during my bovine week, which was awesome. I like suturing things. The cow week was more fun than the horse week, mostly because the clinicians who go out on bovine calls are really great. I did a case report on the cutest patient we saw: a calf named Elmo with pneumonia. The equine people are nice too, but are much more into the structured question-asking, which always makes me nervous, mostly because while I'm generally clueless, I'm even more clueless about large animals. Also making me nervous: the fact that I don't have any instinct about equine body language. I'm so used to animals that attack with their heads that I put myself in some danger a few times by standing too close to back legs. Luckily, I never got hurt.

So now I'm back home (yaaaay!) and two days into the oncology rotation. So far it's pretty good. I was nervous at first, of course (I have a feeling I'm going to be nervous before every rotation I do, 'cause that's who I am), but it's not as intense as a lot of other rotations, so it's a good way to ease myself into VHUP a bit. Many of the cases we're seeing are really sad (they do all have cancer, after all), but it's great to see how well most of them do with chemotherapy. It's not a specialty I could really see myself doing - I don't think I'm strong enough emotionally to deal with cancer all day, every day. I need some happy puppy visits to break up the sadness. It's really interesting so far, though, and the clinicians are good teachers. I've been doing really badly with all of my attempts to get blood from jugular veins, which is really frustrating, even though everyone's been nice about it. I'm hoping to do it successfully by the end of the week, because it's getting a little ridiculous. I just need a non-overweight, well-hydrated, well-behaved, short-haired dog. Is that so much to ask?

So here's a nice long post to make up for more than a month of blog silence. I'm going to try to post more often, because I know that getting my thoughts out is good for me, no matter whether anyone else sees it.