Finally Friday! And honestly, despite the knowledge of the upcoming weeks of intensive exams and quizzes, it was a pretty good one. They're ALL pretty good weeks if you can manage to forget about how much studying you have to do!
The wetlab on Tuesday was awesome! There were several dog and cat cadavers there for us to practice the procedures on. We first learned how to perform thoracocentesis - a chest tap - which can be both diagnostic to confirm the presence of air or fluid in the pleural cavity or therapeutic to remove it. You have to count from the last rib toward the head to find the 8th intercostal (between the ribs) space. A syringe is then inserted at this space (you have to be careful not to hit the artery and nerves on the caudal/back edge of the ribs). If you lose negative pressure in the syringe, you've hit a pocket of air in the cavity that shouldn't be there which is called pneumothorax! We also practiced placing urinary catheters in both dogs and cats and venous cutdown, which is an emergency procedure performed when you can't find a vein to give medication in an injured, shockey, etc. animal. Learned a lot...plus it was great review for the anatomy quiz yesterday about the thoracic cavity!
The officer team for our class also held our first class meeting yesterday afternoon, which went great. Some of the students weren't too thrilled to be there for additional time after classes, but the overall mood at the end was positive, and it was definitely a success. Still have to finish up the meeting minutes and get those distributed to the rest of the class in addition to organizing the monthly birthday celebration for September and planning a gift for one of our anatomy instructors who is out on maternity leave. I also attended the officer's meeting for the internal medicine club (SCACVIM) where we discussed planning some wetlabs and case discussions for the next year - excited to get started!
And in not so great news...two exams next week that will be taking up most of my spare time in the coming days. Bacteriology and physiology, both of which are going to be tough. There's also a take-home exam for our evidence-based med class, but that doesn't really count. Plus I'd like to not fall super-behind in anatomy since we have quizzes and a huuuuuge exam coming up in just a few weeks.
Least I get to play with baby turkeys in TAU lab and hang out with some friends tonight before really getting started with all that stuff! :)
Also, in our careers seminar we had a talk yesterday about internships, residencies, and specializing. And holy cow, was it scary. I still think that specializing might be something I want to pursue, but now I'm scared to death about getting good enough grades and experience, brown-nosing enough to the right clinicians for letters, getting the "best" internship when geographical location will be more important to me (because of the boy), etc. Might plan a meeting with someone soon to talk through the steps and the whole process. I think I'm going to see if there's a way to shadow or assist a few of the specialties in the hospital over Christmas break to get an idea of what each is about. Too much to think about, and it's only first year!
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