More shadowing

Just a few more days of freedom. Winter break has flown by pretty quickly, as I suspected it probably would. Wednesday I was able to follow Dr. Brent Reimer, DVM, DACVS, as he went through his day as a surgeon. We saw a few clients, made some phone calls, and started in on the surgeries. The first one was an older golden retreiver with a degernative disease of the cruciate ligament. After lunch we came back and made it through the other three surgeries for the day. The next one was a scope surgery, then a mass removal, and the last one was a bilateral ear canal removal. Pretty cool stuff, if you are in to those types of things like I am.

Yesterday (Thursday) I followed Dr. Nestor again. I finally got to see him do some endoscopic procedures, trying to figure out what was wrong with a couple of dogs. There were also a few ultrasounds, client consults, and patient rechecks. I am hoping to get back down to the clinic to shadow some more, possibly over Spring Break. That would be sometime in March.

Well, Christmas Break is almost over. I start classes again on Monday, just a couple of days from now. Before that, though, I have a couple of shifts to work over at Best Buy. Tomorrow (Saturday) I work 6 hours and Sunday I believe it's eight. Not overworking, but I probably need some sleep in order to function well.

1/8

One semester down and seven to go. That doesn't sound very exciting. Maybe I should look at it as nearly 150 days completed. Sounds a bit better, I think. Finished out the semester pretty well, too. Finals weren't too terribly taxing, and I even ended up with a GPA between 3.0 and 4.0. Not bad for my "adjustment" semester. I anticipate performing even better in the semesters that follow. Other than a forgotten class survey (I'm sorry Dr. Booth) I didn't run into any problems.

Break has been nearly as hectic as the semester was. Best Buy upped my hours for the holiday season, which put me very close to 40 hours a week over that time. I faired well, though, and I have come through the other side nearly unscathed. I haven't been lazy in my off time; actually, on Monday of this week I went and shadowed Dr. Derek Nestor, DVM, DACVIM at the Animal Emergency and Referral Clinic down in Des Moines. All those letters just mean that Derek is a veterinarian who specializes in internal medicine. I also shadowed him over Thanksgiving break. I was actually able to observe/assist in a limited capacity on numerous ultrasounds, echocardiograms, chemotherapy treatments, client interactions, and examinations. It really was quite an experience.

Tomorrow (or I guess it is today, really) I will be shadowing Dr. Brent Reimer, who is the small animal surgeon who also practices at the clinic. I should be able to scrub in on 4 or 5 surgeries. Hopefully I'll get to see a TPLO, which is essentially an ACL repair technique. Anyway, hopefully more tomorrow after I get down with the shadowing.