The 'rents just called to tell me that they are looking at renting a cabin at a state park for a couple of the days that I am up there and that they are hopefully going to take the entire week off for while I'm up there! :-D Weeee!! I'm really looking forward to some good hiking and swimming. So a list of my current activities that we have planned:

1. Haircut at fancy salon.
2. Massage at day spa with Mom.
3. See movie 'Mamma Mia' with Mom.
4. Swimming and kayaking at the lake near the house.
5. Two nights at a cabin a couple hours north of the house with good hiking and swimming. I'm sure there will be a fireplace to enjoy.
6. Plenty of relaxing dinners.
7. Coffee with my Mom in the morning (when I make coffee in the morning on the weekends, I always think of drinking it peacefully with my Mom on the couch or the patio instead of drinking it in my to go mug on my way to school).
8. Plenty of sleep and lounging around.

If they are going to take that entire week off, I'm sure there will be more fun to be had. My Mom talked about going shopping and/or driving to Charlotte (their house is about 20 miles north of there) for half a day or something for fun. I'm so freaking excited!! I am counting the days and I don't know if I'll be able to concentrate at all for the remainder of radiology ;-) Just five more days to get through and I'll be there.

( fooding and exercise )

I bought a new bathing suit today that I quite like. I need to try it on again one more time just to be sure before I rip the tags off, but I think it'll be fine. The experience today was much better than the last time I tried to buy a bathing suit. That time, Joey made the mistake of coming with me and then had to put up with my temper tantrum and tears about not being happy with anything I tried on. Today was much better!!

Joey will also be happy to know that I bought the car washing stuff, so I'll probably do that at some point either this evening, tomorrow morning or tomorrow evening when it's not hot out. Leaning toward either evening because I want to go running tomorrow morning. I have a 4 mile route mapped out that will push me over the 50% mark on the 60 mile challenge :-) I'll probably end up walking most of it, but that's ok. I'm trying not to over do it, but I've been feeling pretty good overall. My knee has been fine, except for the horrible crepitus (grinding, popping, etc) that I heard this morning when I stood up. It hurt my ears more than my actual knee. I need to remember to take my cosamin everyday...I keep forgetting. Oops.

Ok. I think I'm gonna find something on TV and snuggle up with my radiology book.

I'm so glad it's Friday. Another weekend away from school. I have a whole list of things to do this weekend, but none of which I necessarily mind:

1. Clean out inside of car; vacuum and armorall.
2. Buy car washing soap and a suitable brush.
3. Wash car and possibly wax myself here in my very own driveway with my very own garden hose!! Ooohhh ahhhhh ;-)
4. Clean around house (bathroom, bunny cage, vacuum, wipe down kitchen, etc).
5. Watch my new Netflix movie.
6. Go for a run.
7. Go for a bike ride.
8. Leisurely study abdominal radiology for Monday and Tuesday.
9. Go grocery shopping.
10. Go to Petco for bunny foods and treats.

I'm sure I'll find other things, but for now I think that's enough ;-)

( on to more important things ::sarcasm:: )

( fooding )

I'm going to bed early tonight because Kelly's car is dying and she took it to the dealership so I offered to take her to school tomorrow. Unfortunately, she is on large animal medicine and needs to be to school by 6:30am, which is when I've been getting up in the morning. Oh well. No big deal. I may drop her off and then go to starbucks for coffee lol. We shall see.

( fooding )

I had a great time in radiology today. I had fun interpreting radiographs with the radiologist and learned a lot of neat radiology tidbits :-) Tomorrow I'm on ultrasound, so I hope there are plenty of ultrasounds to do, otherwise I may go back into the interpretation room just for funsies. I also am the late student tomorrow, which is fine with me. It'll give me plenty of time to study some teaching rads for the upcoming tests.

I happened to be putzing around my undergrad website (Eckerd College) and found that they have a nice, shiny new webpage for pre-health professionals. It has a section titled "advice from recent graduates" and there's a little something from me in there. They emailed me awhile back asking for any advice I have or insights into medical/veterinary school. I sent it back and they didn't change the page for quite some time. Now they have changed it and it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside seeing my quote on there :-)

In other news, starting radiology tomorrow. I'm excited about the hours and I actually do enjoy radiology in general, so I think it'll be good. Gotta get my imagination goggles all warmed up and get ready to stare into the grey abyss that is a radiograph! I went to target and bought some new clothes as well; buying clothes in the single digit sizes is a blast. Must keep this whole losing weight thing up; unfortunately, there are always tasty treats in radiology, so now that I'll have a better schedule I need to be more pro-active about running, cycling, doing some weights and ab workouts and making healthy lunches. Also, radiology does not require as much running around as small animal medicine and surgery do, so that's another thing. Overall, I think I can do it without too much trouble. I am still working on the 60 miles in a month challenge, of which I am 26% complete with three weeks to go, so it shouldn't be a problem completing it. I think next month I will do 80 miles and see how that goes. We shall see...I think doing my exercise and food journal again will help with this. Let's see if I can keep up with that LOL ;-)

( exercise and fooding today )

Tomorrow is my last official day of surgery, however I'm still responsibe for two surgery on-call shifts this weekend. I don't have any in-patients as of yet, so unless an emergency comes in between now and Monday morning, I should be free this weekend. Overall, it feels pretty good to be done with another month and know that the rest of my rotations are only two weeks long.

Unfortunately, I still have one tiny little detail to take care of before I'm really done and that's the TEST! We have a test tomorrow morning. It's only worth 10% of the grade, but I'd like to not bomb it all together. I'm having the worst time ever concentrating. I just can't even think of studying. I've tried to focus and I just get distracted by whatever else.

Anyways, speaking of which, here I am distracted by my computer and livejournal. Frankly, all I can think about now is my vacation in two weeks FOR two weeks. I'm going to my parents for eight days and I couldn't be more excited!! My Mom already told me that she is taking myself and her to a day spa for masages and possibly other things, as well as taking me to get a hair cut at some fancy place she is now going regularly. So thrilled! Not to mention my parents are good for fooding out and somehow my mother always manages to get a few drinks in me when we go out LOL. I have more fun with my parents than I do with most of the people my age, which I would say is sad for me, but really I think it is nice that my parents can have a good time.

Ok. I'm gonna migrate to the living room. I need a change of scenary. Wish me luck tomorrow...

Two more days of surgery and then I'M DONE! Ok...not really. Then I'll just be moving onto radiology, but that should be much more chill than surgery, at least I hope so.

Unfortunately, over the next two days I need to study like hell for the end-of-rotation exam that they are forcing on us. I've heard mixed reviews and I'm not really sure what to study anyways. I've been reading various things in my enormous surgery textbook, but not much of it is really sticking (I mean, how much can really stick when I'm reading it straight through, not really studying anything in great detail?) and they haven't been very clear on what is expected of us at all. All I know is that it's written rather than multiple choice, which worries me. It also worries me that I don't really care much anyways...Still I wish I knew what to study.

In other news, Joey made it to Brazil safely and has been there for four hectic days. He can't find much to eat because there isn't much vegetarian down there and what he can find is making him sick. He's caught some bug that's giving him all kinds of problems (some 48 hour flu type virus). They're going to class everyday at some ridiculous hour in the morning and then are expected to do individual research for the remainder of the day. They have to get up really early, yet aren't able to eat til almost 9pm. Overall, it sounds pretty miserable to me, but I think it'll get better for him. Hopefully :-(

That's it from here. I think I'm gonna go to bed early and get up early to study. I'm tired and just can't concentrate anymore. At least I don't have a surgery tomorrow so I have some time to prepare for this test without worrying about a surgery.

Day 4
2.44 mile run; total miles 8.87
60 miles is 15% complete
51.13 miles remaining

Day 1
6.45 mile bike ride
60 miles is 11% complete
53.55 miles remaining

I just signed myself up on Mapmyrun.com to travel (= run or bike) sixty miles in the next 30 days. It doesn't cost anything, nothing like that. But it would be nice to finish it. I'll start with a six mile bike ride tomorrow :-)

They have a 100 miles in a month run challenge, but I don't think I'm ready to run 3.3 miles a day yet. I need to get back in shape first, so I think the 60 miles in a month travel challenge will be a good start and then next month I will do the 100 miles. After that, I'll hopefully be ready to train for that half marathon in February :-)

Knees can't fail me now!!

Yes, I have actually managed to have an entire weekend off from clinics without having to go to school (besides that pesky little presentation I have on Monday which I'll have to go to school for tomorrow to get some resources, but let's not talk about that ok). I've been sleeping in til 9:30am the last two days and putzing around in my pj's. I've actually done some cooking and cleaning, have spent some time with my pets, and went for a run this morning. I got to hang out with some people for half the day yesterday having July 4th festivities and watched some neat fireworks. Tomorrow I will probably go for a bike ride, just for kicks :-)

That is the great part of my weekend. The sad part of my weekend is that my Joey is leaving tonight for Brazil for over a month, which makes me sad. I could have been down at his place this weekend if it weren't for the fact that HE ISN'T THERE! :-( Oh well. He bought me a microphone and I downloaded Skype (a free internet talk program) so that we can talk to each other over the internet. Better than running the cellular bills up I suppose and certainly better than nothing, but not that great really.

Anywho, enough depressing stuff. I have cinnamon raison bread cooking in the breadmaker that should be done in about two hours for eating. I need to work on my powerpoint, which I already started, but other than that I'm just taking it easy.

I switched to orthopedic surgery this week. It has been an interesting couple of days. Let me elaborate.

Monday: There weren't any transfer cases from the previous ortho students, so we began with a fresh slate to see appointments. I saw two rechecks, of which I can hardly remember what they were for. I then got handed an "emergency" (quotations because there are very few actual orthopedic emergencies, they almost always wait til the next day) that was a dog with a total hip replacement device in its right femur placed in August 2007 that had a fracture just distal to the the prosthesis. Likely due to the dog being a spaz, in my opinion lol.

Tuesday: Surgery on the fracture. It took about an hour and a half and then I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I was under the impression (wrongly) that only two students were allowed to go into the OR, but in actuality it's only that two students are allowed to scrub in, the remaining students can stand there and watch. So I accidentally missed the other two surgeries and putzed around catching up on paperwork.

Wednesday (today): The appointments were really strange today. We originally had enough appointments for each of us to see one recheck and one evaluation (five of each total). These quickly diminished to three rechecks and two evaluations total. I saw one recheck and had nothing for the rest of the day. Not only that, but the two evaluations are both NOT going to surgery tomorrow, so there are NO surgeries tomorrow. Not only that, but I am discharging my surgery patient tomorrow at 11am. So I will have no patients after that for the weekend.

Thursday: No surgeries. We have two discharges for the team as a whole and then we will be doing teaching rounds til whenever. Hoping to get out early so I can go to the running store to possibly get new shoes and see if there is a running club in town that I could possibly join...possibly. I'm planning on going for a run in the morning since I can be to school a tad later than usual. I've set my alarm, but we'll see if it actually happens.

Friday: Holiday. If we have no inpatients we won't have to come in, so as of now I should be able to skip Friday all together. Unless my soft tissue surgery patient goes home, in which case I will go in. I did transfer it to another student, but I want to be involved in the discharge so I'll be there Friday if we do send her home that day.

Saturday and Sunday: If I don't have any inpatients on Friday, I won't have any on Saturday and Sunday either. So right now it is looking quite possible that I will actually have a weekend off on surgery!! Pretty awesome. I'm sure that doesn't happen very often. But I haven't had a weekend off in almost seven weeks, so I don't think it's entirely undeserved :-)

Anyways, now I'm going to be an old lady and go to bed. I'm getting up early to go running and then I plan on being at school closer to 8am. I normally would have to get there at 7am, but my patient is getting discharged so I don't have to write new clinician's orders or a new green sheet and I don't have to be done taking care of it til 9am, so I'll have plenty of time.

I haven't posted in awhile because I didn't have internetz at home. I now have internetz because my roommate called cox and signed us up. Cable isn't working, but maybe it'll start tomorrow. We shall see.

Clinics are going ok. I'm getting more tired by the day and more irritated with having to get up early as well. I just need a couple days to "sleep in", I would be thrilled to wake up at 7am even, instead of 5:45am. I'm currently in the middle of small animal surgery. I just switched from soft tissue surgery to orthopedic surgery. Ortho is supposed to be easier and lighter than soft tissue, but I'm not entirely certain of that. Today, the soft tissue people got out at least an hour earlier than us, which NEVER happened while I was on soft tissue. Due to this I have realized something. I can never be an intern because I would be the "shit eater" of the group. For example, Dr. H (one of the interns who just left) was the "shit eater" of his group. When other people were on call, they might get an emergency, but they might not. If Dr. H was on call he'd get 5-7 a night. I know I'd end up being that person. I just attract cases. It's good, because I'm always busy, but it's bad for the same reason. I'm just looking forward to being on radiology when I can have weekends off to actually sleep until the sun is up.

In other news, I am completely moved into the house, as is Kelly. We still have stuff everywhere and I really have no excuse becuase I've been here for two weeks, but oh well. This weekend we have the 4th off, so I'm going to work on it then.

Anywho, getting close to bedtime. I can't stay awake much longer.

This week is going to be busy. Today I'm going over to Justin's house to pick up my keys. Him and his wife are moving out on Tuesday, they are having the carpets cleaned on Wednesday, and I'll start moving in Wednesday evening. I'm pretty much gonna be doing that after I get out of the hospital at night Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I'm hoping on Saturday that Joey can come up and I'll rent one of those Uhaul trucks for the day and move all the furniture and be in by Sunday. I have boxes packed up all over my apartment and I've barely gotten started, there's still so much more to do. It's hard to believe how much stuff can be in a 750sq ft apartment!! I'm really looking forward to the new place though! For one thing, it's a house! No more listening to my neighbor's music or other random noises through the walls :-) There's also a fenced in yard, wood deck, garage, a couple trees, which will make studying outside nice. Finally, I'll have a roommate, which will make life more interesting. I'm so tired of living alone and coming home to an empty apartment every evening. I mean, I have the cat and the rabbit and I really love having them, but I can only hold a conversation with the cat for so long before it just becomes weird LOL.

This week in SAM is going to be really busy too, so I just hope I can find the energy and time to move. The clinicians were at a conference last week, so there weren't as many of them available, so hence less appointments to see and only real emergencies got in on triage. It all made for a very slow, even boring week. This week, all the people that couldn't get in last week are coming this week. Monday has ten appointments lined up for four of us, which may not sound like a lot (the average vet probably sees that many appointments a day on their own, if not more), but at the vet school one appointment takes all day, so when you pile three appointments on to one student it can get very frustrating and takes a great deal of organization to complete everything. I'm still working on the organization aspect! I have my notebook and I try to keep it with me at all times to have my little checkboxes of things to complete, but sometimes I still have trouble keeping on top of things especially when things run behind or are not completed through no fault of my own, but because radiology is backed up or the lab got something wrong even though I ordered it correctly. I'm just praying for a busy, but SMOOTH, week.

I'm also trying to get mentally prepared for starting soft tissue surgery next week. We have a test on the first day at 8am, and I'm not entirely sure what is on it. I need to ask someone from surgery when I run into one of them tomorrow. I think it has instrument identification, hand ties and instrument ties, and maybe suture identification, but I'm really not sure.

Anyways, today is pretty slow for me. I don't have any in-patients to take care of and I'm not on call. I'm mostly just hanging out because I woke up not feeling all that great this morning. I've been trying to keep hydrated and I'm just hoping that I'm not getting sick. I'm waiting on Justin to call me to tell me they are home so I can go grab my keys. I'm gonna get a coffee at Starbucks first though, because I think the caffiene may make me feel better as I haven't had any coffee in several days and that might be what's throwing me off and making me feel bad (yes, I am addicted to caffiene and, no, I don't intend to do anything about it anytime soon lol).

When I was first looking at my clinic schedule, I thought two weeks of a rotation was ridiculously short and four weeks wasn't far behind that = pretty short. But now that I'm here, I'm realizing how long four weeks really is.

Don't get me wrong. I'm really enjoying the small animal medicine rotation. It's not nearly as stressful or horrible as some people led me to believe. I would even dare to say it is fun!! But now I've gotten myself into a groove and, not to say that I've learned everything there is to learn, not even close, but I just feel a little stuck. Maybe it's because everyone around me changed rotations and I'm still in SAM. Or maybe because this week is really odd due to most of the clinicians being away at the ACVIM conference and so we have a reduced case-load and few triages. Maybe I'm just being silly...

All I know is that I'm ready for small animal surgery and something new. At least with SAS there will be somewhat of a switch at the two week mark because I'll be switching from soft tissue surgery to orthopedic surgery, so that'll be a nice change. I just feel like I've been in SAM for-ev-errrr!! LOL

Anyways, tomorrow will be a nice change, since I have two drop off appointments that will take up my entire day and keep me busy! I have a diabetic cushing's dog coming in for a recheck glucose curve and ACTH stim test now that she's been on trilostane for a week now. I'm still trying to figure out what to feed her because she is currently on W/D, but she is also underweight, so those two things don't go together. I can't find any food that has similar qualities to W/D with more fat content, so maybe mixing foods would be best? If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know (...before 9am tomorrow, thankskbye lol)!! I also have a pyloric gastropathy secondary to mucosal hyperplasia suspect dog coming in for CT and then gastroduodenoscopy with biopsies in preparation for surgery on Monday (whew, that's a mouthful), so that should also be interesting. Fun fun fun!!! :-D

Ok. Going to bed early tonight, because I'm really tired and need some sleep. I tried going to bed early last night, but I really didn't sleep well and I was even more tired when I woke up. So yeah, coffee for all tomorrow morning. I'm stopping at Panera's and getting a box 'o coffee to share with SAM because I feel like we all need it :-)

We had our two week midway point evaluations yesterday for the small animal medicine rotation. I wasn't too thrilled about that, but tried to stay positive. Dr. Hill was actually really nice. He told me that on all the points they have on the evaluation form, I have 'good' to 'excellent' (choices are poor, competent, good, excellent) and that if I left the rotation now I'd have a B+. He says I have the opportunity to get an A; of course, if I screw up or don't improve at all I have the opportunity to get lower than that. He said my main problem that I needed to work on is time management and organizational skills, which I agreed with because I know I do forget to do things. I try to make to-do lists and then end up forgetting the to-do lists. Oops, gotta fix that.

Overall, I'm pleased with a B+ rating as of now, since I know that not many juniors get A's in their rotations (they used to, but now they are trying to say that you can only really get A's when you are a senior...grade inflation or some b.s. like that, whatever). And he says I could get an A, so that makes me feel better :-)

Anyways, I'm on call tonight. I find it amusing that I haven't been called, I could be sleeping and I'm awake for no good reason now. At this point, if I get called, it won't matter because I have to go in soon to take care of my patient anyways.