Week 2 of vacation involved sleeping in (a lot), a full day of doctor's appointments (all annual check ups), camping in Estes Park, and a trip to the water park (where it did not rain and nothing of ours was stolen -- there had to be a first time for that!).
I am so glad that we are given 2 weeks of vacation at a time. Although I was quite refreshed after the first week, the 27 hours of driving over the span of 2 days kind of sucked up 29% of my vacation that week, and it was really nice to have a second week to just chill out and get stuff done. It's hard to have doctor appointments, etc. during rotations when I'm at school from 6:30-7:30 am until late in the evening.
I'm also glad that we get 8 weeks of vacation built into our senior year rotation schedule, and Lord knows we need it. On orthopedics, we had a visiting senior student from NC State who informed us that they get 2 weeks -- TOTAL -- of vacation time during their senior year. Of course, they also have special time set aside in their schedules for externships, whereas we small animal trackers pretty much have to do any desired externships during our vacation time, but still. Two weeks? All year? I am already dreading how drained I'm going to be by the time my next vacation rolls around in January. By then I'll have completed 4 weeks on CCU, 2 weeks each on oncology, necropsy, cardiology, and 3 weeks each on anesthesia and radiology -- plus my grand rounds will be over (September 16, how I dread you).
But anyway, this round of vacation officially ended at 9:45 pm yesterday when I reported to CCU for orientation. Step 1 of CCU orientation was a visit to the night receptionist (who is around till 10 pm every day) to learn how to have emergency clients complete new client paperwork and how to take deposits and payments. Little did I know that I was going to get to play receptionist while on CCU overnights -- "lucky" me.
Then we had case transfer rounds, where the after-hours students passed on their hospitalized cases to us. That was followed by an orientation to the CCU room itself. Fortunately, the night nurse didn't seem bothered by the fact that I didn't know where anything was or how to do anything CCU-style, since my single rotation-mate had already had her first 2 weeks of CCU earlier this summer.
My 5 cases were as follows:
1. Middle-aged Chow with megaesophagus and a newly placed feeding tube
2. Middle-aged Shih Tzu with kidney and bladder stones
3. Middle-aged cat with possibly lily ingestion the day before
4. Middle-aged Rottweiler with previously diagnosed osteosarcoma treated with a hindlimb amputation, and acute inability to ambulate (suspected spinal cord lesion)
5. Middle-aged Lab that ate 30 Adderall pills (amphetamine used to treat ADHD in people)
As you can see, it was a night for the middle-aged, with all of my patients between 6 and 8 years of age. The Shih Tzu, kitty, and Lab were all super-sweet and happy with whatever I had to do to them. The Chow was a bit cranky, but couldn't do much to get around his e-collar at me. The Rottweiler bit another student badly before I arrived, but the consensus was that he had been painful and was startled -- nonetheless, I muzzled him any time I had to touch him in any way (especially when I tried [and failed] to place an IV catheter [his veins were totally shot from months of chemo], and when I placed a urinary catheter [much more successfully than the IV!]).
CCU overnights, as I understand them, mainly involve caring for the hospitalized patients, as well as dealing with any emergencies that come in between 11 pm and 7 am. Fortunately, we didn't have any emergencies last night, which was just fine with me since I was plenty busy harassing the poor lone night nurse to show me how to do things and where things were kept.
Treatment times in CCU are on a q24h (once daily), BID (twice daily), TID (three times daily), and QID (four times daily) schedule.
q24h treatments are done at 7 am.
BID treatments are at 7 am and 7 pm.
TID treatments are at 7 am, 3 pm, and 11 pm.
QID treatments are at 7 am, 1 pm, 7 pm, and 1 am.
As overnight students on from 10 pm-8 am, we were responsible for helping finish the 11 pms, doing the 1 ams, and doing the 7 ams. The 7 ams are the hardest because all treatments occur at 7 am.
I made it home around 8:30 am and went to bed at 10. I woke up every couple hours but did manage to sleep until almost 5 pm, so I'm hopeful that that will tide me over until tomorrow's daytime sleepfest. I made it through last night with just a 90 minute nap yesterday afternoon and was still functional by the time I got home this morning, so I hope I'll be able to get enough sleep during the days to be cogent and collected overnight.
Either way, it's going to be interesting. One down, six more to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment