Job Hunting

Decision made - it's time to find a new job at the end of the internship. I've spent a bit of time looking already and there are a few interesting prospects, but I don't know when I finish so this could cause a problem.

Plague!

I'm a bit ill at the moment so no fun stories from work. Hopefully things will get better soon as the residents are all away at the end of this week so things will be crazy. There seems to be a few diseases going around at the moment. The cough/cold one is the most popular and but is hopefully on the way out. That is until after Easter when the students come back with more disease.

Residency?

I've got a bit of a dilemma at the moment, what do I want to do with my life? Or more accurately, should I go for an anaesthesia residency or go back to practice? There are pros and cons of both options really.

Residency

- Enjoy the subject!
- Would learn interesting things.
- Extra qualifications.
- Could earn more money when I get out.
But....
- Would earn less money whilst there.
- Need to keep up the qualification afterwards.
- Would focus on one subject.

Practice

- Learn and get to do more.
- Get to do surgery!
- Earn more money.
- Could do an extra qualification whilst there.
But....
- Clients. Oh the clients.
- Need to hunt a job.

So all very complicated. At the moment I'm learning towards going back to practice, but I'll have to see how long that idea lasts. It also depends on when I finish the internship.

More in the future.

Canine's Canine To The Face

The vet world can be a dangerous place, bites and scratches are the usual hazard that we are all aware of. Everyone can recognise the grumpy cat, the Collie that gives you that "look" and the sore old Labrador who can give a growl when you move him. We all know to take precautions. As one of my friends put it, "If you're not careful you could lose a finger, and that's the end of your career".

It wasn't a big scary dog that managed to get me however. It wasn't a cat. Or a parrot. It was a 20 week old Labrador puppy. She had had surgery a few days previously and was just about to go home, so I went to say goodbye. She is the softest puppy you would ever meet, but now getting to full bounce. We'd been having a few talks about jumping up and it looked like she was getting the message.

This time she got a little overexcited though and bounced at my face. Not too scary, she'd be trying to lick me all week, except I was just getting up at the time and took the full force of her nose to my face. Initially I didn't think much of it, then the bleeding started. Oh yes, the bleeding started from my nose. A quick investigation revealed a split inside my nostril out to the real world. Lovely! The poor puppy looked very sad and a bit scared!

I was all for using tissue glue to close this up. Apparently it wasn't allowed, so a trip to A&E was in order. Two sutures (and a bit of a chat about dentals with the doctor) later I was released to head on home.

Everything has healed now, there is a small scar that is barely noticeable, and I'm back to work once again. It's not the big scary dogs that get me apparently, it's the little cute one that lull me in to a false sense of security!

Back Yet Again

Well I'm back again. It's not been a fun few months and I've had quite a few things to get on with at work and out of work meaning I've let this slide a bit. Things have started to calm down now so I've decided to write again.

So since last time I've had a pretty dull time being off ill. After the illness in October I've had a range of signs and symptoms which have meant I've been unable to work, especially at nights, for a variety of reasons. To combat this I was given a month off work in November to recover my strength. In this time there were various trips to doctors around and about and too many tests to count. Thankfully all these have come back negative for nasties, but I'm still having the main symptoms of feeling exhausted and occasionally weak and dizzy. Not fun.

I was back at work over Christmas, but found I was truly exhausted after only 5 days of work and would be sleeping for 14 hours a night. My doctor also recommended that I don't work nights as that would make me worse.

All of this meant I wasn't able to keep up with my rotating internship. It wasn't fair on the other interns and I couldn't be signed off as having completed an internship if I wanted to progress to a medicine or surgery residency. I was however offered a chance to continue working at the hospital in a different intern position which I happily took.

So now I'm the anaesthesia intern! This means I may be able to become an anaesthesia resident and continue to learn more, which is where I was leaning towards anyway. Currently I'm only in 3 days a week, but hopefully I'll be building this up to 4, then 5 days and then possible on call at some point. I even have a few projects to do on my days off to keep my mind busy.

I do have a few fun stories and some cute puppy pictures to post later, but now back to work!

Back Again

So what's happened recently? Not much really apart from work and play. I've been on quite a few rotations since my last entry and mostly loved them. There wasn't a whole lot of work on imaging, but oncology was fairly busy.

A few weeks ago I was a bit ill and had a brief hospital stay. It wasn't the most fun experience (I'm pretty sure our patients get treated better) that ended up with me discharging myself after waiting for an ultrasound scan for several hours.

Feeling better now though and back on to night duty. I'm still feeling tired a lot of the time, but the current batch of students are very useful and I'm getting some rest.

Time Off

Internship is all fun and lots is being learned but sometimes time away is required. This weekend I took an evening off to escape to the city, see some of the festival and meet up with a few old friends who were visiting. It was a great night out!

I find it far too easy to stay late here and follow cases that I've become involved with even if I should have been away hours earlier. Work-life balance is important though, and so more time will be spent escaping.