Still Job Hunting

It's been 4 months since my last post. Oops! So what's been happening?

The short answer is not much. I've been applying for various jobs but had no luck just at the moment. There were a couple of interviews, but nothing came of them sadly. So currently I'm still in the same place working with anaesthesia, and still loving it.

I've finally sorted my application for a postgraduate certificate in anaesthesia after a few months of people losing various forms. Hopefully I can get started on that fairly soon.

Despite steal several loaves of bread Mac is still alive and healthy. His latest conquest was an entire pack of extra strong mints which he seemed to enjoy immensely with no adverse consequences yet. It really can't be good for him.

Mac

I met a lovely stray dog whilst at work when he arrived to have a broken tooth removed. He was very shy at first, wide brown eyes looking sideways at everyone, not wanting to look in to eyes and challenge their dominance. The hallmarks of being in kennels at the rescue centre were obvious but beneath it all he was an absolutely lovely dog who just needed someone to love and trust. I sat with him when he was recovering from his operation and he rested his head on my knee, licked my hand and went to sleep. I like to think he chose me, but it could have been the painkillers!

Scared puppy

A few days later I made discreet enquires to the shelter as to whether or not he had a home and went to visit to see if he remembered me. He was such a different dog in his "home" environment of the centre. Waggy tail, bright eyes, interested in the environment, a far cry from the scared pup I met. And he didn't have a home. Yet.

I reserved him, but my main problem was I had nowhere to keep him. He couldn't stay at my current flat due to allergies of a flatmate. One of my amazing work colleagues already has a dog and offered to take him to get him out of the shelter and in to a normal life, on one condition - he had to get on with her dog.

On first meeting there were a lot of happy looks through the gate before we introduced them face to face. He seemed to remember me more and more, possible due to the treats I'd been feeding him when I visited. We let them play together and it was clear from the start they got on like a house on fire. Minor grumbles over who had which toy were quickly sorted out, and it was clear he loved the company.

So he came home. It's been a few weeks now. He stays with my friend and her dog but I get to see him at work most days. Soon he will be staying with me full time as I move to somewhere new. He is so much happier with a home and people he knows. He has got used to his new name, Mac, and will sit and give paw on command.

In case anyone is wondering Mac is the initials of a couple of good friends. It's also an anaesthesia acronym. But I wouldn't be that geeky...would I?

Definitely happy!

No Interview

Well that was a little complicated! I had applied to a job in England, and was offered an interview, which I was looking forward to. Sadly someone with more experience who already lived in the area had also applied and accepted the job before I got there. Never mind, there will always be other jobs. For now there is the possibility I will stay where I am for at least 2 months, possibly 3, whilst I search for something new.

Now it's time to go find my dog and go for a walk. Thankfully it has stopped raining for the first time in weeks! I'll need to post about him soon.

Interview

Exciting news, I have an interview!!

It's a small animal position in England no too far from Edinburgh. It's very close to the sea, and there are hills nearby as well, so it's kinda perfect. The group has a few practices, but are looking for someone to stay at their main hospital with some anaesthesia experience. Again, a little bit perfect.

So I'd work 4.5 days a week with 1 in 3 Saturday mornings also, which isn't really that tough. The rest of the time would be my own to enjoy as there is no out-of-hours work involved. Yay! There is also a house with the job, hopefully somewhere closeish to the practice so I can run in some days with the dog.

All in all it sounds great, and I'm really looking forward to being back in practice. Fingers crossed for Wednesday.

Another Break

So much for posting more regularly! What happened really was too much work. It's coming up to exams so everyone has been running around teaching students, giving tutorials etc. I've spent a lot of time in theatre still learning loads and trying new (and old) techniques to see what I prefer. I'm still planning to leave at the end of July to get a job elsewhere and I have applied for a few, but no news back yet.

This week is finals week (good luck to all the final years!) so we are emergency work only in theory as there are so many people off examining. I'm being left in charge a couple of afternoons which is just scary.

Fixed it!

I know it says if it breathes I can fix it, but one of the most recent patients wasn't even doing that recently!

We had just induced him when things went rather badly. His heart didn't have a brilliant rate, his pulses were impossible to find and he stopped breathing. Luckily I had a great team of students with me as well as some backup from other anaesthetists, nurses, students, etc.

We managed to resuscitate him and all is well once more. It was a rather hectic half hour, but definitely worth the effort.

What went wrong? He is an old boy - at least 16 years - and had lost of lot of weight recently. He had some kind of disease, although we were unsure what exactly, and were anaesthetising him for more tests. The theory is the drugs caused his blood pressure to drop quickly meaning his heart was none to happy.

No-one really knows for certain as we gave up with the tests and the owner decided to take him home for a bit before thinking what to do next. He wasn't any worse for his ordeal, after we were comfortable with his status he went back to the kennels where he ate all his food!

Pigs

I've been observing how to anaesthetise pigs over the past few weeks and come to the conclusion that pigs are amazing! I'd only spent a week working with them before when I was a student, and although it was fun we weren't actually doing anything. This time it's different.

What makes it amazing is that the other people working with the pigs really love their work too and it shows in how they interact with the animals - you can tell they care.

My favourite was a 300kg boar who wanted a scratch on the back. I stood there for a good 10 minutes scratching behind his ears and he actually fell asleep! When I stopped he started kicking the pen door until someone else took my place. It was fun!

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.

Night Shift

Well that was fun! I survived my week on the night shift. It was fairly bad with at least 3 cases there each night, but everything survived, even the 2 animals that tried to die at once.

There were a variety of emergency cases such as the feather plucking cockatiel at 3am and the sick Labrador (has he eaten something? Are you sure?), although most of the people that called me weren't actually our clients. It was very strange that I had to send at least 4 people back to their own vets, including one complex cases that was in Northumberland who we'd never seen! They weren't even in the area! Weird.

Still catching up on sleep. I went to a friend's wedding this weekend. It was great, but I was exhausted.

First Few Weeks

It's been a while since I've been able to write anything due to lack of computer access and no internet connection, but so far today the wireless is working. Woo!

The internship is going well. I have been switching from service to service as required including exotics and feline medicine. So far I'm loving being back, it's great to see everyone again. Some people even seem to remember my name which is rather worrying.

Night work starts tomorrow which I am not looking forward to, although at least there will be various people around for backup should it be required. After that I'm moving from one flat to another in the intern building, then heading off to a wedding.

Back to journal review for tomorrow.

Interning changes

There's been a few changes to the intern program whilst I've been in Wales! First of all I'm starting a 13 month course instead of the usual 12 to cover various holidays and locum on the services. It will hopefully give me extra time to figure out what I'm doing and get me settled in too. And any more time in Wales and I'd go insane.

Currently there are 3 interns who share the load between them. This means 1 week in 3 is nights, and they work every 3rd weekend. I think someone may have mentioned the working time directive as on a busy weekend the on call vet may only have 8 hours sleep total! So now there are 4 new interns.

This means we will only be working 1 in 4 weeks of nights (only 12 weeks? Doesn't sounds like a lot!) but to cover the weekend efficiently we are going to be working 1 in 2 weekends. Basically if anyone is looking for me, it's a good bet that I'll be at work.

And finally a big YAY! to all the final years who passed their exams, including my Lab Partner from first year. Well done!

New Job

Well it's confirmed, I have a job for next year - I'm heading to be an intern at University! Very strange way to get a job, they heard I was looking and offered me a position. I didn't even apply for it! Not that I'm complaining in the slightest.

So next year I'll be back in the vet school learning loads and hopefully not hating all of the out-of-hours work too much. There is an element of teaching and supervision the final years involved but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Before then I'll be heading between locum work and staying Wales where hopefully there will be time (and the right weather) to climb a bit. I have a load of gear that needs testing!

Quick Update

I'm back off to Wales tomorrow for a while, but first I have to give the talk to the 4th years. I decided to be honest in the end about the shortcomings of the job I've had, but also about myself. Should be fun!

I also got a phone call yesterday about a potential job but I'm still waiting to hear back for certain. It's only for a year, but I'll hopefully learn a lot. More details soon!

Goodbyes

Over the past week or so I seem to have been seeing the same clients that have stuck in my memory (for better or for worse) over the past six months.

First was the lady with a new puppy. I sadly had to put her oldest dog to sleep on boxing day, so I'm so happy to see her with a new dog as well as the regular pup too. Then came my first caesar dog along with the pup that the owners were keeping, followed closely by a dog who I saw roughly every other day for a few weeks to re-dress a wound.

A few other memorable faces popped up too, such as the lovely lady who thanked me for putting her old dog to sleep with a lovely card and the twitching dogs I'd seen a week or so before.

I will miss the people here. Mostly.

In a more fun note I'm back off to uni for a bit in 3 weeks. I am going back to lecture the 4th years on how terrible the life in practice is. Not too sure whether I should be nice or honest about my experience so far. Probably honest.