Tempted to do another crappy entry but I shouldn’t, I suppose. I think this is the point in NOJOMO every year where I kind of burn out a bit. And I’ve been a poor reader and noter lately. I’ll catch up soon!
I’ve got a tiny Harvey sleeping on my lap, so my computer has to be on my knees. Makes it kind of hard to type but it’s pretty adorable and cozy.
So this week’s been kind of hellish and not really because of my rotation. On Wednesday my mom went into work for a class. She was really tired that day and felt really weird when she was there, so she checked herself into the ER. They did an EKG and it showed that her T-waves were…inverted or something and that was a sign of ischemia, and thus, a heart attack. I didn’t get all the details because I was at the Raptor Center and I don’t keep my phone on me. So the front desk lady called down to the clinic saying she had a phone call for me and I go up there thinking “Oh, fuck, what’s going on for someone to call here for me?” and got the above news. I had Aaron go to the hospital to keep track of things for me, send me progress texts and he would come get me if I needed to be there. My rationale was that there wasn’t anything I could do, my mom didn’t want me there (not in a mean way, she just tends to like to do things like that on her own which I think is a trait we both share. She hadn’t even wanted Aaron to tell me what was going on) and working is a good distraction.
Aaron sent me the status updates as frequently as he had news. She was admitted to the cardiac hospital, where she used to work, so she knew her cardiologist, which was nice. They tossed the idea of a heart attack pretty quickly, thank goodness! For a while they thought maybe she had a pericardial infection that was irritating her heart, making it be weird. They redid her EKG and ended up deciding that the T-wave thing was actually an artifact from poor placement of her EKG leads and that her EKG was actually normal. To cover their bases they took blood for troponin levels, an enzyme that goes up when someone has a heart attack, and found them to be normal. The following morning they did a contrast study to look at her vessels to look for blockages, etc, and the 30 year old doctor reading it said that she probably has less plaque in her vessels than he does. They ended up thinking that she’s just really run down from the GI virus she’s been fighting. She told us, when we visited her in the hospital, she thought that her having to poop (she’d taken some loperamide for the GI thing and it had stopped her up) had contributed to her feeling so weird. ::shrugs:: So, all is well. Just a bunch of stress. But a good outcome, so yay!
Bottom line: taking a shit will fix everything, even a heart attack :P
Aside from that, I’ve been enjoying my Raptor Center rotation even more, especially since I haven’t been assigned any more new projects. Just gotta finish working on my case logs. I have all my info, just have to write them up. That’s what I’ll do on Saturday and get it in my file on Sunday (my last day! eee!).
The problem with two week long rotations is you’re done once you feel like you’re just hitting your stride. I felt the same way about my Acupuncture one too. I am just getting comfortable at the Raptor Center and feel like I’m finally really understanding the medicine I’ve been exposed to. I also feel like I’m becoming more efficient and getting more comfortable handling the birds. Today, I was able to confidently grab the head of our craziest bald eagle, open its mouth using only the thumb of my restraint hand, give it its oral meds and get the feeding tube in its stomach. It felt so good! I also feel like I’m making fewer dumb mistakes. Yay learning! I love the days when I feel like I could maybe actually be a doctor someday.
I should ponder sleep. Tomorrow’s a busy day. I’m supposed to be shadowing the flight crew, we’re (hopefully) getting a really cool admit, going over to the cardiology department at the veterinary hospital to do a transesophogeal echocardiogram on a bird AND Aaron and I are going to the last Wits recording of the season to see Keegan-Michael Key and Bhi Bhiman! WHEE!!!
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