In the Desert!

I've been just south of Phoenix for the past week on my CORE surgery rotation, and it's been a blast so far.  The doctors at the practice I'm at are very laid back, and willing to answer questions, and I've gotten to scrub into some cool surgeries.

I decided to explore the area a little bit today, and found the Superstition Mountain Museum.  It had a lot of exhibits covering mining, the lost dutchman mine, the apaches, and to end the visit, there was an old chapel with an Elvis statue standing up front.  I guess there used to be an old Western movie set in the area, but the Elvis addition was hilarious.  Apparently people actually get married there.

After that mini-adventure, the rest of my day is dedicated to finishing up case logs from Friday, writing a case report, doing laundry, and all that "responsible" stuff I have to do.

I'm apparently breaking stuff here.

I let my domain for this blog expire, and forgot to change my redirect settings, so that would explain why my pageviews have been stuck at 0 since the 17th.  Sorry about that.  Hopefully, if you've been using clawspawsscales.com to get here, you can figure out how to get to the blogspot address (clawspawsscales.blogspot.com), otherwise, oops, I just lost a ton of readers.

The past few weeks here in MN have been great.  I've leaned how to do orthopedic procedures and endoscopy on birds, plus a ton of other things.  I'm ready to leave, though, and the next 4 days are going to drag.  I think I hit my quota of days I can be gone without being homesick, and unfortunately, I have to go straight from here to Arizona.

I've been plowing through a ton of busywork the past few days, trying to get all of these random assignments done for this rotation, and my motivation is pretty sapped.  Busywork + personal life crashing and burning while I'm 1,000 miles away + missing my puppies is not a good combination.  I had grand plans to knock out all my assignments over the weekend, but instead ended up watching a bunch of episodes of The Shield, plus the Dexter series finale.  I fail at life.

I did get my email today from the NAVLE, giving me the go-ahead to schedule my national boards.  I was able to schedule them in my hometown, in the timeframe I was hoping for.  I'm excited and terrified.

I'm in Minnesota!

I'm halfway through my first week at the Raptor Center.  I had labor day off, so it's only been three days.  But in those three days, I've seen more raptors than I've seen in my life (in the wild, and zoos combined.)  I think the board said we had 99 patients today - everything from merlins to bald eagles to various hawk species.  I'm getting tons of hands-on experience, and getting practice with handling and IDing various species, and it's overall just wonderful.

I'm staying at the house of this woman who rents out rooms to students, and she is an absolute sweetheart.  I've been walking the 2 miles to the raptor center every day, and she's been hellbent on finding me a bike.  I don't mind walking, but she's way more concerned about it than I am.

One of the weird things I've noticed on my rotations is I keep finding vets who very closely resemble faculty members from school.  At CSU, one of the ECC residents had the EXACT same intonation and accent as our pharmacologist at Western.  Here at the raptor center, one of the vets has identical facial expressions and personality traits as our surgeon.  Nothing that makes any of them a complete doppleganger, but just enough similarities to throw you off.

Anyway, I've had long days sandwiched by long walks, I need to do my case logs for the last 3 days, and an avian radiology exercise, so I'm not going to write much of an update.  The whole year will probably be like this, which is sad, because this is probably the most interesting year, but the one I can write the least about.

Things you probably shouldn't say to your future boss

I was working at Dr. G's today.  She brought up how when I start to buy her practice from her, there's some cheap insurance you can get to make either business partner whole if something happens to the other.

Because I like to put my foot in my mouth, the first thing out of my mouth was "Good idea.  Then if you regret going into business with me, you can just cut my brake lines."  Good thing she's got an equally dark sense of humor.

Well, that went by quickly.

I'm home, after spending the month in Ft. Collins doing my emergency rotation at CSU.  It was not at all what I expected from an emergency and critical care rotation (75% critical care, 25% emergency, and once a patient was stable, it got referred to a different dept. for treatment.) I've got a few weeks off before my next rotation starts, but I'm not wasting it.

Tomorrow, I'm going to my old clinic to do some supervised shelter work.  In a way, it's like a working interview, even though Dr. G has already introduced me to clients every time I've been there recently as "her new vet in a few months."  Or once "the future owner."  Eek!

Anyway, not much to add here.  I can't really write about anything from CSU due to confidentiality, and I haven't exactly had much of a life the past 4 weeks to write about.  I'm 1/4 of the way done with 4th year.  2 rotations down, and 6 more to go!

I'm in Fort Collins!

I've been on my emergency and critical care rotation for the past 2 weeks, with 2 more left to go.  It's been some long, crazy hours, and I've pretty much studied, then crashed soon after getting out each day, so sorry I suck about updating.  CSU has been gracious enough to give the "visiting" students weekends off, so I've been able to drive the 2 hours home the past 2 weekends to see Tyler and the critters.  I've almost finished unpacking all of our boxes, and it's starting to feel like home.  Too bad I won't be around much this year to appreciate it.  I bought a used couch yesterday, since we got rid of ours before moving, only to find out that it won't fit through the door to the room we were going to put it in.  I was running late getting back to Ft. Collins, so I had to leave it where it was, blocking the entire kitchen for Tyler to deal with when he got off work.  Poor guy.

I finally got my last rotation booked for February, and while I'm super excited I finally found a dentistry rotation that'll take me, I'm also sad it's out of state.  My original plan for 4th year was to try to do all of my elective rotations in Colorado, and only have to travel for my core internal med and surgery rotations, but I suck at booking things, and somehow, out of my 6 electives, 1 was in Cali before we moved, 3 are out of state, plus the 2 required out of state rotations.  I'm going to miss the hubby so much.

Washing the California stink off of me

I've neglected posting here the past few weeks.  First, I was packing up my stuff in Cali, and had no internet.  Now that I've made the drive to Colorado, I've been slowly putting a dent in unpacking my boxes. It's really hard to unpack when you're unpacking about 700 square feet of stuff into a 500 square foot apartment!  I haven't even unpacked my Kitchenaid mixer, and I'm 99% sure I have nowhere in my kitchen to fit it.  Anyway, it's taken me so long to update, because I've been spending what feels like every free moment hanging out with the people I missed like crazy, and this is the first time I've had to sit down and write.  

I've only done one car, but I just got Colorado plates on my vibe, and damn, does it feel good to get those Cali plates off.  There's always been a palpable hostility towards California here (and Texas), due to getting tons of people immigrating from those states and contributing to the urban sprawl/mcmansion problem we have.  I wasn't really comfortable getting stereotyped into that group because of identifiable plates, so it feels good to have the car "clean," so to speak.  I also got pawprint plates!  I was supposed to get spay/neuter plates in Cali, but they needed a minimum order for the run before they could issue them, and I left too early to get them.  So now I have plates from a better state, with better artwork on them.  

Doesn't the California plate look like the dog is melting, or has a chromosome missing or something?  

One plus side of hitting up the DMV today, is that it's super close to Garden of the Gods.  Sure, I wasn't prepared to go hiking - I was wearing a dress, my cell battery was almost dead, and didn't have a water bottle, but who can resist on such a beautiful day?  

Having that in my backyard is exactly why I've spent the past 3 years homesick like crazy.  

It's weird being back though.  Random businesses have changed, entire buildings have been erected or demolished, urban sprawl has gotten worse.  But the differences between here and Pomona are stark.  Pomona has a doughnut shop on every corner, the springs has either a tattoo studio or a church.  Too damn many churches everywhere.  And the number of tattoo shops seems to have doubled since I left - precisely the reason why I had to quit piercing - way too much competition to be able to make it charging full price for top quality work.  It's out of control now.  

I do have some amazing news though.  I stopped by my old clinic, and was greeted with "hurry up and graduate so you can start working here!"  I was also informed that since the property may get taken by the city by eminent domain in the next few years, that the owner's looking for a new place - and since I'll be owning it someday, my input is wanted.  :)  I've also been given the open offer to work there during my gaps between clinical rotations, do exams, and work up cases.  Eeeee!

I start my emergency rotation next week in Ft. Collins.  I'm extra excited and terrified.  Terrified, because I hate navigating large institutions, and I'm always convinced I'll get lost, and because even with as much preparation I've been trying to do, I don't feel like I know enough.  (Which, I honestly don't and never will.  It keeps me constantly reading and bettering myself.)  However, I love emergency, and I get to stay with family that I haven't seen in far too long, so I'm excited about that.  Fingers crossed.  (And as always, if I write about 3rd and 4th year stuff, since so much of it involves clients/patients, details will be either fudged or left out completely.) 

Anyway, that's the super-quick past couple weeks in a nutshell.  I don't know what my hours will be like in Ft. Collins, so updates may continue to be sporadic.