It’s that time of year again. Finals are upon us. This is my last full week of classes. There are only 3 class days next week before the first exams begin. I have a lot of work ahead of me. I’m going to stay positive because there really are a lot of great things about being a second year veterinary student.
No one looks at us like we’re babies anymore. Granted, I miss some of the hand-holding of first year (actually, I miss having the lecture notes provided in class as opposed to paying to print them out myself), but I like getting to class and being expected to know something about what we’re discussing that day. Granted it’s really intimidating when I don’t know the answers, it is a really big pat on the back when I DO know them. It helps me to see that I am learning and all of these facts are getting stored away somewhere. Looking back on this semester, I can really see how far I’ve come as a student and it feels wonderful to finally feel like I belong.
I had a chance to do some volunteering this weekend for a local organization that’s run by one of my instructors. It is a means of certifying dogs to be able to visit children in the hospital and the dogs have to go through health screening twice per year. This was one of those screening sessions. Each dog gets a physical exam, skin cultures (to make sure they aren’t carrying anything on their skin that children with weakened immune systems could catch), oropharyngeal (throat) cultures, blood tests, and fecal and urine screening. As students, we do the physical exams and all of the sample collection and there are clinicians walking around if we need help.
I was paired with two first years who were rather nervous about doing physical exams in front of an owner. Granted these are some of the coolest owners you will ever meet, it’s still intimidating. Everything was going well until they started asking each other if the dog had a tumor. It was an intradermal lesion. Technically, the word tumor means “any abnormal growth of tissue,” but tumor means cancer to a pet owner. I got them straightened out until it came time for them to listen to the heart. Then they got the brilliant idea to say that the heart sounded really abnormal and slow. However, neither one could tell me how many beats they had counted. I donned my stethoscope and heard a beautiful respiratory arrhythmia. It took a few long minutes before I convinced the owner that this was totally normal finding and that the dog was not dying of cancer and a heart condition.
That whole scenario really got me thinking; did I make mistakes like that in front of owners? Oh yes. Did I realize I was making the mistake? Not a chance. I just hope the two first years can realize their mistake and move forward and not do it again. It was a learning experience for me, too. I had the chance to really work on my communication skills. I don’t know that I’d have been able to explain a respiratory arrhythmia to an owner a year ago. I don’t know that I’ve have been confident enough in my auscultation skills to hear one in the first place. I’m learning a lot and I love having little opportunities like that to show myself that it’s all worth it and I’m actually getting where I need to go. Second year isn’t so bad after all.
That said, I have some major studying to do. If anyone knows why the ophthalmologists use so many phth-es in their eye-related words, please let me know. I love spelling but that’s a little excessive if you ask me.
