Too Long in Ponderings of the Universe

Yikes! I haven’t written since December?! I didn’t think it had been that long! I’ve also been a terrible noter.

The winter blah’s are in full force. I’m so content to spend most of my free time curled up in bed with critters +/- Aaron reading, watching TV or wasting time on my phone. I haven’t been particularly social either. For the majority of January and the first bit of February I was incredibly anxious as well. I’m starting to feel better.

January was hard. I had a week at work that completely spent me. I had owners that waited too long to bring their pets in. Now I have a young patient that may be in kidney failure and wouldn’t have if his owner had just brought him in to see me in a timely manner, but he “just couldn’t find the time.” I’m still so angry. I have another patient who is dead because owners waited two days to bring her in after she delivered a dead puppy. In those two days, the other puppy that was still inside her was dead and her uterus ruptured itself trying to deliver it. She was septic when J and I did an emergency spay on her. I can’t forget opening up her abdomen to be greeted by a belly full of green, smelly liquid and a dead puppy’s head where I should have just found a uterus. She miraculously survived surgery and was still alive when I checked in on her to give her more IV antibiotics before I went to bed for the night. The next morning, she was dead. It was not surprising, but it still gutted me. With how sick she was, I would have been had she survived in an intensive care hospital. And yet, I still felt guilty asking the owner to pay the remainder of their balance. I shouldn’t have, I did nothing wrong and I performed a service. I’m still angry and sad from that week, but getting better.

On the bright side, I also did my second bladder surgery, for the first time on a male dog. Getting the penis out of the way is so awkward! At least I didn’t sew it back on crooked! That was right after my awful week. H, my boss, said I did a great job with all of it and that I was growing as a doctor. I almost cried. Jokingly, I said she should throw me an ice cream party. She did (jointly celebrating another co-worker’s major accomplishment). It was nice.

We hired the student who externed in November! She graduates in May and will be starting sometimes towards the end of June and beginning of July. I’m really excited! She fit in so well and is the right amount of quirky. It will be weird not being the most inexperienced doctor anymore.

Aaron is recovering from influenza. He was so sick for a few days and so miserable but is so much better now. I’ve been trying to take care of him this week and have been worrying. I’m glad he’s on the mend. I’m amazed no one in my household has gotten it yet, but there’s still time.

My 5 year Cancerversary is this week. It’s another reason I feel kind of a mess. It doesn’t feel like it was that long ago, but at the same time seems as though it was a dream and didn’t really happen. I keep having flashbacks to the awful week I spent in the hospital. It was so surreal. As time goes on, I become more and more…OK with it, I guess. I still wonder who I’d be now if it hadn’t happened at all.

My workout space has gotten messy again, so I haven’t done anything workout related for too long. I’m feeling too sedentary and squishy. It’s hard enough to motivate myself but if I have to do some major cleaning before I workout…well, that’s not (and hasn’t been) happening. Once Aaron’s well again, I’ll have to get him move the excess to storage, which is where it was initially supposed to go but then there was an issue with getting into the storage facility. Getting the problem solved has fallen by the wayside due to him being in school and such.

I’m not ready for anther work week to start tomorrow!