See one, do one, ...

Today I got to give a teaching-demo to a client at the clinic! She has a diabetic cat, see, and she'd just bought a glucose meter. Boy did I sympathize. Two years ago, that was me.

Apparently I am the only person on staff today who has ever done this. (Well, with lancets and a human glucose meter. The techs have all done it with venipuncture, of course, but nobody's going to try teaching that method.) So I got to teach, all official-like as a Veterinary Health Type Of Person and all. Be very afraid. :-)

I hope I did okay by her. She was nervous. She had a One-Touch and she hadn't so much as cracked the seal on the package. (Just like me two years ago.) The cat, predictably, wasn't bothered at all, except that we seemed to want to hang on to his ear for an annoyingly long time.

I am also now officially cleared to give oral medications to dogs and injections to cats boarded at the clinic. The rule seems to be that if you do it enough in front of a registered tech and you don't do anything stupid or unsafe (for yourself or for the animal), the tech decrees you sufficiently responsible and sane. Everyone agreed that it was odd to have me not able to give insulin to a cat, but it's also true that there's a big difference between caring for my own cat and taking on the responsibility of caring for someone else's.

Woo, I are all important an stuf.

Terrible schedule

Winter quarter class schedules are up, so I'm looking at the days and times for the next class I need in each series: physics, biology, and chemistry. These are the standard three series taken by every student wanting to go on in anything health-related. I've got a few buddies who are in exactly my three classes this quarter. (One aims to be a physician, one a physical therapist, one a marine biologist, and there's me).

There is exactly ONE section of physics 2B offered, and that one conflicts with EVERY POSSIBLE section of biology 6B.

*sigh*