My Journey in Veterinary Medicine

A little bit about me

I am a 21-year-old female. I am a vet assistant at a local vet hospital and I am studying to be a vet tech. If you would like me to explain the difference between those two, let me know and I will be more than happy to tell you.

When I was in high school I was 100% set on becoming a human doctor. I was inspired by Grey's Anatomy to become a surgeon. It sounds pathetic, but I genuinely wanted to save lives by doing surgery. I was planning on moving to St. Louis to go to SLU to become a doctor. I applied, got accepted with a scholarship, but would have still owed $38,000 per semester, and just under $500,000 at the end of med school. That is not including books, lab fees, dorms, etc. I don't know about you, but I think that is a bizarre amount of money.

Anyway, two months before graduating high school I had to change my career path to something more affordable. In my psychology class, we took a personality test that told us what would be good careers according to our answers. One of my "recommended careers" was a paramedic. Cool. My dad is one, and I am running out of time to pick something to study, so paramedic it is! I made a rushed decision to go to a community college to study emergency medicine. 2 years later and one semester away from completing the paramedic program, I decided it isn't the career for me. During my time through that program, I was doing really well, but I did not feel passionate about it. I will go more into this at a later time. After what I call "soul searching" I decided to apply to the vet tech program at that same community college. Long story short, I was accepted into the program. Now I have one year left of this program until graduation, and I have never been happier in my college career than I am right now. 

Anyway, enough about that. I still live with my parents and we have two dogs: a coonhound mix and a boxer. I am single, but I am looking for a nice fellow if those exist anymore (sorry,  I'm still bitter about being treated badly in a past relationship). I don't have much free time, but when I do, I enjoy painting, crocheting, walking in parks, cuddling my dogs, and watching Youtube. My favorite animals are giraffes and turtles. My favorite color is black and if you are one of those people who say black isn't a color, blue is my second favorite. I don't really have an appetite a lot but when I do, I like pasta, potatoes, cookies, and anything else that is bad for me. 

I don't drink too much. Only a glass of something every once in a while with friends or family. I don't smoke weed. I don't really have anything against it, but it tastes and smells bad. I mentally and physically can't do anything if I feel like I smell bad or have bad breath, and those two things happen when people smoke. 

I will go into this later if you would like me to, but I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and OCD. All of these things have been challenging to deal with because they feed off of each other (I don't know if that makes sense). I do worry about these becoming worse with this field. After all, the suicide rate in vet medicine is very high. Don't quote me on this, but I think people in this field are 5 times more likely to commit suicide than a "normal" person. That is worrisome, but it will all work out. 

For everyone's sake who is reading this, I am going to end this on a bright note. I had a pretty good day at school today. We did blood smears and I found some pretty cool white blood cells and even knew the name of them! We also had our first surgery day and although I was not directly apart of the surgery, I did play a vital role in the "behind the scenes" of it. I felt like a valuable part of the team and quite honestly, I don't usually feel that way. It was a nice change. 

Anyway, I have assignments I need to do instead of writing to strangers who aren't even going to read this. Thank you to whoever does happen to read this. If you have a topic you would like me to talk about (related to me or not) or if you would like me to elaborate on something I've already written about, please don't be afraid to ask. 

Your girl,

K