Cherry Hills Days 7-9

Wednesday- Today was very busy. Lots of appointments which split the vet Techs in half, so I got to help out a lot more than usual, helping to hold the more hostile animals while they got blood drawn or vaccinations. Had a dog who couldn’t  really use his back legs and his eyes darted horizontally constantly, which meant either Old Dog’s Disease, or, less likely, a brain tumor.

Thursday-Today was less busy but just all day appointments. Had an adorable puppy ten weeks old who needed a lepto vaccine. She had just taken a nap so she was very tired. Her name is Ella Rose, and I got to hold her while she got her shot. She left, and then an hour later, she came back because she had a reaction to the shot: hives on her belly and a fever. My job, thankfully, was to hold the puppy until her fever and hives went down. She fell asleep in my arms and I was happy as a clam.

Saturday-Today was very very busy-similar to Wednesday. We had a lot of new patients, and once again, they let me hold the dogs while they drew blood. We had an owner with three dogs who just moved from California: a bijon frise named Tinkerbell, a yellow lab, and a severely under-groomed husky named Seiko. They all needed lots of lab work and vaccines, so it was all hands on deck.

Parkway Southwest Middle School: Closet of Cans

At SWM, they have a closet of food in cans and boxes.  Mrs. Grossmann, the counselor I am spending most of my time with, asked me to move some cans from the ground to the upper shelves.

I did that in about thirty minutes, but she didn’t come back for me, so I just started organizing all of them.  French Style Green Beans, Cut Green Beans, Sweet Peas, Peas and Carrots, Carrots, Sweet Corn, White Corn, Asparagus, Sliced Yams, Sliced Beets, Garbanzo Beans, Black Beans, Red Beans,  Chili Beans, Baked Beans, Chili, Chicken Noodle Soup… I could go on but I already feel bad for typing that many and I think the point is clear.

I went crazy on that closet and it was so much fun.  It was not something I anticipated doing but I was glad to do it and I had lots of fun.

First week interning at LaserLight Inc.

For this week, I started my internship at LaserLight Inc. It is a high-tech manufacturing company that specializes in drilling micro holes on parts by applying laser machines.

Monday:Mr Hannan,the CEO and the owner of the company, gave me a introduction of the company and a lesson on SWOT analysis of the company. He learned this company managing strategic technique from his MBA program, and he has applied this technique on managing LaserLight since then. In the afternoon, We had a meeting with the C.O.O of the company and the director of technology department together.

Tuesday: Kim, the director of marketing department taught me a comprehensive class on what methods does the company use to promote its fame and reputation to outside world. And how does the company specifically apply them.

Wednesday: In the morning, Scott, the controller of the company taught me about the cost system of the company and the gross profit. In the afternoon, Brittany, the HR director, taught me what kinds of work an HR does everyday.

Parkway Southwest Middle School: Observation

I am all for observing but I have been doing it for almost 12 hours so far and it’s the same thing over and over.  I get to watch the counselor lady I am shadowing go classroom to classroom giving a climate survey to 7th graders.

A lot of the kids I’ve seen are very disrespectful, and many of the teachers don’t seem to care.

I miss Gambrill!  It’s not very fun at SWM.  Luckily I’m going back (to Gambrill) this Friday because they asked me to come in to help set up and work their health fair.

Cherry Hills Days 5-6

Yesterday-Lots of appointments. Just kind of a normal day. There were lots of vaccinations, including rabies, lepto, flu, and others. We had quite a bit of unwilling patients so it was my job to hold and distract them while they got their shots.

Today-Surgery day! And thankfully, I didn’t pass out this time. We had four patients today: Pixel-Spay, two patients had Dental, and Mittens-Declaw. We started with Pixel, who was the hardest one, because she was a fighter. She didn’t want to come out of her kennel, first of all, and she was even harder to sedate, so we had to put her in a cat box and distribute the anesthesia in the box. When we thought she was asleep, we took her out and it appeared that she was pretending because she shot right up after we took her out. We had to put her back in the box three times to get her to sleep. After she finally fell asleep, everything went smoothly. Everyone felt very bad for Mittens because of the declawing. They try to talk the owners out of declawing cats because it’s basically like amputating part of their fingers. That went smoothly though, but after the cat woke up, she shook off her bandages every time, so we just let her be. To avoid possible fainting, I skipped the two dentals, and spent the rest of my time with the recovering animals. I made sure they didn’t vomit while their tube was still in, then after their tube was taken out, I made sure that they were breathing right. Mittens and Pixel were fine, but Maggie wasn’t after she got out of surgery. Maggie is a pug, who have breathing troubles in general, but after they took the tube out, she couldn’t breathe. Dr. Leonard put another tube back in and hooked up a monitor so we could watch her and make sure she’s breathing normally as she came out of the anesthesia.

the old switcharoo

okay so because of the sheer amount of photos I have, I’m gonna have to use Flickr rather than Instagram to store them all where people can see them. it’s a slow process, getting set up, because they take forever to edit and then upload, but here‘s where they’ll be. (if for some reason that link didn’t work, it’s just @canoncandor on Flickr.)

I’ve spent all day so far working on editing a subject’s senior pictures as well as some photos of my own. that’s pretty much my plan for the rest of the week as well.

MO Bap/This Week

Today, I shadowed a nurse at Missouri Baptist in a surgical inpatient unit (a post-op unit that seems to function as one step down from an ICU). She had five patients (most of them elderly and one 21-years-old) and I got to follow her around during the busiest part of the day. Some things I saw her do: pass out medications, take vitals, chart on Epic, give a suppository, apply ointment in “unseemly places.”

Moral of the story, I enjoyed the experience much more than I thought I would. I still want to work with babies; if plans A, B, C, D, E, and F fail, Surgical Inpatient would probably be my plan G (approximately).

An Update

I’m mostly updating because it’s now 3-something A.M, and I am apparently not getting any sleep tonight because everything hurts. And I’m bored.

My health is, as I’ve probably said an annoying number of times now, a mess. I had to cancel Austin, which is really disappointing. We’re trying to work something out for me to do from the house and maybe part time at school, at least.

As much as I’ve learned from the website work I’ve done, what I learned most about is how to handle chronic illness… It gets in the way a lot. Though I’m hoping this is just a flareup, the nature of my conditions is to be a bit degenerative, so I’m learning as I go.

I’m having to figure out how to set boundaries for myself (which, for someone who wants to do everything possible to be useful as efficiently as possible, is not at all fun) and listen to my heart. Not figuratively–I don’t have feelings– but literally. I also have to listen to my joints and stomach and nervous system, but the heart thing sounded better.

Truly, though, I’m learning a lot about when to resist limitations and when to just accept them. Write 8 English essays in three days? Sure! Push myself to the physical limit, particularly when there’s no one up for helping me out? Probably not a good idea.

You’d think heat stroke, dehydration, and an IV in my arm would’ve taught me about overworking myself, but it takes a while to get through to me.

Moral of the midnight story? Take care of yourself. Whether it’s mental or physical, no matter how small you think your problem is, take care of yourself. And listen to me, here, I’m the expert in ignoring my problems for fear that they’re too small to warrant any concern… ya girl ignored what was probably a serious arrhythmia a couple years ago because it was “no big deal.” (Fun wakeup call when your cardiologist tells you about that.)

Everything is temporary anyway. Might as well keep yourself as happy and healthy as possible while you’re here.

Love,

Your very annoying and very tired fellow student.

Oh, and Walgreens sells mango flavored Pedialyte that doesn’t taste like vaguely-salty, syrupy junk. If anyone’s dehydrated, I highly recommend it.

Summarization of the week interning with Mr. Levinson.

Thursday: We had 5 meetings and 1 presentations.One of the meetings was a discussion for deciding the waterproof style of the outdoor headwear that will fit the government regulation and also keep as many profits as possible. We had this huge presentation that five employees from any departments of the company can come and present their ideas for the purpose of saving the company’s cost in a big hall. It was pretty cool to see how a company could maximize people’s wisdom by getting all of them involved.

Friday: We had four meetings today. One of them was a discussion about the process of making scoresheets for a couple departments. It is a way to form a new culture for the future of the company. Mr. Levinson took me for a complete tour of the factory in the afternoon.

Overall, last week was really busy but it was super helpful for me to learn and understanding how the management office operate a big firm like PAI Fashion. It was just a phenomenal experience.

Hydromat Day 1

Today I started at Hydromat.  They are a Swiss-American company that makes really high tech and efficient milling and tooling machines that are capable of machining lots of products very quickly (they told me they can do half a million roughly pen sized precision metal parts on one machine in a week and a half).  Thats a lot.  Anyways I’ve been chilling’ with the guys that do more modeling stuff but hopefully I will get to work on the floor at some point with the hands on guys putting the machines together.  It’s also pretty okay because they have an exchange program thing with their headquarters in Switzerland so theres a lot of Swiss people with fun accents, also a lot of stuff is in German because of that.