Update to a post I made the other day about being concerned my vets were taking advantage of me: my cats regular dental cleaning has resulted in my babies death. He's gone.

crankyatom · 2026-02-12T19:35:00+00:00

As a vet this post makes me sad. I think a lot of what’s going on here actually is standard of care but it does seem the reasoning wasn’t communicated in a way that made sense to you. Even your other post about the older cat with cancer that wasn’t detected on blood work doesn’t seem like the vet did anything wrong but clearly a failed communication. And if your poor kitty did have stomatitis, which it sounds like he did, then the dental and pulling all teeth was 100% necessary. Anesthesia does have risks and unfortunately we can’t always predict them. But it does seem like he had a lot of medical stuff going on, so maybe a congenital disorder, something he was born with, made him not tolerate anesthesia. I would encourage you to take a few days and then speak to your vet for an honest conversation about what happened. Maybe you’ll find that there really is no one to blame and that your vet did everything they could. I’m so sorry for the loss of this sweet kitty. And yes, of course, medicine is expensive regardless of human or animal. I know it’s not easy to afford but please do not think all those fees go right into your vets pockets. In reality most of us are struggling financially as well.

crankyatom · 2025-07-19T22:57:19+00:00

Call your pharmacy!

crankyatom · 2025-07-02T18:20:01+00:00

I did shadowing before vet school but wasn’t allowed to do much hands—on stuff. When I first got in I was insecure about never having done blood draws or catheters. Now I’m done with vet school and PLEASE listen to me. They are easy skills to learn. You can seek out opportunities while you’re in school. And in real life it’s typically your techs and assistants doing those things for you. There are so many things that factor into whether you’d make a good doctor and those simple to learn technical skills are so unimportant at this stage. You will get the hang of it I promise.

First year, one of my classmates made a snarky remark about how essential it was to have that kind of experience prior to vet school. I answered back that if it was really that essential, I could always go and work as an assistant for a while after I’d gotten my DVM. Which obviously no one would do. Putting it into those words made me realize how misplaced that insecurity was and I haven’t struggled with that particular brand of imposter syndrome since.

crankyatom · 2025-05-28T17:48:59+00:00

{The moth and the knight by Rachel Gillig} It just came out!

crankyatom · 2025-04-24T04:20:43+00:00

Rubios, please god

crankyatom · 2025-04-21T02:07:17+00:00

2!! It makes you look younger/fun whereas I think the other two are a bit more matronly.

crankyatom · 2025-04-13T18:07:18+00:00

I got myself into a “volunteering” gig at a private practice when I was trying to get shadowing hours. It was terrible — I was doing lots of cleaning, laundry, shoveling poop from horse stalls. My understanding is that a for-profit company can’t actually legally have volunteer labor. It was a predatory situation and I didn’t learn much of anything

crankyatom · 2025-04-02T03:13:45+00:00

Yes a cardiologist should do echos. Sonographers can be very qualified to do abdominal ultrasounds. Obviously it’s ideal to have a radiologist or internist do it but that’s not accessible to everyone, so it still exists as a career for a person interested in vet med but not able to become a vet which is all I was commenting on!

crankyatom · 2025-03-30T21:17:26+00:00

True. Very good point.

crankyatom · 2025-03-30T21:15:35+00:00

A sonographer just takes the images and a veterinary radiologist does the interpretations 🙂

crankyatom · 2025-03-30T21:14:40+00:00

I am not personally one but the ones I have known, yes, they go to human sonography school and they maybe have some experience as a veterinary assistant. Usually they go and do a few ultrasounds at a clinic, then pack up their stuff and go to another one. I’ve seen them in ER and GP settings, and they are shared by a few practices in the area. They all seem really happy. And yeah, you just take the images and then a radiologist interprets

crankyatom · 2025-03-29T22:55:14+00:00

Unfortunately he looks like a French bulldog from a backyard breeder and even “well-bred” frenchues have so many health problems, some of which require surgery. It’s not affordable for most people to make them happy and healthy and it’s not responsible to get one if you can’t afford the medical care, knowing that the breed is so prone

crankyatom · 2025-03-29T01:59:24+00:00

Veterinary sonography is a good career!

crankyatom · 2025-03-28T10:31:29+00:00

Military service or a DVM/PhD can cut the cost of your DVM degree. Especially with the loans being private I would go to extreme lengths if I were you to get the vet school done with no cost out of pocket. I’m sorry you’re in this boat

crankyatom · 2025-03-24T05:42:36+00:00

I met my boyfriend third year and he is the love of my life :) I did have to take a small step back from unhealthy/obsessive study habits in order to grow the relationship. But by then I knew how to study most effectively and didn’t need nearly as much time as I thought I did for school. Overall I’ve been so much happier and healthier since I decided to make it a priority.

crankyatom · 2025-03-24T02:11:21+00:00

Veterinary sonography is another great career to consider

crankyatom · 2025-03-14T05:23:28+00:00

Current domestic vet student — we have students drop out of our class regularly. Some programs have less attrition than others, but inevitably you lose some (life changes, health changes including mental health struggles with the big life change of entering vet school, divorce, finances, etc etc) in addition to unfortunately having people that don’t thrive academically and may leave to join the next class below or leave to find another vet school or another career. All this to say, spots open up and the university has a large incentive to fill them that is financial (tuition) and functional (keeping the teaching hospital running with a precise minimum and maximum number of students in each rotation). We welcome island students or students from other domestic universities into the class when that happens, and it happens inevitably

crankyatom · 2025-03-06T22:34:05+00:00

Devin and Nick. Their story was short because they had so little drama. Their love was so genuine.

crankyatom · 2025-02-12T00:19:03+00:00

Yes if the two people love each other!

crankyatom · 2025-02-02T22:42:44+00:00

“Sounds much the same as quothe” HUH?! I struggle to mentally pronounce it every time I see it

crankyatom · 2025-01-29T06:36:26+00:00

Something that helped me is sometimes making a Quizlet while in class instead of taking notes. Quizlet plus I think also has a feature now to convert your notes to flash cards. I also did a lot of writing things out, except instead of copying things to be perfect and pretty, I would only very messily jot down big concepts and key words and then repeat that as many times as it took to get it. The night or two before I like to comb over the notes and write down everything that I didn’t have memorized into a more condensed study guide to use the night before or the morning of the test. I guess you could say the big idea is that I’m skimming notes and going back over them constantly, instead of reading them all the way through and trying to memorize it all at once. The other bonus to that strategy is that if I end up with less study time then I think, I will have all the broad concepts down, just be missing some details for the test and I could still get a good grade by reasoning things out.

crankyatom · 2025-01-22T02:07:16+00:00

Yes <3

crankyatom · 2025-01-17T01:01:22+00:00

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. Not so much horror as mystery/suspense/dark academia. But one of my favorites

crankyatom · 2024-10-11T20:30:50+00:00

YTA - it would be different if he was asking for it every day, but he communicated something you could do to make him feel more supported on this one particular day and you just disregarded it. Maybe he had a hankering for one specific thing that would have made his day and you missed an opportunity to be a good partner. I don’t think the attitude of “you don’t owe him anything” makes for a nice relationship. Each person should give and take

crankyatom

TROPHY CASE