So I've been at work for the last 6 days. Not by choice, of course. People called me asking to fill in for them for lame reasons like their car won't start because it's too cold, they just got their wisdom teeth out and they're in a lot of pain, or they've had the flu for a week. But on the bright side, I'm finally getting my 35-40 hours that I'm legally entitled to according to my full time status. Being at work for 6 straight 10+ hour days is pretty exhausting. Things start to get to you.
Day 1: Friday, January 31.
This started off as every other normal day that I didn't have to work. I was sleeping. Then I got a phone call at 7am from a co-worker saying her car wouldn't start. I agreed to come in for her because so far that week I had only worked about 14 hours. I went in at 8, worked til 2. Not bad at all. Overall, not a horrible day.
Day 2: Saturday, February 1.
A regularly scheduled day. One of my longer days, I went in at 7. (Now, for those of you who don't know me well, I'll just tell you now that I am probably the furthest thing from a morning person that exists. My ideal sleeping time is from 3am til noon.) Most of the day went pretty well, nothing too exciting happened, and I left at 7:30pm.
Day 3: Sunday, February 2.
This is the point in my week that starts getting unbearably crazy. I was scheduled for surgery that day, so I got to work at 6:30. Unfortunately, I had to wait for the Petsmart manager to show up to unlock the doors so I could go in. I could have gotten another 10 minutes of sleep. We only had one surgery scheduled, a dog neuter. No big deal, it was looking like a pretty slow day. Then a dog showed up for a dental cleaning. Apparently, somebody forgot to mark in the computer that it was a drop off, so it didn't show up in the section for scheduled surgeries. But I could deal with it, we still only had 2 surgeries. Then the owner of the dog to be neutered decided that he doesn't want to pay $25 for an e-collar (cone of shame) or pain meds to go home, because he thought that everything his dog would ever need was included in the price of our wellness plans for which he pays a monthly fee. I tried to clear things up with him, to no avail. So I told him I would talk to the doctor about it and get things cleared up. This was at 7:15, and the doctor doesn't usually arrive before 8:30. When she got there, I filled her in on what happened, and she called the guy right away. Of course his phone went to voicemail, and they played phone tag for a good half hour trying to come to an understanding about wellness plans, what is covered, etc. Eventually the guy was satisfied, and we could continue with the surgery. We didn't even pre-med the dog until 10:00, and it has to set in for at least 30 minutes before being induced into anesthesia. So we got a late start. (Normally, we already would have been done with the surgery.) So we went into surgery, neutered the dog, recovered him from anesthesia, and started on the dental. This particular dog needed about 5 extractions, but didn't really like staying under anesthesia. She didn't stay stable for very long periods of time, and insisted on waking up as soon as the doctor started extracting teeth. We got one tooth out, and decided this dog shouldn't stay under. So we turned the gas off and woke her up. She was breathing really hard, her heart rate and blood pressure were both high, and her temperature was pretty low, so we had to keep monitoring closely until she stabilized. About 45 minutes later, she calmed down and we were able to move on with our day. That was about 1:30. I still hadn't gone on break, and we had appointments starting at 2:15, and several people had already called to set up walk-ins at 2:00. I got back from lunch at 2:30, and sure enough, we had 3 rooms there. 2 of those were sick pets that would have to be dropped off to do diagnostics. The rest of the day was like this, and I didn't even finish cleaning up my surgery stuff until 5:30. (We close at 5 on Sundays). Thankfully, nothing too exciting happened after the 2:00 hour, but we were still running around like crazy trying to get things done up until 7:00. Then, I finally got to go home.
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