OPC Rotation: Week 2

Howdy!

I just finished my 2nd week of my outpatient clinical rotation… I only have 1 week left! This is the last leg of clinicals for me and I can’t believe I’ve almost finished 13 weeks!

Outpatient has definitely been my favorite rotation thus far. I like that you have 1-on-1 time with a patient and get to follow-up with them later to see how they are doing. In outpatient, the focus is really on nutrition whereas in inpatient, nutrition is just a small (though important) piece of a patient’s medical treatment. Patients are generally referred to outpatient nutrition therapy by a physician. The physician only has time to say “You need to do XYZ,” but the dietitian has time to say, “You need to do XYZ. Tell me about yourself and let’s see how we can fit this into your lifestyle.”

This week I got to teach a diabetes support group and begin the assessment portion of nutrition counseling. I have felt pretty comfortable so far, although I am still getting the hang of getting the conversation flowing. I am looking forward to my last week.

I have been obsessed with eating pomegranates this week. I stock up on them when they are on sale at Aldi and then eat them almost every night until they are gone.

This week I started feeling really good about my life after my internship is over :) It sounds silly but seriously for the past 2 years, my life has been structured around eventually being able to complete a dietetic internship. It is exciting to think that I will be completely finished in 5 short weeks. K jokingly asked what I was going to do with my time once I pass my exam and I wanted to cry tears of joy just thinking about it…. reading (for fun)…. watching TV without thinking about all of the crap I have to do… RELAXING… having a job and getting a paycheck again.

On a not-so-light note, Lily has been limping for a whole week and we took her to the vet this afternoon. It turns out she tore her cranial cruciate ligament, which is the dog equivalent to an ACL. She also has a luxating patella in that same knee that was diagnosed when she was a few years old. The vet seems to think that the CCL injury is related to her age and patella issue.
The vet told us that we could either wait a few weeks to see how she does walking on it or go ahead and do surgery. Since she has the luxating patella already, he said she likely will not be able to walk on the leg again until she has surgery. We decided to go ahead with the surgery and are consulting a few doggy surgeons at the beginning of next week.

Lily has been doing really well ever since we realized all of her skin problems and ear infections were being caused by allergies, so this new diagnosis really upset me. She has been my best little buddy ever since I was 19 and I know this is probably the beginning of many age-related health problems. I’m just not ready for my girl to be a ‘senior citizen’ as the vet described her.