Whew!

So that Clin Path exam I was so worried about? I got a 93%! I missed 2 questions out of 30, and both were silly mistakes that if I'd been in a less stressed frame of mind and thought through them I wouldn't have goofed up.

One question in particular I am so angry at myself over. It was one in a series of questions on a CBC showing immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. I answered all of the questions correctly apart from one: "What is the most likely cause of this animal's thrombocytopenia?" Thrombocytopenia is a low platelet count. The two most common causes of thrombocytopenia in an IMHA animal are Evan's syndrome, where antibodies are attacking both the red blood cells and platelets, or disseminated intravascular coagulopathy. I knew that, and both answers were given as options. So my next step should have been asking myself how do you differentiate between the two. The answer is a coagulation panel. And the professor even provided a coagulation panel that was perfectly normal apart from a prolonged bleeding time, indicating that the only thing preventing the patient from clotting normally is a lack of platelets. DIC would result in a coagulation panel where everything was out of whack, and we were given just that coagulation panel on a later question which I got right! And yet I still put DIC when I should have put Evan's because my stupid brain kept going, "DIC is more common!" And it is, but the coag panel clearly said Evan's. I am an idiot sometimes.

I am getting straight A's so far this semester. It's been an intense ride and it isn't even halfway over yet. I hope I can keep going with the same steam but I doubt I'll maintain a 4.0. It's just ridiculously hard and uncommon in vet school. We've got a president's list apart from the dean's list that lists all the students who earned a 4.0 each semester and it's usually only got about 20 names on it from all 7 semesters combined. Still, I want my name on that list just once.