I'm my worst critic

I have been having serious doubts about my performance at work.  Basically, I have felt like a complete idiot for the last 2 weeks, and have been sure that my boss is secretly thinking "Why the hell did I hire her?"

But after today, I think I'm doing okay.

The day started out busy and never stopped.  When I first got to work, I was immediately handed several cases to take over for the day.  Then I get the quiz.  "So this dog came in last night because it ate chocolate.  [Experienced weekend vet] couldn't answer this question, let's see if you do better..."  Uh oh.  No pressure or anything.   "What's the most common clinical sign to expect with chocolate toxicosis?"  Oh, oh!  I know that one!  Of course, I couldn't remember the name of the drug to use to counteract the elevated heart rate that comes from ingesting chocolate (propanolol, for future reference), but it was still points for me.

Then a rat comes in.  (As a side note, why would you spend hundreds of dollars on an animal that cost about $2 at the pet store?  I don't get it.  I guess it's all about the emotional connection.)  Either way, they had two rats.  They lived in town but had left 2.5 hours earlier and had only just found the clinic.  The female had died on the way.  The male was at death's door.  And they wanted me to perform miracles.  This was an interesting couple anyway, but the guy was sobbing.  So I had to try.  I gave it some fluids, some antibiotics, some heat, and crossed my fingers.  Half an hour later, it was gone.  But my boss said "I'm glad you're willing to try on cases like this, I think that's why we're here."  Or something like that.  But kudos to me for trying!

And then the day gets crazy.  [Weekend vet] likes to disappear on me, although I think he's really just chatting as I'm trying to see 5 rooms at once.  Either way, I was crazy busy.  And boss-man knew that.  As we were both trying to finish so we could get out of there, me to my husband and him to a house call, he turned around as he was walking through the door and I was racing around with a foot-high stack of charts, and said "You work very well independently and that is great.  I just want you to know how much I appreciate that."  Yay!

So all of this makes me think he doesn't hate me after all.  And maybe I'll be okay as I'm catching on to his policies more and more. 

And on top of all of that, a client I've been working with for almost a week because his ancient lab keeps goign downhill said that he was so glad that I was working on her because some of the other doctors seem to just not care as much.  Again, I thought I was totally messing up this case and the guy probably hated me.

Moral of this story:  I obviously need to work on not thinking the worst and realizing that people probably aren't anywhere near as hard on me as I am on myself. 

Now if only it were that easy...