Unghhhh, or, Finals Zombie Time

Reporting from Pullman, where currently the Shackleton expedition would feel right at home.  I'm going to keep this short and sweet, but I wanted to say HI! and I MISS YOU! and HOPEFULLY I WILL SEE MOST OF YOU OVER BREAK IN TWO WEEKS! and also OH MY GOD THERE ARE STILL EIGHT TESTS AHEAD OF ME WHAT AM I DOING ON BLOGGER?!?!?!

Here because I'm not all there

Just rolling off the end of our first Diagnostic Challenge.  This is an exercise in which classes are cancelled Mon-Thurs, and our class is broken up into groups, given 'clients', and we simulate working through real cases.  It was a lot of fun, although sometimes knowledge is scary.  Our case involved a couple dogs who both contracted multi-drug resistant staphylococcus intermedius infections at 'our' hospital; these bugs were only susceptible to one antibiotic tested, which is the same drug used in humans as a last resort to combat really strong versions of MRSA and the like.  Bringing up the ethical question: should we even be using this drug in a veterinary capacity?  If by using it, we select for a strain of bacteria that doesn't even respond to the strong stuff and that is transmitted to a human, then what?  Obviously if my dog was suffering a potentially fatal infection I would want to treat it.  But I would also be pretty pissed if I or my friends then got a resistant strain and you know, died.  If it's all the same to y'all I would like to crawl back under my cozy rock of ignorance now.

In other news, last weekend I went on a field trip to the largest dairy farm in Washington state--they milk 21,000 cows a day, basically around the clock.  The management system in place on that farm is insane.  We also got to see a calf born, two calves pulled from a cow who was having a bit of trouble, and do jugular blood draws on calves (I feel about calves the same way I feel about cats: it is a crying shame that they have to grow into cows because they're so cute and harmless as babies).

Attempting to locate the jugular under all that fuzz.  Yes it's the size of a
garden hose.  No I'm not a gifted phlebotomist.

Please note the sweet stethoscope.  Thanks Mom and Dad!
Also, it was raining.  So much for "Sunnyside".

We got to do necropsies (autopsies) on a few calves that had died.
I decided that this was as graphic as I would get for you guys.
You probably think my life is way weird already.

I have to run to class at the moment but I'll be back for more later.  It's 5:10 pm.  That's dedication, people.

I Guess My Misadventures Pale in Comparison

I have a project right now in which we are to research a disease and create a case scenario for that disease.  Mine is equine pyrollizidine alkaloid toxicity (horse eats toxic plant, liver shuts down, yada yada yada).  So I am reading about this syndrome in my 10 pound bible entitled humbly "VETERINARY MEDICINE" (one-stop shopping at its best, right?) and it's not looking good for our indiscriminate eaters--listlessness, head pressing, fits of mad galloping--and then I get to a sentence which just tickled my apparently black rotting funny bone: "Death due to misadventure is a frequent outcome".  I know it shouldn't be amusing--but doesn't that sound like the way Scooby and the gang will ultimately meet their demise?

PS To all my horsey buddies: not a common problem.  Nobody we know should be succumbing to any misadventures anytime soon.

First Semester...Second Year--sounds like (but isn't!), lazy!

And we're back!  I'm reinstated in Pullman with so much procrastinating to get done, therefore naturally I have returned to this blog.  This is the first weekend since classes started and we've already got quite a load.  Additionally all the professors this semester are into something called "class participation".  Somebody look this up and get back to me because I'm unfamiliar with the concept.  They are also [almost] all very engaging and enthusiastic (oh god...50 pages of notes in one week enthusiastic!) which makes up for a lot of it.  Grad school is great because the professors, as well as the students, are interested in being there.  And let's see...we have on our plate Systems Pathology, Clinical Pathology, Virology, Bacteriology, Pharmacology, International Veterinary Medicine and Skeletal Prep (in which you make a dog skeleton...from scratch; I'll just leave that one to your imagination).  We've already grown your friendly neighborhood Staphylococci, learned to read a packed cell volume and plasma protein, and have a paper in which we get assigned a different kind of DIARRHEA! to research and then make up a case involving our DIARRHEA!, and on the way talk to another student with a different type of DIARRHEA! and then learn about it and teach it to our classmates (I think this may be getting at that pesky participation thing) and frankly they are all too excited that we are learning about DIARRHEA!!  But there's chronic and acute and necrotizing and cytotoxic--the wide, exciting world of diarrhea is seemingly endless.  Because we are all very mature there have been no comments at all about, What kind of diarrhea do you have? or No, I can't go out, I have to get home and deal with my diarrhea.

It is so nice to be around grown-ups (JESSICA).

I have a lot to tell you all about my epic summer vacation, starring some extremely unauthorized uses of a VW Golf (stay tuned! small rivers forded! ATV trails tackled! trees hit--really, really slowly!), blue water, really large Redwoods, and naked middle aged river beach intruders practicing their early morning yoga (hello, and welcome to northern California).  But that is going to wait until Eli has got his camera situations all sorted out and I can illustrate the points.  Except for the naked people, ew.  What do you think this blog is, gross?  I have standards.  That is the other best thing about Pullman.  Not that there are no naked people, although that is a definite plus, but that Eli is here for a while.  (Well, not right now.  Today he drove halfway to Montana to a ski hill to taunt gravity on a mountain bike, which is his favorite 'sport'.  I maintain that if you have to wear body armor, it isn't a sport, but then I go jump horses around in the woods so I am nothing if not hypocritical.  Whatever.)  He is taking some time to study and do the coursework for his captain's license before heading off to waters uncharted again.  In the meantime he'll be earning food money as the detail dude for a Ford dealership, which to me sounds like work but to him is like hanging out at the pound all day in that he wants to bring them all home with him.  Whatever floats your boat.  And cooks me dinner.  Mmm, dinner.

Off to have Monty Python night with a friend.  See previous comment regarding extreme maturiosity.

In Protest of the Apron Scale or Whatever the Heck That Was, Mariel

The closest thing I've ever had to a 'normal' job was paging at the library, which I did for about two years to pay for my wicked horse habit until I couldn't take being inside ONE MINUTE LONGER one April and quit.  Otherwise, jobs have included shoveling many, many tons of manure, shoving cows around in the wee morning hours, taking apart fresh pigs (yeah.), sidekick for an equine dentist (sidekick is an awesome job: you often get to drive, you look good by association, and while Batman was probably up at night worrying about the safety of Gotham, I'm betting Robin slept like a baby), working for the surgery teaching department at school, and now, general farm whipping boy.  

Last week, I cleaned kennels, got paid for four hours in the sun in a field playing with dogs, dusted the ceiling, painted all the exterior trim of a house by myself with a single paintbrush, Round-Upped the whole farm with one of those backpack things while not humming the Ghostbusters jingle to myself even a little, was the nail in the coffin for the farm's decrepit riding mower, hossed out the sawhorses and an angle-grinder and felt supah BAD-ASS de-rusting a gate for priming, took the power hedge trimmers to the nasty barberries and maybe (maybe) drove Eli's massive truck back and forth across the property to the garage for things that I really didn't need to 'haul' just because it felt cool.  Also I observed minor surgeries, handed the doctor acupuncture needles, and tried to restrain some small animals which I swear is harder than horses because they're so freakin' wiggly.  Why be normal?  And why compose a sentence with less than seventeen independent clauses?

In other news, I'm watching Burn Notice and I was about to ask Where are the cops in Miami? Are all the streets just littered with bullets? And then I remembered my trip with Janet to West Palm Beach late at night and if Miami is anything like that then yes, yes they probably are.

Hello Finals Week

Ripped-up bread, balsamic vinegar, milk, onion, garlic, green pepper, salt and spices.  Add .25 lbs ground beef, stir together in big mug (you know, the ones you use for cereal).  Microwave 5 minutes at 70%.

And it's surprisingly edible.

Ah, desperation.

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Hello, all!  I just had my large animal anatomy final (which went well) and two large slices of chocolate cake, so I am both a) on my very last day of smelling like a mausoleum and b) all sugared up!  It's a good morning!  Add to that the fact that Eli is coming out for the weekend and it's a damn fine Thursday (except for the SNOW but we'll leave that out of it because we're so charitable).

I'm sorry to have let the ol' blog slip so much this semester.  It was a bit more strenuous than the last and I wasn't staying on top of it very well, but I'm slowly reforming and hope to be SuperStudent by next year.  SuperStudent opens her books at least twice a week, not just in the days leading up to exams.  SuperStudent uses her daily planner.  SuperStudent goes running more often.  Come to think of it she sounds sort of obnoxious.  Perhaps another goal would suit...I know, I'll figure it out later....  That's more like it.

Next week: Nutrition, Physiology, Immunology, Pathology, Neuroscience finals.  Anatomy...check!

I'm so looking forward to coming home for the summer--with the water, and the mountains, and the horses, and the people.  I will need to find gainful employment but you know, that's not really what I daydream about while I'm here.  I have a couple weeks of work at my job here in Pullman--my department puts on a continuing education small animal endoscopy (small camera on a tube for scoping guts) lab for area DVMs, and I'm very excited about that.  I have so little experience with small animals and anesthesia, and I love imaging (and gadgets!!), and also they have air conditioning at work.  Really nice here in late May.  (We have AC at home in Poulsbo, too, but you wouldn't know it, MOM).

I'm excited for my cousin to get home so we can start working on his house again, because he lets me use tools.  For some reason a lot of people are reluctant to let me use tools on their property but Evan doesn't know this yet and I'm inclined to let him make his own mistakes decisions so no word from the peanut gallery, thanks.  I'm excited to kidnap Jackie and go find hiking trails at the very ends of twisty precipitous dirt roads.  I'm excited to be riding again (don't laugh at me Janet I've been busy and I'm out of shape), and to be able to just throw my dog in the backyard when she's annoying and have a dishwasher.  I'm excited for Mariel to move to Arizona and MB to move to Nawlins because then I'll have more trips to make although maybe not this exact summer.  I'm excited for Eli to send me photos from Alaska and then come home.  I'm excited at the prospect of being so bored that coming back to school sounds like a good idea, because I'm sorry vet school but I've lost that lovin' feeling.

Summer is so thrilling.

Oh right, I have a blog.

Wow, this semester has been kicking my butt.  It's been a while since I was here.

I think the most important thing I have to say is that I am about to be on SPRING BREAK!  If you were here you would know that just saying those two words the clouds break and the choirs of angels trumpet joyous songs from the heavens.  We are all so drained.  I skipped a class today (don't judge me, all the notes are online!) so I could shower.  Because I couldn't last night or this morning due to a school project (okay, it was extra credit, but I got to do whatever I wanted so I made a quilt--on my beautiful 73 year old sewing machine, thank you Janet!!--and it felt soooo good to use the other half of my brain).  Actually, this is kind of cool--our cardiac physiology prof granted us 15 points for an artistic representation of what we'd learned.  So I made a quilt of an ECG, I saw several paintings, crossword puzzles, a pipe cleaner heart complete with construction paper vessels and my personal favorite, cake.  It was amazing--they had a heart shaped cake and a lung cake and a liver cake and two kidney cakes, with lines connecting them to show the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, which responds to changes in blood pressure.  I really hope we get to eat it tomorrow.  Now that is what I call sweetmeats.

Where was I?  Right.  Break.  I'll be home Friday night and around until Sunday the 21st, hanging out with my dogs because my parents went to Maui without me.  It's okay Mom and Dad, I'll be fine and I still love you (maybe, depending on what you bring me).  I will, however, be trucking home several tons of textbooks and trying to cram for the next round of five exams after spring break.  YAY!  Please, if you are around, give me a reason not to study.  Also: I would be calling you all and notifying you of my presence (at high decibels) except that I left my phone in Eli's truck so it got back to Poulsbo a week before I did...helpful.  Email is the only form of communication I have right now.

This has not been an inspired update but I am really tired and I think I'll go take a nap now.  More later, after I haven't been in class for a day or two and can resume a normal sleep schedule.

Stuff I Like

I have an Anatomy exam tomorrow, and so of course, here I am.  But sometimes I am humming along through my day and I hit on things that are really neat, like so neat that I talk on and on about them at anyone who will listen.  So since this is my blog and you are my captive audience, here are some things I like (starting with: I like lists of things):

--My labradoofus.  She makes me very happy, even when she smells like mud (i.e., 95% of the time).

--The clock tower bells.  WSU has a clock tower (we call it the Eye of Sauron because it is lit in red neon) which chimes on the hour and plays a song every day at 5 o' clock.  I've only ever been able to identify "Tradition" from the Fiddler on the Roof, but it makes me happy that I can hear it from my house.  I keep meaning to find out who puts the songs together and ask them to post the playlist on the web somewhere.

--Renal physiology.  It is very cool, and would probably be even cooler if I knew what the hell was going on (that's this weekend's project).  My favorite thing about physiology is that it is so interesting, the class goes by quickly.

--Radiographs.  So nifty, I mean, have you thought about it?  You are looking inside the body.  And it's like a jigsaw puzzle in there. And thanks, Dr. Mary, because now I know how to look at head x-rays and impress the bejeezus out of my colleagues (How can you tell it's a 4 year old horse?!  Oohhhh...).

--This website.  Any idea to be more happy is a good idea!  I like being happy.

--Hatching plans for my apartment.  I'm allowed to paint it (!!), and boy howdy do I have ambitions here.

--You guys.  I am so lucky to have such a wonderful network of people around me!  I appreciate each and every one of you and I would encourage you to visit Pullman (although you may want to wait until the weird chemical smell is out of my new cushy futon mattress).

--The hot chocolate at the Black Cypress restaurant downtown.  If Indy and I are not quite enough, this hot chocolate will make the trip to Pullman worth your time.

--Procrastination.  Today I saw a t-shirt reading "I have not yet begun to procrastinate" which I may need to own.

--This weirdo (Pumpkin Pi for Halloween; please note the clever stem):

The Year of the Ologies

Apparently, the second semester of vet school is when they begin to dump ologies on you.  You know; ologies:

-Path-ology
-Neur-ology
-Physi-ology
-Immun-ology
-And also Nutrition and Anatomy but those sound less impressive without that all important suffix

It's only into the second week of classes so hard to tell yet how the term will shake out.  We've certainly got the full range of teaching styles though.  It runs from old-school (really...with a slide projector that he makes the students at the back of the room operate for him) to high tech with powerpoint shows and remote clickers and receivers to compile the input from the class in realtime.  Our brains are having to span not just volumes but decades of information.

We also have considerably more lab time this semester.  Each week holds two pathology labs, one microscopic and one gross specimens, a long (looooong) neuro lab wherein we poke about in dog brain with our "Canine Atlas of the Brain" which was printed in 1986.  1986 and they made me pay for it.  It is also in black and white because apparently color photography had not yet been introduced in 1986.  I don't know because I wasn't alive.  Moving on.  Also a physiology lab and three days of large animal anatomy lab, although we're not dissecting all of those days.  Our anatomy groups are divided into A and B subunits and on alternating days, except when we're only doing bones, or reviewing for an exam, or working on the bovine cadavers, or the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, the A group dissects and the B group studies and vice versa.

So, in sum, I think I spend ~15 hours of the week in a lab which is pretty cool because it means I get to do something.  I am not good at learning on my butt.  I get a lot more out of moving around and learning, like when I'm dissecting or when I'm cleaning the house and making Eli follow me around and read bold terms to me.  He gets a headache, but I get a lot more out of it.  The flip side of this coin is that I'm extremely clumsy, and in the anatomy lab alone have a running tally of one broken skeleton pelvis, one previously labelled femur which might not be described as such so much anymore, a small scar from where I walked into Jessica's scalpel blade, and a 4-inch bruise and laceration on my shin where I tried (and failed) to walk through one of the huge steel racks from which our pony cadavers are suspended.  You will understand, then, why my lab partners were so very, very excited when the instructors handed me a 7 inch knife for our dissections.  Yee-HAAA!  So far no casualties but I'll keep you posted.

Signing off for tonight: 8 o' clock class tomorrow morning.

On the Road (Again)

Back in Pullman after a long lovely break, and here in my living room after a long lovely week.  If I may climb onto the metaphorical couch for a second, I'm conflicted.  I wasn't ready to come back to classes and homework and exams but when I got to class Monday morning (on time, in the right place, a minor miracle in and of itself) I felt like I had a purpose again.  I'm here to do something!  I'm a human data sponge!  Woo-hoo!

Indiana is not feeling so fulfilled.  She was irritated on the car ride home and downright petulant when I shoved her into her crate the first morning (would not be an issue if she hadn't started chewing on my walls) but she's starting to get over herself.  It's nice to be allowed on all the furniture again, right?

It was a great time being home, though, and so wonderful to see many friends and family.  Although it was relaxing, there was not a whole lot of downtime!

I:

• got snowshoeing at Hurricane Ridge (is it really snowshoeing if there are only six inches? or is it just strapping goofy contraptions to your feet at that point?), 
• ate my way through Seattle (Kell's, Piroshky, Habesha, I love you) 
• had a great time snooping around at a local barn ostensibly working with Dr. Mary who may or may not have paid me in wine (the way to a grad student's heart, I tell you)
• went to Portland where (hello?!) it snowed four very wet sloggy inches and rendered all the snow-plowless Portlanders totally useless on the road, resulting in,
• driving Eli's standard transmission one-ton pickup beast all the way back home to Poulsbo by myself without mishap, although I did get some patronizing looks from the good ol' boys when I pulled up to the [diesel] pump on the wrong side and was then forced to execute an 83,754 point turn to extricate myself,
• got a trail ride in with Beau, the best Morgan ever, 
• had some wonderful rides with Jaegermeister who not so gently reminded me that I should really work on those core muscles while I'm here at school, 
• had a fabulous Christmas with more eating and lots of kitchen related gifts which made me wonder how I am not 400 pounds already
• went on a 'snowboard' trip only to abandon snowboarding after one (soaking wet, bruised, but definitely enjoyable) day, to return to my much drier skiing roots the next--stick with what you know, people, and
• was totally out-lasted by my parents and their friends on New Year's Eve.  By the way, you know who you are, I am having dreams about those carob chip muffins.  I must know the recipe, please help!

Now it's Friday, and I'm getting back into the swing of things.  Actually, it's better than that: I've done my dishes every day I've been home and there is nothing on my floor that is not supposed to be there.  Oh, no, I'm becoming a grown-up!  Send sugary treats and insolent slovenly attitude at once!  To add to the nauseating responsibility around here, I must go take my dog for a walk before I head out for the night: free bowling thanks to GPSA--I hate bowling but love my friends, for whom I will even brave used shoes.

Stay tuned this weekend, at which time since my house is clean (that sound you heard was my mom swooning) I might give you a tour.  And also recap my first week as a second semester veterinary student (spoiler: involves guts).

TTFN,

Kate