Life in Vet School

NAVLE results

2012-01-14T16:08:00.002-05:00

My sister (who is very sweet) recently posted a FB status saying, "Congrats to my sister, who's officially a veterinarian!". She was jumping the gun a little, since I still have to tie up a few loose ends* but since I don't plan on failing any clinical rotations, she was correct in that I've completed the only real hurdle between me and the DVM after my name. I passed the NAVLE!!!

I actually was in some doubt about it, because I really dropped the ball when it came to studying. I did take a vacation rotation to study for 2 weeks, but I ended up spending about a third of the time keeping H home from daycare and hanging out with him (I told myself I would study when he was napping, but when he's home he doesn't nap that much . . . . . . . and when he did nap I think I mostly watched Private Practice!) and also Christmas shopping. I subscribed to VetPrep, which everyone in the class above me SWORE by, and I think it was a huge help. They have really good practice questions that very accurately simulate NAVLE questions, and there are something like 4000 questions in the database, so there's a lot of material there. They also have Power Pages, which are very short, very concise reviews of a few dozen "greatest hits" boards topics. My big mistake was that I spent a lot of study time poring over the Power Pages, and didn't even start doing practice questions until the end of my vacation rotation. It turned out the Power Pages were minimally helpful (seriously, if I had to take the NAVLE again I would skip them entirely, or maybe spend one day skimming them and that would be it). The practice questions are where it's at. VetPrep also guarantees that if you complete 80% of the test bank and still fail the NAVLE, they'll pay for your registration fee to retake it (which is about $500, hundreds more than I paid to join VetPrep). It's well worth it.

Buuuuuuut, I didn't really use the course. I managed to stretch myself all the way to a grand total of 16% of the question bank, and I squeezed out that last 1% the morning of the exam while I was brushing my teeth and riding the subway downtown. MM harassed me about cramming, and said I should just relax and let it go, but I did learn one random fact while brushing my teeth that morning, about a disease I had never heard of in an exotic species, which ended up being my SECOND QUESTION on the NAVLE. That was a nice coincidence. Plus, there was the whole I'm-only-at-15% thing.

So, if I'd failed, it would have sucked, and been expensive to retake the darn thing, and sucked up another long and thirsty day of my life (I HATE being separated from my water supply!!!), and annoying to have to pump in some random stranger's office on my breaks so that I wouldn't hog the only bathroom available to a couple dozen women, but I would have known I was underprepared, and just buckled down and studied properly for the April testing window. I would have done a LOT more VetPrep questions. It wouldn't have been the end of the world (although it would have been pretty embarrassing, since the passing rate is ridiculously high).

But I passed! So I never have to worry about it again. :)

It's a really stupid test. It's a bunch of random trivia, basically, and it's the luck of the draw whether you get a lot of questions about your species of interest or about some random species you're never going to practice on and therefore don't care (or know) that much about. It in no way tests your ability to make clinical decisions, select diagnostics, formulate differentials, or handle patients. And the passing rate is so ridiculously high that I'm kind of surprised they still use it. I don't feel like it really provides any information about us that could be used to make decisions. It really is kind of a hoop we have to jump through. Fortunately, it's a hoop I'm done with! :)

I live in a state where we can get our results online, the day they're released (about a month after the last testing date). There was a webpage that went up in August on the NBVME website, explaining that a link would appear at the bottom of the page when the results were available. By sifting through the FB status updates of a person the year ahead of me, I determined that the results would likely come out this past week, so on Monday I started obsessively refreshing that page. I have an iPhone now, so I could check anytime, and I literally refreshed the page at least 30 times a day. Maybe 50. Anytime we had a slow moment, I would pull out my phone and check. All day Monday went by with no results. All day Tuesday. Wednesday we were extremely busy, and I was giving grand rounds the next day, so at lunch I was pumping while I frantically worked on my rounds presentation, and I decided to check the page just for the heck of it, and instantly saw that the date at the top of the page had changed from August to January! So I frantically scrolled down and found the link to get the results, and clicked on it, and the server was inaccessible! It wasn't built to handle the amount of traffic it was getting, so a login window would only open up occasionally. I was able to get the login screen loaded twice out of about 50 attempts (once for me, once for a friend who couldn't get it on her phone), and the other 48 times I got error messages. My heart was pounding, and I knew I had to go to lab in about 6 minutes and would be working on cadaveric horse intestines for the next two hours, so I wouldn't be able to try again for HOURS if I didn't get in right then, and FINALLY the login page loaded. When I saw that it said "PASS", I had to first confirm that it said my name at the top of the screen and I hadn't accidentally logged into the wrong account. Then I had to verify that it was in fact my actual result, and not some stupid informational page that tells you how to interpret your report. Then I had to spell out the word PASS out loud, while looking at each letter individually, to make sure that was what it really said. Then I called MM and told him I passed (he thought I was telling him I passed equine surgery, so he was confused at first since I still had about 30% of the rotation to go). Then I went to lab and did a fabulous job suturing my intestines closed with a Cushing pattern, then I did my evening treatments, then I went back to the dorm and tried another 50 times to log in and confirm that I wasn't mis-remembering the results page, and that it had indeed said pass. Which it did.

*"tie up a few loose ends" = "do almost half of my total clinical rotations".

Equine surgery and being on call

2012-01-14T10:37:00.001-05:00

It's a beautiful winter day! When I got to the barns at 6 AM, the sun was just coming up and the sky was very clear. The ground is frozen solid and there are little ice crystals glinting in the light. And the smell of hay and horses overlies the smell of winter, and it's very peaceful. Sometimes I love early mornings on equine medicine.

I'm on call for equine surgery today, and I really don't like being on call (does anyone like being on call?). I don't sleep well, because I have a neurotic fear of sleeping through a page and failing to respond to an emergency. I usually wake up several times during the night to check for missed pages. Sometimes I wake up convinced I missed one (or overslept for my next shift) and lurch toward the nightstand with my heart racing, only to find that (of course) I didn't miss a page (keeping the stupid thing set to the loudest volume makes that basically impossible) and (of course) I didn't sleep through my alarm (sometimes I ask MM to set his alarm for 5 minutes later than mine, so that just in case mine doesn't go off, or I miss it, I'll have his as a backup. Then I just reset his for 2 hours later when mine goes off, so that he'll have his own alarm. I've never once needed it, though). I also don't like being in limbo, knowing that at any minute, I could have to rush into the hospital. And that, if I do rush in, I might find the entire surgical team assembled and the patient about to be induced, or I might find that the anesthetist is still 20 minutes away and patient himself hasn't even arrived yet, and then stand around for an hour waiting for things to get going.

When I'm on small animal rotations, so far I've tended to have amazingly good call luck!!! When I was on soft tissue surgery, all of my overnight call shifts were with the resident who has the worst call luck of the entire surgery department. He always gets called in. Always. For bad cases, usually, involving hours-long procedures that end up in ICU. We did not get one single call when we were on together. In fact, I did not get called in once the entire time I was on soft tissue. Not once! That's amazing. When I was on medicine, same thing (except it's relatively uncommon to get called on medicine, so that wasn't such a big deal). I never got called on cardiology. I never got called on ICU. I have been extremely lucky with small animal call.

Not so much with large animal. But today I'm backup call, behind the emergency student. If anything comes in, he gets called. As soon as that procedure is finished, he goes back on call, so if a second horse comes in 10 minutes after the first one is recovered enough to go back to his stall, he gets called in again. I only get called if a second emergency comes in while the first one is still in surgery. On the other hand, I'm also on call for 24 hours, so the odds of being called are higher than for a shorter shift. Still on that same hand, apparently it's "good colic weather". (Is it just me, or do horses have the most ridiculous GI systems in the world? How do you get such a strong, athletic machine with such a delicate little flower of a digestive system?!?) Apparently (can you tell I'm not going to be an equine vet?) the warm/cold/warm/cold weather increases the incidence of colic (at least anecdotally according to the senior clinicians; I do not care enough about this issue to actually consult PubMed about whether that's true).

Half of me wishes I had better call luck on my large animal rotations, since they're not useful to me at all. I can pretty much guarantee that I will never in my life touch a horse in any professional capacity. So however cool the procedure, it's nothing I'm ever going to do again, so it's not very helpful. I do try to glean general information that's applicable to small animal medicine from these rotations, so that I'm learning at least a few things I'll use in real life. I got some excellent suturing advice from a 3rd year resident when I was closing a trephination hole a couple of days ago, that somehow no one in small animal surgery ever mentioned (despite the vastly greater amounts of time I've spent suturing things in dogs and cats). I got some good endoscopy experience. We had a very nice lab on intestinal resection and anastomosis, using cadaver intestines, which was vastly more useful than practicing R&As on models and which is basically the same as in dogs and cats except for the size of the intestine, so I learned a good bit from that. But if I get called in for a colic surgery, or fracture repair, or whatever emergency comes in later, it's nothing I'm ever going to do in real life. Whereas on SA surgery, I was really hoping I'd get to scrub in on a GDV, a splenectomy, a foreign body, and some hit by cars, since those are common emergencies that I'm likely to have to handle on my own in the near future. So I wouldn't really have minded being called in for something like that, because although it would mean a night of lost sleep (and who the heck likes being awake for 36 hours straight?) it would be really useful. Very much not the case with horses! But the other half of me is glad that my small animal call luck is the better one, since SA makes up about 80% of my rotations.

Overall, the rotation wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I didn't have any truly difficult patients (we get a lot of young racehorses, who can be a little . . . . . . . . . uncooperative), and I didn't have any super-involved treatments to perform. All of my patients were basically good-natured (not all cooperative, but not the kind of temperament that has them presenting their hindquarters to be in perfect kicking position as soon as you unlatch the stall door) and all of the surgeons I worked with were also basically good-natured! That makes a TON of difference to my opinion of a rotation. It's not over yet, I still have 19.5 hours of call and then I have a 16-hour treatment shift on Monday in which 4 students take care of all of the nursing responsibilities of the entire hospital's worth of inpatients (yay). But my preliminary evaluation is that it definitely could have been worse. :)

Costs and benefits

2011-10-07T13:29:00.000-04:00

A friend, Onlyonewoof (love the name, btw!) :) commented very thought-provokingly on the cancer post about the time vet school consumes, and it made me think about life balance.

First of all, I want to say that I'm extremely glad I applied (and went to) vet school! I don't regret that for a second. It has definitely taken time away from my dogs, and my personal life, but if I look objectively at my lifestyle before and during vet school, they're not all THAT different. I worked a shit ton in lab before I started school, and (with the exception of the hardcore rotations like internal medicine, which averaged 14 hours a day often without a meal break -- I kid you not, I lost 8 pounds in 6 weeks on dentistry/oral surgery and then internal medicine. Just from running around the hospital all day and never having time to eat! I weigh less now than I did before I got pregnant with H. And I have to say, my ass looks amazing, and I fit into jeans I never thought I'd actually be able to wear. But I digress, since this is not a blog about my ass.) . . . . . now I forget what I was talking about . . . . . oh, right -- hours. So, I worked long hours in lab. And I was not in love with research anymore. And being a PI would SUCK MAJOR ASS. I get involuntary chills thinking about it! The hours required to be successful at it are insane -- my PI has worked residency hours since he was hired years ago, and there was no guarantee anything would work out, ever. I feel like veterinary medicine will give me a lot more job security than research would have. And more flexibility, too -- I have a lot of job options as a vet. A LOOOOOOT of job options. I could join a private practice full-time. Or part-time. I could do 3 twelves at an emergency clinic and have 4 days off every week. I could open my own practice. I could work for Idexx or Antech. I could get certified in acupuncture and open a holistic clinic/dog spa in some ritzy neighborhood. I could do an internship and residency, and join a specialty practice. Or a teaching hospital. I could consult. I could work in industry. I could do practically anything I can think of, and have practically any lifestyle I choose, which was definitely not the case with the kind of research I do. The mice, they wait for no man.

So, for me personally, going to vet school was a huge tradeup in terms of lifestyle and career options. And I really, really like medicine. And I've made fantastic friends in school, whom I never would have met otherwise.

But all of this being true, one of the biggest reasons I went to vet school, and a major perk of being a vet, is that it makes me an insider. For one thing, I will actually BE a vet, so I'll be capable of taking excellent care of my dogs myself. For another, I know all kinds of specialists now, and am on a friendly basis with many of them. If I'm worried about Mr. Bear, I don't need to wait 3 weeks for an appointment and then pay $X00 for a neuro workup, most of which I don't even get to see and the results of which I only have access to in the form of the discharge summary -- I run down the hall, say "Hey, Ted! I think one of my dogs might be a little vestibular, and I'm worried about him. Would you mind taking a look at him for me?" and then Ted says, "No problem! Bring him in tomorrow before appointments and I'll check him out!" and then when I bring Mr. Bear in, along with hip and knee films, after his neuro exam Ted calls his orthopedic surgeon buddy who comes over and looks at the films and does an ortho exam, all of which are done with me in the room. If he needs a procedure, I can be right by his side the entire time. If he's hospitalized, I can camp out in his run instead of having a 10 minute daily supervised visitation period. If I disagree with a management decision, I can discuss it with 5 different residents and attendings instead of having one uncertain intern tell me that this is the way it is, the end. I know all the nurses, so they keep an extra close eye on him because he's my dog. This means the world to me.

I do have less time to spend with the dogs right now, especially on clinical rotations, than before vet school. But this year is particularly busy and then, if I don't do an internship, I'll have an easier schedule with all sorts of professional options. I will never get back the time that I'm spending away from them. And I'm really worried that Mr. Bear is old enough that he won't have time to really benefit once I'm done. :( But already, he's gotten so much benefit medically from my being a student that I really think it's been worth it just for that. When he was in ICU a couple years ago, I got to spend HOURS every day with him, instead of 10 minutes. And he's such a little cling-on that I honestly think that made a dramatic difference to his recovery -- if he'd been away from me that entire time, I don't think he would have done as well as he did.

So, partly I'm glad I went to vet school because I genuinely enjoy it (most of it. Heading out on a large animal rotation next and will SO NOT ENJOY THAT). Partly I'm glad because of the immense wealth of resources it gives me for taking care of my dogs. Partly I'm glad because of all the professional options it opens up to me. And partly I'm glad because I can't imagine doing what I was doing before for the rest of my life, so this alternative looks very attractive in comparison. And I hope that my dogs will benefit from the resources being a vet will give me, and I hope that H will benefit from the flexibility I can have if I choose the right jobs.

On Anonymity

2011-09-24T12:15:00.000-04:00

I thought this was so glaringly obvious that it without saying, but apparently it was not.

Confidentiality is not quite the same in veterinary medicine as in human medicine -- we don't have HIPAA, etc. Nevertheless, clients are still entitled to protection of their privacy. Which is one reason I've kept this blog semi-anonymous. I'm not under any illusions of total anonymity (I think it would be naive to believe that anything you post on the internet is going to be completely anonymous) and I know for a fact that several people I know IRL read this blog and know who I am. And that's fine; I prefer to keep my name and location off the blog but I'm not saying anything scandalous, or even anything of much interest to anyone who's not a vet student or dog lover. Google Analytics tells me exactly how big my readership is, and where everyone's coming from, and believe me -- I'm not getting offered corporate sponsorship anytime soon. :) But if you really wanted to figure out who I am (for whatever odd reason you cared), it wouldn't be all that hard.

The primary reason I write the blog is so that *I* have a record of what vet school was like, since it has occupied most of my time and attention for the past 3.5 years. I already have only vague memories of first and second year, and it's fun to go back and read about what I was doing way back then. :) When I look back at first year, I think about being in the Anatomy lab, and in the library. That's it. When I think about second year, I think about being in the library and the classroom. There was a lot more to it than that! But I wouldn't remember the details on my own. So, I'm happy to have this blog. And I've made some online buddies whom I enjoy staying in touch with, which is a nice perk. And, when I was applying to vet school and just starting the program, I was completely addicted to several vet student blogs, and in fact one of them (My Vet School Days) helped convince me to apply in the first place! So I'm happy when I can return the favor for another prospective applicant or new vet student.

Anyway, getting back to confidentiality, here's the thing. If you think I'm talking about your dog? I'm not. Pretty much the only thing I DON'T change about every patient I write about is their gender (since if I always changed that it would be the same as never changing it, being a binary variable). The name, breed, age, presenting complaint, etc all get changed. And if something is so extremely rare that I think the patient MIGHT be recognizable even with the details changed, I just don't talk about it. The cases that I specifically mention concern extremely common conditions that affect multiple breeds. Frequently they're not even individual cases, but composites of multiple patients I've worked with over the past several weeks (since I see a lot of the same things over and over and over again. I never thought I'd be so excited to see a cat with diarrhea, but I feel confident working up a diarrheic cat because I've seen at least 8 of them in the past 2 weeks! And that's fun. And endoscopy is really neat!!!).

A sad cancer case

2011-09-17T16:29:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, my pickup was a beautiful, sweet German Shepherd who came into Emergency with a hemoabdomen and also had a chronic history of severe DJD and could barely walk on her right hind leg. She was scheduled for surgery that afternoon to remove her spleen (the most likely source of the bleed) but her parents didn't want to proceed if she had metastatic cancer, so when she was transferred to Medicine we did chest rads and an abdominal ultrasound. We could have stopped after the chest rads -- she had an obvious miliary pattern indicative of lung mets everywhere. But when the intern called with the news, her parents wanted to know where the primary mass was* -- which I totally agreed with, given that we were going to either make a decision not to treat, or euthanize her, based on the conclusion of metastatic cancer. So even if it was incredibly unlikely that she did NOT have mets, it was worth doing the U/S for peace of mind.

On ultrasound, she had mets everywhere -- the primary mass looked like it was in her liver, and there were nodules in her spleen, kidneys, and peritoneal wall. She was extremely sweet and cooperative the entire time, and when I took her back up to Fluids after her U/S, she gobbled up a can of mixed food (I mixed 3 canned types together to see if any of them would interest her, and she ate the whole thing). I ran out to grab the intern before he called her parents, so that he could let them know she ate well, since we were planning to discharge her on steroids and warn the parents that she could rupture another mass and bleed out, but that she seemed to be feeling okay (HR and RR were WNL, she was calm, alert, eating -- she didn't seem to feel too bad) so we wanted her to have at least another few days at home with her family. She might have lived another couple of months**! If we could control her pain adequately, they could have been good months full of attention and cuddling and fabulous food, and her parents could have had some time to adjust to the fact that they were going to lose her. I mean, they brought her into ES because she'd had a decreased appetite, not expecting to find a hemoabdomen and mets everywhere. I assume they thought she had some GI bug or something. They certainly didn't think that was going to be the end of their life with her!!!!!

So, the intern was happy that she ate and went off to call the parents. I went back to hang out with her and finish my physical exam, since we were in such a rush to get to Radiology that morning that I hadn't done one when we picked up her case (the intern did, of course). After that I went to pump, and on my way into the bathroom, I heard the intern calling my name. I came back out into the hallway, and he told me they were euthanizing her. They were too afraid to have her bleed out at home, and wanted to euthanize her today.

I was surprised by that, on one hand, although I completely understand it on another. I want every last minute I can possibly get with Mr. Bear. If he had a terminal illness and I could keep him happy and comfortable and buy myself another week or two with him, that's what I would do. I would pet him, brush him, feed him steak and eggs and all the pretzels he could eat, cuddle with him, take him for rides in the car, teach him a new word or two, tell him what a wonderful dog he is, and make sure he knew how much I love him. And then when I either couldn't control his pain anymore or he just got too tired or depressed to enjoy his life anymore, I would euthanize him. But not UNTIL then. On the other hand, when anything is wrong with him, I'm so upset and stressed and afraid, that I can't function. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I cry at the drop of a hat, I can't work productively, I'm a complete mess. So I can understand where my patient's parents were coming from, not wanting to go through that. I do think it's a little sad that the dog didn't get at least one more good weekend at home with her family, since her last 24 hours were spent at the vet hospital and that kind of sucks for her, but rationally I know that dogs don't really understand about lifespans and don't really look toward the future, so SHE probably wasn't worried about that.

So, anyway, she was euthanized. I had to stay with her body after her parents left, while the intern found a gurney to take her body down to the necropsy room. I petted her and very quickly blotted away tears each time they sprang up so that the intern wouldn't come back and find me crying over this cancer-riddled dog I'd known for 3 hours. I think really I just wanted one more good weekend for her. She might not have gotten it, but I think she probably would have lived that long. And it makes me really sad that her last 24 hours were spent in our hospital with strangers, instead of at home with her family. Even if it's hard for me to take one of my dogs home, knowing that I'm going to have to euthanize soon, I hope that I can give him or her a wonderful end.

Yesterday, I went down to the post room to see her necropsy. There were tumors EVERYWHERE. Pathology saved her organs for teaching purposes, because they were such excellent examples of metastatic hemangiosarcoma. There were hundreds of little mets in her lungs, huge cavitary masses in her liver and spleen, and her right knee had the worst degenerative changes I've ever seen in a joint. I felt better about her euthanasia after that.

*One thing I hope I never forget is how it feels to be a client. I vehemently disagree with some of the decisions that are made about client management, because I know how it feels to have a sick dog that you hand over to this hospital and are then kept apart from except for supervised 10 minute visits every 24 hours, and how much I HATED that. The radiologists and internists were a little critical of the parents' desire to have the ultrasound done, after what we saw on the chest films. They were like, why waste $300 when you KNOW your dog has metastatic cancer?!? And to a clinician who's seen dozens or hundreds of HSA cases, the 99% probability that those chest rads mean HSA mets is the end of the story. There's your diagnosis, let's move on. But to the parents, if there's even a 1% chance that it's something treatable, you have to finish the workup!!! WHAT IF it's not HSA?!?!? You'd spend the rest of your life wondering if maybe there was a tiny chance it was something treatable and you could have had another 5 years with your dog. So I agreed with the parents. Of course it ended up being HSA, and I knew going into the ultrasound that we would almost certainly find more masses. But I completely understood their desire to be 100% sure. 99% isn't good enough, when it's YOUR DOG!!!

**Of course, there's absolutely no way to predict when another mass would rupture. She could have lived another 2 months. She could also have bled out on the way home that day.

Life on clinics

2011-09-11T11:43:00.000-04:00

The transition back to clinics has been partly better and partly worse than I thought. The evenings are always late, to the point that I usually get home between 8 and 9, H has already been given a couple of bottles, and I nurse him to sleep which takes about 20 minutes. He's already sleepy and quiet, and not interested in making eye contact, singing songs, playing little finger games, smiling, or really interacting at all. So I feed him until he falls asleep, and then I rush around washing all of his bottles from that day (unless it's MM's turn to wash them), refilling them with pumped milk for tomorrow, washing the pump parts, maybe pumping again depending on how much he ate, packing my lunch for the next day, making coffee, possibly updating my progress notes or SOAP for one of two patients, and then falling into bed as soon as all of that is done. So, I barely spend any time with him during the week, most of what I do spend is not quality time, and I'm always tired because I have all that stuff to do when I get home instead of just going to sleep.

I can actually FEEL myself getting stupider as the week goes on! On Monday, if I only worked a few hours over the weekend, I'm pretty on my game. I can intelligently examine a patient, formulate a problem list, come up with a decent list of differentials, and decide on an initial diagnostic plan. I can think through mechanisms when the clinicians pimp me, and I get things done relatively efficiently (although I've always tended more toward the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off style of doing things rather than a smoothly efficient manner. I wish I could think of some way to be more organized about what I need to do! I've been like that my whole life, and I've recognized it as a problem for years, and nothing I do seems to help much. It's a real liability as a clinician, so I'd really like to fix it.) By Thursday, I'm a total disaster. You would think I was actually a completely different person! This Thursday, for instance, I had trouble deciding whether serum bile acids would be high or low in a dog with a portosystemic shunt. I decided they'd be low, since they're made by the liver, which isn't functioning properly. Since that's wrong, the clinician tried to get me to start over with the mechanism, and I thought she was saying I was wrong about where bile acids are made . . . . . . . so I ended up telling her they're made in the pancreas.

The pancreas.

Bile acids.

In the pancreas.

I cringe even thinking about it! And Friday was similar.

Anyway, I was off this weekend, except for being on call last night 8P-8A, and having to go in around 7 both mornings to SOAP my patient in ICU. I only have one patient in the hospital right now, and he was in ICU for the past couple of days so I didn't have to do his treatments, just examine him and update the problems list, diagnostics from the day before, and plan for the current day. Yesterday that was fine, I finished around 8:45 and went home. Today, he had improved enough to move out of ICU and back to the wards! That was super cool (he was really sick, I thought he was going to either die or be euthanized) but also a pain in the ass since a) I had to do the transfer, b) now all his AM treatments were my responsibility, and there was a list a page long (literally) of treatments that I was ordering for him, and c) since he was on the wards he couldn't be on IV fluids anymore, so all his meds had to go PO and the doses and intervals had to be recalculated and everything had to be ordered from the pharmacy. Oh, and since he was feeling so much better, he no longer stood inert while I measured his blood pressure, took his temperature, applied his topical medications, and drew blood -- instead he was wriggling and twisting all around trying to get away from me, so I needed help with everything and everyone else was busy trying to get their own treatments taken care of so they could leave.

So, at 8:15 I texted MM (who had to leave for work at 9) that he was going to have to drop H off at the vet hospital on his way to work. Which he did, and it was no big deal since we only live half a mile away and had discussed the possibility beforehand. And MM fed him right before they came over, so theoretically he'd be fine for awhile while I finished up all my stuff for my patient and wrote his magnum opus of a discharge.

But he started fussing as soon as I got up to the wards. So I had him in the Bjorn trying to shush him, while everyone who hadn't met him yet wandered by, saying hi to him and asking about him, and one of the really nice nurses (probably the nicest I've met at this hospital, actually) hung out, chatting about when her daughter was a baby, and he was fussing, and crying, and I finally put him back in his carseat, but then I had to lug it everywhere with me. And every time I sat down to try to update the discharge (THANK GOD I started it ahead of time!!!) he would start fussing again, and everyone else was trying to concentrate so I couldn't just let him be noisy.

In the end, my resident ended up basically finishing all of my work for me, while I shushed H. I literally got nothing done once M dropped him off, except for filling samples of prescription diets to go home with the dog, and dropping his bloodwork off at the lab. My RESIDENT did the rest of my work, including deciding which drugs to send him home on, writing all the directions for the owner, filling the prescriptions, and finishing my discharge. So, that was a pretty massive fail. :( Luckily she's really nice and didn't seem to hold it against me. But it was still unprofessional, whether it upset anyone or not.

Continuing education

2011-07-13T14:06:00.003-04:00

I registered for a veterinary conference today! MM needs a bunch of CE before the end of the year, so he wanted to go to our state association's conference at the end of the summer. It coincidentally falls the weekend before I return to clinics, so we decided to go together and make a weekend of it. I vaguely remembered getting a program emailed to me a few months ago, and thinking some of the sessions sounded interesting, so I checked it out today -- it turns out, the price for me to register for the entire conference as a student is LESS than the price MM paid for 2 days of guest meal passes for me! So I called them, cancelled the meal passes, and registered for the conference -- I don't know how many sessions I'll actually be able to attend, since we're taking H with us and obviously he's not guaranteed to sit quietly through hours of lecture. :) But since it was cheaper than just buying me breakfast and lunch, I figured I can wear him in the Bjorn and stand in the back, and slip out the door the second he starts fussing, and hopefully still learn a few things. There are three day-long sessions I'm interested in, one on chronic diarrhea and GI disease, one on companion animal cancer, and one on emergency resuscitation and shock. The latter two are on the same day, so I'll either pick one or shuttle back and forth between them (or, of course, do laps around the convention center all day with a fussing H, depending on how he feels that day!). I think it'll be fun.

As an added bonus, the surgeon with whom I'm collaborating on that retrospective is speaking, so I'll be able to "run into" him and ask him how the paper's going! :)

I had my 5-week post-partum checkup on Monday (all is well, I'm allowed to run again. He squinted at me and asked if I've already tried, so I admitted I had. He said that was fine, but if I go out and run 5 miles today I probably won't be very happy. I said there's absolutely no danger -- at all -- of me running 5 miles today, so not to worry.) I took H with me, and since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped at MM's clinic afterward so his coworkers could meet H. When I was getting out of the car, a client pulled up and let his lab out of the car, and the lab immediately started trotting toward the VERY BUSY road at the end of the driveway. The road has no shoulder, and there's a wooden fence that completely blocks the driveway from view until you're 10 feet from it, which is not exactly a sufficient stopping distance when you're doing 40 mph. MM said, "Don't let him run into the road!", and the kid glanced over and kind of chuckled. The dog kept going, and MM said, "SERIOUSLY!!! Don't let him run into that road!". The kid looked a little uncertainly at the dog, and half-heartedly called him a couple of times as he started walking after him. It ended up with MM stopping traffic (with his own body, which obviously thrilled me to no end) and the guy grabbing the dog by his TAIL as he trotted out into the street.

What is WRONG with people?!?!?!?!?!? How can you just let your dog trot (the dog wasn't going that fast, the guy could EASILY have grabbed him before he got anywhere near the road) right out into a heavily-trafficked street?!?!? He barely even CALLED the dog, let alone ran after him! I think I was more upset about it than the guy was! Thank goodness the dog was fine, but I would really prefer if my husband didn't have to step into speeding traffic to save dogs from other peoples' idiocy. :( :( :(

Squirrel medicine

2011-07-08T13:43:00.002-04:00

MM euthanized a squirrel this morning. He found it (actually, Bug found it) when he was walking the dogs this morning, laying in the dirt next to the sidewalk, alert but paralyzed and with flies buzzing all around its face. So on his way to work, he scooped it up and took it in with him, then sedated and euthanized it. Poor squirrel . . . . . but lucky he happened to be on MM's dog-walking route! The poor thing couldn't even try to wriggle away when he picked it up. :(

It was probably the highlight of Bug's week, though!

I went for a 4-mile walk with H in his stroller this morning, and he stayed awake for most of it -- I think he's starting to sleep a little less and be a little more alert. He had a marathon feeding session when we came back, then spit up probably half of what he'd just eaten -- huge streams running out of his nose and mouth -- all over me, then pooped out the back of his diaper onto the couch, then Red Panda puked on the couch (I managed to catch it with a dish towel that we had been using as a diaper changing cloth, so it didn't actually get ON the couch! Score!!!), then everyone settled back down. Now he's sleeping on my lap. :) He's so adorable and sweet -- I love when he falls asleep on me.

So slow!

2011-07-06T14:34:00.004-04:00

I think I'm back on the workout wagon, although things are a little rusty. :) I went for my first "run" in months on Saturday afternoon -- it was really hot, and MM had just gotten home from work so I didn't want to dump the dogs and baby on him for a long time, so I only did 2 miles. At 10:00 pace. Yikes.

It felt surprisingly good -- I thought I might have forgotten how to run, so I was relieved! The next day, I woke up with a shooting pain deep in my right glute that radiates from my lower back down my leg, so I may have pissed off my sciatic nerve. It still bothers me when I'm walking or climbing stairs, and I tried to run a few yards with one of the dogs yesterday and that made it a lot worse, so apparently I should wait a few days before I try running again. It's been really hot since then, so I'm okay with that. I also lifted when I got back from running, and I think the dead lifts may have exacerbated the problem, so maybe I'll skip those next time.

Today I did a 40 minute bike workout on the trainer, while I watched Army Wives during H's nap. Damn Netflix's streaming video option! I've gotten totally sucked back into Grey's Anatomy, I recently discovered that Sliders is on there (I had the biggest crush on Quinn Mallory in high school!) and yesterday I found Scrubs. I also watched the Army Wives pilot yesterday, and since then have watched 4 more episodes -- I'm afraid I'm in danger of spending my entire maternity leave on the couch watching tv and reading random novels! I had a moment while I was biking, watching Army Wives, when I realized I'm essentially watching a soap opera. That kind of hurt. :)

I started looking at the VetPrep Power Pages yesterday, which are extremely brief, focused reviews on a variety of topics. There are several dozen of them, organized by species. I thought they would be good review for clinics as well, but I think they're actually too brief to be much help for real life. They just focus too tightly on common boards material for that (which is fine, it's what they're designed for).

Today I need to do laundry, collect a bunch of forms for our name change paperwork (it's finalized legally, but we haven't actually changed our names anywhere -- all my identification and accounts are still under my original last name), study 3 VetPrep Power Pages, list a few things for sale on Etsy, and maybe take a few pictures of some other stuff I want to sell. And walk all the dogs again at some point.

Week in review

2011-07-02T11:24:00.002-04:00

This week, I:

Registered for the NAVLE!!!

(Excuse me a moment while I lay down and hyperventilate.)
(I won't get a test date for a couple more months, but I officially registered for the November/December testing window! I also signed up for VetPrep, which everyone who used it highly recommended as a prep tool. They have an option to access focused review lectures, which I think will be really helpful and convenient since they'll hopefully save me from having to review the entiiiiiirety of my vet school curriculum so far and instead just remind me of the core stuff I really need to remember.)

Went for two 3-mile walks with H in the stroller

(For reasons I don't actually understand, I'm apparently not supposed to exercise until my 5-week post-partum checkup. I get the no baths/swimming/sex part, but no exercise? It reminds me of Victorian times, when women were told that if they exercised while menstruating, their uterus would fall out! There must be some valid reason for it, especially since my OB, who's normally an extremely permissive doctor who laughed off practically every concern I ever brought up while I was pregnant, gave me those instructions. Maybe one of my human medicine buddies can enlighten me . . . . . [hint, hint]. :) Anyway, my body decided it was time to get off the couch, so I'm compromising by walking. H is too young for jogging in the stroller anyway, and this way we can go together in the morning before it gets hot. Walking hasn't killed me, or caused my uterus to fall out, so I think I'm going to try a brief jog tomorrow morning while MM hangs out with H!)

Did a couple of weight workouts at home

(I haven't lifted weights in MONTHS!!! I realized a few months ago that my awesome upper body from all that trapeze work was totally gone. And lifting is not nearly as fun, so I didn't do anything about it. But it would be nice to get back into aerial stuff at some point, and the stronger I am, the easier it will be. So I'm getting back on the wagon.)

(Oh, all right, fine. Vanity is also a giant motivator. I'm currently only 8 pounds over my normal weight, but things have redistributed themselves oddly. My abs actually look pretty good -- you'd never even guess I was pregnant -- but my body appears to think that instead, my uterus was located in my ass. That's really annoying me. Hopefully resistance training will help!)

Finished the spreadsheet for the retrospective study! Hallelujah! What a pain in the ass. :)

(MM pointed out last night that the surgeon might forget to list me as an author, which would royally suck. The primary reason I volunteered for the project is that I want to beef up my CV a little for internship/residency applications, and I haven't published nearly as much in primary research as I'd like to. A middle-author paper just came out in a pretty good journal, but my first-author postdoc paper is hanging in limbo and may never be submitted, so I'm anxious to at least get my name on some other papers. I'm not sure how to tactfully go about reminding the surgeon that the deal was middle authorship, or when the best time to do that would be -- I feel like submitting the spreadsheet was a reminder right now, so if he's going to forget, he'd also forget if I mentioned it now. So I should wait a few weeks/months, but I don't know what the timeline for submission is, and I also don't know how to do it in a way that's not obnoxious.)

Introduced H to bottles!

(This sounds totally trivial, but it actually means that I can sleep for an entire night once a week!!! Instead of me getting up to feed H on MM's nights to take care of him, MM can bottle-feed him pumped milk, and I can stay blissfully asleep. I'm only going to use it on MM's one weekend night, both because of the supply/demand problem, and because I like to give MM a break since he has to go to work the next day. But I got my first continuous night's sleep in a month last night, and it was awesome.)

Started working on poor, neglected Mr. Bear's massage and PT again.

(This is how I know I can only have one child. I don't multitask well at caregiving, apparently. At all. I can actually SEE the progression of his hindlimb muscle atrophy over the past month. And he's not nearly as confident jumping on and off the couch, or climbing his stairs to get into bed, or coming up our building's stairs after a walk. This KILLS me. So I need to get back onto a rigorous PT schedule with him.)

Read 3 novels! How cool is that?

And, finally, saw this on Heartsy, an Etsy sale site, where I was voting on potential future coupons:

"If this artisan offered you a great deal on children, would you buy it?"

(I think each shop owner, when they submit their shop to be featured for a discount, has to specify a category for their wares. This particular person makes children's clothing and accessories, but they were a little too brief in their category description.) :)

My life as a pacifier :)

2011-06-30T17:22:00.003-04:00

So, Anconeus . . . . . . . . . all right, who are we kidding, here? I've never had the remotest indication that anyone I know IRL (other than one particularly astute friend, who figured out who I am from - I kid you not - the tone of voice I used in comments I left on another blog we both read!) has ever even seen this blog. And if someone did, and figured out who I am, then what would happen? They might find out that - gasp - I'm a neurotic freak about which seat in the library I like to sit in to study? I didn't start my business project until the last possible second? I have an irrational aversion to necropsies? I really really love french toast? OH MY GOD THE HORROR.

** This is the part where I decided to just use our real names, freaked out 5 seconds after I hit publish, and went back and edited them out. Sorry. I just feel WEIRD about not being anonymous! I'll just call him H. That's his real initial. **

H was born on June 6, I was in labor for 36 hours, I caved and got an epidural after 24 hours and consider it one of the best experiences of my life (the epidural, I mean), and my OB, whom I picked largely because he personally delivers something like 90% of his own patients, which is unheard of, was out of town that weekend BUT I ended up liking the on-call OB WAY better than I liked him, so it really couldn't have worked out any more perfectly!

He's a champion nurser, so far he sleeps surprisingly well (occasionally he'll go a 6-hour stretch in the middle of the night!), and I'm madly in love with him. :) MM is a total rockstar and alternates nights being "on duty" with me, even though I'm on maternity leave and he is not. So we take turns sleeping on the couch with H in his travel crib (while the off-duty person sleeps in bed with the dogs). On MM's nights, I still get up around 2 AM to feed him while MM takes a nap in the bed, but I am almost giddy with the anticipation of trying to introduce a nighttime bottle this Friday, because if he takes it then I'll get an uninterrupted night's sleep (I can't even explain to you how much I love sleep) other than a quick 15-minute pumping session in the middle of the night, which is faster than feeding, burping, changing, and settling him back down. But even my on-duty nights aren't that bad, and I probably average about 6 hours of sleep on those nights, which for a 3-week old baby seems pretty luxurious!

I've been working at home for the past week; I'm collaborating on a project with one of the surgeons, entering an ungodly amount of data into a massive spreadsheet for a retrospective study, and it's due tomorrow. So I've spent pretty much every daytime second that H's asleep working on that. I have 5 more cases that have gaps I need to fill in, and then I'll be done! Which will be really nice.

He likes riding around in his Baby Bjorn, so I can walk the dogs, run errands, and do laundry with him in there, which is convenient. The dogs have mostly calmed down about him -- the first week we were home, Red Panda whined constantly. I mean, for many hours out of every day. She cried WAY more than H did. She could not STAND being out of the room that he and I were in, and if I tried to put her in another room, her whining would escalate to full-blown barking, which would make all the OTHER dogs start barking, and she was driving me CRAZY! CRAZY! CRAZY!!!!! Eventually she calmed down to the point that I wasn't afraid to take a nap with us all in the same room together (she had been sticking her head over the side of his crib, and I was afraid she might think he was a squeaky toy or small animal. But she eventually either figured out he's human, or just lost interest in him, and now she mostly ignores him). Mr. Bear was never really interested in him to begin with. Monkey is mildly curious about him but not worryingly so, and Bug is just a little nutjob anyway, so she's not allowed to hang out with him, but I'm no longer frantically worried about her intentions toward him. So things have generally settled down with the dogs.

The first week was extremely stressful. I worried about everything, all the time. I couldn't even sleep when H was sleeping, because I was so worried about something happening to him. Part of it was profound sleep deprivation (when we were discharged from the hospital, I had slept something like 10 hours in the previous 5 days) and once he started nursing enough in the late evening to sleep a several-hour stretch at night, I started getting more normal amounts of sleep and regained most of my rationality. I still worry about things, of course, but it's not overwhelming.

Gross Pathology, day 1

2011-05-24T08:48:00.000-04:00

It was a pretty easy day. We didn't start until 9:30, for one thing! That's just plain crazy! Then we had about an hour of some orientation stuff, then we got down to business. Most of our time on Gross Path will be spent doing necropsies of dogs and cats who have died at our hospital (apparently they won't accept animals from other practices for necropsy, which I think is a little weird -- it's not a super-busy service, and they could charge a TON of money, and potentially get some cool cases) and whose parents elected a post-mortem exam.

So, we learned how to do a necropsy, and then we did one. There are 4 of us on the rotation, and we had two dogs to necropsy today, so the resident demonstrated on one and then we worked on the other one ourselves.

I know I said before that I would never consent to a necropsy on one of my own dogs, no matter how suddenly or mysteriously they died and how desperately curious I was about the cause. That was mostly because I'd been to path rounds and seen the bodies they were dissecting, and despite knowing this is totally irrational, I couldn't stand the thought of letting that happen to one of my babies. Well, apparently those bodies were cleaned up and rearranged a bit before rounds, because today was much worse. I always thought of post-mortem exams as kind of like . . . . . . . well, kind of like slightly messy surgery on a cadaver. Obviously you're not worrying about hemostasis, and sterility, and gentle tissue handling, and being able to neatly, functionally, and cosmetically reassemble everything when you're done. But I just thought it would be somewhat messier than surgery, and that some things would be missing when you were done since you're collecting samples. But that basically, you could close the huge incisions if you had some reason to want to, and have a relatively normal-looking dog again.

Huh, no.

When I watched the necropsy instructional video, I was horrified. MM said that when I was actually doing it myself, I would look at it very clinically and not be bothered by it. That was actually true to a large extent -- the dog I worked on bore a slight resemblance to Red Panda, and I didn't even cry. And I did everything that had to be done, and none of it really bothered me that much. But SO MANY THINGS have to come out of the cadavers! What's left when you're done barely even resembles a dog anymore. :(

And I know, I know, so what!!!! It was a cadaver to begin with! There was nobody living in that body! The dog doesn't care about that body anymore. But it was still so sad.

You can probably have a "cosmetic" necropsy done if you really want one; in which we do treat it more as a huge surgery and can close when we're done and have a body that looks basically okay. But I'm guessing that's extremely rare -- it would be a lot more time-consuming, a lot more expensive, and (again) there's really no point because (again) the dog doesn't live in that body anymore and doesn't care what happens to it. So all we'd really be doing is indulging the parent's neurosis.

So far, I'm not a big fan of Gross Pathology. I vastly prefer my patients alive.

Cardiology vacation

2011-05-18T17:55:00.002-04:00

That's what they call it, folks. :)

Today was kind of fun. We had 3 appointments, no pickups, and one consult. The consult was kind of sad (a neuro case whose parents have their heads up their butts). One of the appointments was a very handsome, fat, cuddly cat who squeaked instead of meowing. Another was a CRAZY Boxer who basically covered the room in slobber while he was there, and whose echo took 5 times longer than it should have because even with 4 of us restraining him, he was still moving around too much to get a good signal!

The rest of the day was a practice case and ECG rounds. The ECG rounds were nice, because they were really weird, complicated ECGs but I felt like I understood most of what was going on with them. The practice case was okay . . . . . . . one of my teammates (I'll call her Kia!) is a major know-it-all (people like that drive me CRAZY!!!!!) and was really annoying, but otherwise it was fine.

The know-it-all thing really bothers me. Why would you assume that you know, better than everyone else in the room, what's going on? When I know something, I assume everyone else (especially when "everyone else" consists of a bunch of my classmates, who have EXACTLY the same education I have!) knows it, too. Jumping in to "teach" people something when either they already understand it, or when YOU didn't even understand what the problem was, is just obnoxious. If I know something and someone ASKS for help, or says, "This is so confusing, I have no idea what's going on here", I'll probably say, "Well, when I looked at it, I thought it was such-and-such". But otherwise, I mind my own business! And it usually turns out that either I misunderstood their problem, or they figure it out for themselves ten seconds later!

This morning we were looking at some echo images, and another teammate and I were discussing calculating the ejection fraction from the M mode recording. The issue was that the scale markers were very widely spaced, so the number we were getting was just an estimate based on what we could see on the printout. Kia came strutting over, plopped her stuff down on the table, and said, "Okay, are you ready?" [ready to catch every priceless pearl of wisdom with which I'm about to grace you?] "Here's how you calculate the ejection fraction --". At which point I cut her off and said we're fine with that, thanks, the scale is just hard to see. Later in the day, she helped me out by instructing me in the basics of measuring blood pressure. (It was my lucky day). Amusingly, she did it incorrectly. :) There were several more incidents like this throughout the day -- most of which involved VERY simple things that she just misheard. And it's not so much the frequency with which she jumps in, it's her "Here, I'LL help you" attitude when she does.

The clinicians really seem to like her, which is kind of aggravating -- I thought they'd be as impatient with condescending know-it-all-ism and sucking up as I am, but apparently not.
Fortunately, this is my only rotation with her! And it's only 2 more days. And, this being the cardiology vacation, they'll probably be short days. :) AND, thank goodness it was cardiology and not medicine that I got stuck with her!

2nd day of clinics

2011-05-10T19:50:00.003-04:00

There were these pink Danskos that I saw a few weeks ago, which I really liked and which refreshed my regret that Danskos really just don't fit my feet. Which I had basically forgotten about until then, since I like Ariats so much (but then these pink shoes reminded me that Ariats only come in boring colors!).

Somehow, in the course of my internet travels, I came across a brand of clogs called Sanita, which labels itself "the original Danish clog". A lot of websites compared them favorably to Danskos, and they come in a whole slew of really cool colors and patterns, and I thought I might give them a try sometime. Then I found them for 50% off, and I realized that "sometime" is now!!!

They arrived today. I think I might be in love. I might sleep in them tonight. I can't wear them tomorrow since don't really have any maternity clothes that would go with them, so I need to wait until I wear scrubs again (I mostly have blue scrubs, so I thought they would go well with those), but I can't WAIT to wear them to work!

Aren't they beautiful? [sigh]. They're so pretty. And they're so comfortable out of the box that I can just wear them and not have to bring a backup pair of flats in case, after walking half a mile to the hospital, they turn out to not be so great after all (this has happened with many other shoes!).

They were waiting for me when I got home tonight -- I had to go back to the hospital a couple hours after getting home for the day, to discharge my ICU patient, since his mom wasn't able to pick him up during the day. He was doing great! His medications had him right on track. When I examined him to go home, he was very bradycardic. With an arrhythmia. So instead of going home, he went back to ICU! Poor little furry guy. :( He's very laid-back, though, and didn't seem at all upset to still be in the hospital, which is nice -- a lot of cats react to hospitalization with a furious determination to kill anyone who comes near them, making them MUCH less popular as patients (with me, at least) than dogs. But this guy is just a purr-machine, and as long as you hold him up on your shoulder like a baby, lets you do pretty much whatever you want to him. So he's an easy patient (from a handling standpoint, not so much medically). But anyway, I got home pretty late (especially given that Cardiology is known as a "vacation rotation"! That does not imply 8A-8P shifts!) and was instantly cheered up by not only my adorable puppies, who acted like they hadn't seen me in weeks (even though I came home and walked them not three hours ago) but also my beautiful new shoes.

I guess I should have titled this post something about shoes, since that's all I really seem to be talking about. Oh, well. :)

1st day of clinics!

2011-05-09T17:25:00.002-04:00

It was not that bad!

First of all, as I mentioned, I'm starting with 2 weeks of Cardiology, which is known for being a relatively light rotation. So that's good. I still had to be there at 7 AM in case we had transfers from ES, since I'm the on-call student for the day (and actually, there's still a small chance I could get called in sometime this evening if anything else comes in!), but in the grand scheme of things 7 AM really isn't that bad -- it's a heck of a lot better than the 4 AM starts I'll have on rotations like Medicine and Surgery! And then it turned out ES was almost empty, and none of the cases were heart-related, so then I had 2 hours to just hang out until the rest of the team arrived at 9. I used the time to brush up on my cardiovascular drugs, and run some errands on-campus (dropping off a take-home exam, getting my mail, and picking up my clinical skills booklet [there's a list of clinical skills in which we have to demonstrate proficiency to graduate, and a clinician needs to sign off on each skill, which gets recorded in this booklet]).

However, between the major chest cold/sore throat I've had for the past 5 days, having a touch of insomnia anyway recently, sleeping on the couch a couple of nights ago since MM was snoring, and the dogs hogging the bed making it hard to go back to sleep once I wake up at all, I was TIRED today!!! I even started the morning with a medium blueberry coffee from Dunkin Donuts (sounds gross but was surprisingly good!) and it didn't do a thing. I was literally falling asleep all day long. We had a bunch of echocardiograms, which take awhile and involve many people packed into a warm, dark, tiny room looking at a little flickering ultrasound screen -- if I hadn't been standing up, I would have been out cold. I was also, unfortunately, too tired to really muster much of an interest in anything, which sucks. Especially since I got the only admitted patient of the day! He was a transfer from another service, and is currently in ICU. He's a very handsome, cuddly cat, and is clinically interesting, but I'm so tired that I just didn't care. I felt like, "Just tell me what I have to do, so I can do it as quickly as possible and go home to sleep".

Which sucks. And which does NOT bode well for doing clinical rotations with an infant! Holy cow. One of my rotation-mates just finished his large animal emergency rotation, and he said they had 120-hour weeks because there were only 5 students on the service. **120-hour** weeks!!! Working with freaking horses, of all things! During that rotation, obviously I'll have to live on-campus, which will take the baby out of the equation, but poor MM doesn't want to be a single parent for weeks on end! Hopefully there won't be many like that.

Anyway, I have a bunch of ECGs to analyze for discussion tomorrow, and then I'm going to bed. Hopefully around 7:30! I can catch up on sleep a little, and hopefully be fully functional tomorrow.

Funny dog

2011-05-07T09:14:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I've probably mentioned it before, but I just wanted to remind everyone that Mr. Bear is the best dog in the world. He's also the smartest (I know, I know, there are border collies who know, like, 850 different words and can finish an advanced Sudoku puzzle in under 3 minutes. He's still smarter. He just doesn't like to show off).

Occasionally, he has a . . . . . . . . momentary lapse. They're usually hilarious, especially compared to how intelligent he is overall. If he were a dumb dog, I would feel bad laughing at him. (How mean would that be?!?!?). But this is like laughing at your really smart friend who can't figure out that the door opens outward (Midvale, anyone?).

Anyway. He always gets very agitated when we pass another dog when we're out walking. He gets very alert, starts pulling at the leash and dancing around, and if the dog pays attention to him, he'll bark until one of us walks away. When I lived in the midwest, it was in a sort of suburban neighborhood with front lawns and driveways and lots of trees. We had a regular route that we generally tended to stick to when we walked, but we'd take detours to explore the neighborhood too. There was a house a few blocks away (off my regular route) that had two stone lions flanking their front steps -- they were a good 10 feet back from the sidewalk, and they were ventrally recumbent, and they were stone. They did not look remotely animate. Well, Mr. Bear apparently thought they were real, and they were dogs, and every time we walked past that house, he would FREAK OUT, barking and crying and lunging and trying to get these lions! It was so funny that I would ration our walks past this house, because I knew that if he saw them enough times he would eventually figure it out, and I wouldn't get to have this pee-in-your-pants laughing fit that I enjoyed every time he saw them.

A couple of weeks before we moved, I took him up onto the lawn and let him investigate the lions, so that he could figure out that they weren't real, and the next time we walked past the house he didn't react. Anyway, the dog in this video just totally reminded me of those lions, which I haven't thought about in ages!

Back to my summer blog design :)

2011-05-06T11:55:00.001-04:00

I was looking for something more summery than the "library" layout I was using, and this was the only one I could find. Which was the background I used last summer, too. Oh, well. At least I still like it. :)

My week off has been semi-relaxing. I studied like crazy all weekend for my Surgery final -- I spent the entire weekend in the library, which I haven't done since before Christmas! It was kind of nice, actually -- I really like studying there. And I got a good seat (my favorite seat, actually) both days. :) The exam covered thoracic, abdominal, head and neck surgeries, and skin flaps. I found some of the portosystemic shunt questions confusing, and I spent the most time of the whole exam debating between two answers to a question about the type of shunt most commonly caused by a patent ductus venosus -- it turned out they were BOTH wrong!!! I don't think that's ever happened to me before in vet school! Don't get me wrong, I get my share of questions wrong on exams. But when I can't decide between two answers, one of them is the right one. But not this time! I got a good laugh out of that when I realized it, how much time I spent on that question when I was going to get it wrong either way.

I ended up needing to do some more work on my business project after the deadline, and the secretary wasn't mailing them out to the course organizer until Wednesday so the Monday deadline turned out to be soft. So I spent the extra time and did a slightly better job on it than I would have done if I had handed it in on Monday. I also worked on the data entry for a paper that I'm "collaborating" on with one of the surgeons. By "collaborating", I mean doing brainless but time-consuming scut that will get me authorship, which my CV really needs!

Then I did my Pediatrics take-home exam, which took longer than I thought it would. Then I spent the rest of that day at my 35 week OB appointment (he was delivering a baby, so we hung out for quite awhile before we saw him) where we found out Anconeus is vertex!!! I was convinced he was transverse, since I can feel a large mass on the left and an appendage on the right, quite far away -- I assumed that was his head and foot. The OB said, when I mentioned it, "Yeah . . . . . . that's his ass." I like this guy. :)

Then I got a cold, and spent most of yesterday being a sloth (after I took the dogs for nice, long walks since it was gorgeous outside!) and waiting for the maintenance guy to come fix our leaking toilet. We watched Salt when MM got home from work, and ate ice cream. :) And went to bed relatively early.

Today I have to send out the Cardiology call schedule (I'm the rotation captain! Yay! That means I get the crappiest shifts and actually have to start my first shift before our orientation, so I'm not actually sure where I'm supposed to go or what I'm supposed to DO) and at some point go retrieve the truck from the mechanic, where it's getting hundreds of dollars of work done. Poor truck. It just needed its inspection; I didn't expect it to actually fail! I really like my mechanic, though -- I found him on the Mechanics Files of Car Talk's website, where he had lots of good reviews, and he's never tried to sell us stuff we didn't need. He's always good about telling me what he would do immediately, what could wait awhile, and what I can let go long-term. So although this is turning out to be a much more expensive visit than I expected, it sounds like it's all stuff that's worth taking care of.

So, that's my vacation week. :) I have watched several episodes of Grey's Anatomy (streaming on Netflix! I love that!) and taken 2 naps. I still need to collect all my cardiology notes from various classes and put them in a binder together, review my EKGs and echos, common drugs, listen to murmurs online, and look at the website the department put together for students to review during the rotation. If I finish that today, then I can have the weekend really, truly off!

Done with classes!

2011-04-29T14:07:00.003-04:00

I'm done with classes. As in, forever. There's a just about 0% chance I'll ever pursue another degree (I think 2 doctorates is quite enough!) and while I'll still have things like grand rounds, CE presentations, and hours of lectures at society meetings, today was my last official CLASS ever.

Ever!

How can this be?!?!? I've been in school, except for one year as a post-doc, since I was 5! That's 26 years of full-time school. Granted, grad school wasn't really "school", since it was 90% research -- I had class part-time for either 3 or 4 semesters (I forget now) while I did research the rest of the time, and after that it was all research, all the time. But still. This is seriously the end of an era. A very long era.

It was a nice class to end with, too. We had 2 hours of "lab" for critical care -- we rotated through a bunch of modules discussing/playing with some of the monitoring equipment we'll use a lot in the ER and ICU (different types of blood pressure monitoring, end-tidal CO2 monitoring, pulse oximeters, stuff like that) and getting "tours" of the ER and ICU. Having worked in the hospital (on an IM service, not specifically in either of those departments, but we got pickups from ES and had patients in ICU), I'd spent some time in both. On the tours they mostly they just briefly ran through the way a "typical" (if there is any such thing) day goes in each department, and answered questions. It was very laid-back, interesting, and kind of fun. I even found out that a guy I was totally sure was one of the ES nurses is actually a resident!!! (Good thing to know before I start rotations!!!) And I got to play with a pug. (MM loves pugs. I have NO idea why. He says he wants a pug or a Boston. I say either one would be a snack for Bug, plus wouldn't you rather have a dog who can, I don't know, breathe?!?!? And whose eyeballs stay in their skull??! But I have to admit, this pug, neck-less, obese, and dangerously brachycephalic as she was, was still pretty darn cute. And extremely sweet!).

This should go without saying, but any day you get to play with a cute dog is a good day. :)

And then, we were done.

This afternoon I'm taking Red Panda on a therapy dog visit, which will make her incredibly happy, :) and then meeting a bunch of friends for margaritas (probably Sprite in my case, unless they can make virgin margaritas, which I'm not sure about). Then I need to study for my Surgery final (written), and spend all weekend studying for that and finishing my business project. Next week I have the Surgery exam and all the take-home exams due, and then I start clinical rotations!

I can't believe it's over. And I can't believe clinics are starting for real!

97/66

2011-04-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

Not exactly hypertensive. :)

I don't really know how accurate the thingy that you stick your arm into at CVS is, but that's a pretty typical BP for me so I'm inclined to believe it's in the ballpark.

Also, I walked 4.5 miles with the dogs yesterday morning, and my feet almost look like MY FEET again! I still had to wear my "stunt rings" yesterday morning, the fake wedding band set I bought for $9 in the mall to wear when I'm going to be doing something messy, or something like surgery where my rings will spend most of the day on my watch band in my pocket and I'm afraid they'll get lost, but I still want to wear them the rest of the day. They bear a moderate resemblance to my real rings, and I get compliments on them almost every time I wear them -- it's really funny, and I never know how to respond. I feel dishonest playing along, when someone's admiring my gumball-machine jewelry as if it were real, but I also don't want to respond to a compliment with, "Thanks, but they're fake. And really cheap." because that seems insulting. I usually just say thanks.

Anyway, they're maybe half a size bigger than my real rings, so they fit perfectly when my real ones were too tight. But by yesterday afternoon, my real rings fit again! So, maybe the lesson here is that I should walk several miles every day! I'm sure the dogs wouldn't complain. :)

In other good news, I scored some old Surgery exams this morning! We're all supposed to inherit a box of old tests every year from our buddy the year ahead of us, but I guess by 3rd year people aren't so into retrieving and filing their old exams. Plus there are a lot of electives, so you could end up having very few classes in common with your buddy, and therefore a gigantic, useless test box. For this one class, I figured old exams would be really helpful, if only for getting an idea of the format of the exam (one lecturer told us his section is M/C, and the other 11 lecturers haven't said a word), so I was really happy to see that one of my classmates had brought a few old exams to class this morning!

Other than studying for Surgery, the big thing I have to do this week is finish my business project -- I decided to do a tax-based project (whyyyyyyyyyy????????????) setting up an imaginary sole proprietorship to moonlight for extra income (FT job as a private practice vet), and which would also allow me to write off a bunch of school-related expenses (textbooks, computer, software, CE, depreciation on my car, etc). I actually do know why I chose this -- I figured it would be useful in real life, besides fulfilling the course requirements, since I'd like to get certified in veterinary acupuncture once I graduate and then do house-call acupuncture part-time. So I actually MAY use all this information in real life in a couple of years, which I figured would be better than doing some totally made-up project that I'm never going to think about again.

BUT, in real life, I will TOTALLY have an accountant do all the tax forms for me! I've already spent about 15 hours on it, and I'm so confused that I can't even tell how close I am to being done. MM has stopped asking me how much more I have to do on it, since I almost cried the last time he asked. :) From the examples the accountant who gave the relevant lectures used, it LOOKS like you can write some of the same expenses off multiple times, which doesn't make any sense to me. How can that be legal?!?

So, I keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping, because studying for Surgery is a lot more enjoyable since there's a defined endpoint and I actually know how to do it. Which isn't going to help get the project done!

Bad parent

2011-04-25T17:15:00.003-04:00

It's hot. And I suddenly started retaining water like nobody's business -- it seemed like if I kept up with fairly regular exercise and stayed well-hydrated, that I was fine. Some mornings I would wake up and find that my wedding rings were tight, but they'd go back to normal within an hour or two. Then a couple of days ago, I realized that my ankles looked kind of puffy, and then yesterday I noticed that I can't see my flexor tendons AT ALL!!! Even my toes are puffy. I also had a weird, pounding headache yesterday . . . . . . . I feel really silly using the Doppler in the vet hospital to take my own blood pressure, and my next OB appointment isn't for over a week, so I asked MM to bring home a urinalysis strip tonight so I can see if I'm spilling protein. I'm sure it's just heat and normal pregnancy water retention, but it's making me grumpy.

Anyway, Red Panda was just whining a few minutes ago from the other room. She whines a lot, for no apparent reason, and I've never found anything that makes her stop (they have water, she just went out for a walk 20 minutes ago, it's not time to eat, petting her only works for a few seconds, etc) so I usually ignore it. This time, I was trying to figure out an endocrine problem and she was annoying me, so without looking up I told her curtly to be quiet. Three times. (I should mention that she's extremely sensitive to scolding, and saying her name in a stern voice is a serious punishment, in her opinion.)

Well, I solved my problem and got up to go into the other room, and saw that my giant exercise ball had rolled into the doorway and was blocking her from getting into the room that I was in. She's afraid of anything that moves by itself (the ball, empty plastic bags blowing in the wind, trash cans rolling around, etc) and so she was stuck in the other room. And she was crying because she wanted to come in and SEE ME!!!! And I basically yelled at her!!!

My poor little baby. :( I need to go and blanket-wrestle with her to apologize.

Procrastination comes back to bite me

2011-04-22T09:27:00.005-04:00

My lack of work over the rest of the quarter is catching up to me. :) It's not THAT bad; the only real problem is that I have a business project due on May 1, which I was SURE was due on May 31st. I was planning to work on it intensively over "exam week", when I only have one in-class exam. So as of Monday, I hadn't even picked a topic! Luckily, I decided to double check the syllabus just in case, and realized I only had 2 weeks to do the entire project! Yikes.

Then I have one in-class exam (Surgery) which will require a lot of studying. Probably about 40 hours. I should really start working on that, too! That exam is the same day the business project is due, so I can't even stagger them. I guess I could ask for an extension on the business project until the end of the week, except that I also (I'm really batting a thousand this quarter!) didn't realize it HAD to be a group project, and therefore didn't join a group, and now everyone else has done way too much work on their own projects for me to join at this point, so I'm flying solo and I'm not sure how well that will go over with the course organizer. I figure one transgression is probably excusable, but if I email him basically saying, "So, I paid no attention whatsoever to the requirements of this course. Not only did I not join a group since I thought I could work by myself, but I also thought the project was due a month later than it really is, so I actually only picked a TOPIC 4 days ago! Could I please have an extension on my last-minute solo project that was supposed to be done with a group?" he'll probably just laugh. And give me a C on the spot. That's probably what I would do if I were him. :)

I've also never asked for an extension before, so I'm not sure how big a deal it is. My senior year in college, I was in a biochemistry lab one day, complaining about how much work I had to do that week (there were only 8 students in the lab, so the professor just sort of hung out in the middle of the room and would help/chat/leave us alone, as needed) and the prof (a DOLL -- she was one of the nicest professors I've ever had. Not because of this; although it certainly didn't hurt; she was also my on-campus thesis advisor since I did my research at an off-site institution, and she taught several of the upper-level classes that I took, so I spent a fair amount of time with her. She also had two ADORABLE, elfin children with the cutest curly red hair, and she did good research but also really LOVED teaching. She was awesome.) -- anyway, the prof overheard me griping and OFFERED me an extension on the long lab report that was due that Friday. I almost passed out from shock, since I thought extensions were strictly for deaths in the family/incapacitating injuries to yourself, but she didn't seem to think it was that big a deal. So, maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion.

I guess my reluctance is partly because it's completely my own fault; I didn't get legitimately overloaded with work, I just didn't pay ~~any~~ enough attention to the due dates and requirements for the course. And partly because I don't really need an extension; I can do both the project and the surgery studying in time to be fine for both classes, it would just be easier if the project were due a week later. And partly because I'm embarrassed that I totally missed the fact that it was supposed to be a group project!

Anyway, aside from those two classes, I also have*

1) two online quizzes for Pharmacology, and a take-home exam for Pharm if the quizzes don't go well (he gave us the option of doing a quiz series or a midterm and final, and I did both so that I could just use whichever gave me a higher grade. So far the quizzes have gone great, so as long as the last two are fine, I can skip the final. He lets us drop one quiz grade, but I missed a quiz completely because I thought they were every Monday and they're actually randomly scattered throughout the quarter [again with the paying attention] so I have to do well on all the quizzes I actually take since that one was my drop).

2) One in-class group case-based exam for Emergency Medicine, which is both open-book/internet and there are 9 smarties in my group (plus every. single. case. we've had this quarter has had some form of shock as the primary problem, so as long as we get another shocky patient we should at least be off to a good start!).

3) 1 rather long, mixed-format take-home exam for Pediatrics. It involves a case discussion, and a bunch of M/C and short-answer questions.

4) 3 take-home M/C exams, for ICU, Shelter Medicine, and Exotics. I should probably go check the due dates on those, since at the rate I'm going this quarter, one of them is probably due this afternoon!

I'm already finished with Anesthesia (that professor is also a doll, and apparently is giving everyone an A simply for showing up to the lectures! It's only a 1-credit class, so we only had about 8 hours of lecture, and they were all clumped into 2 weeks so I haven't even thought about it in about a month).

And I'm also finished with Dentistry, which was graded entirely based on a "creative project" that had to involve some dental medicine but was primarily graded on creativity. For example, one final project was a giant sheet cake that had the crown of an incisor cut out of the top, and the whole cake was iced to show the anatomy of the tooth, gingiva, alveolar bone, etc. It was cute. :) A lot of people made dentistry board games. Some people made funny videos. One pair wrote a book of poems about teeth and dental pathology. I made a children's book, starring Red Panda! She's so unbelievably adorable that MM and I have been talking for years about writing a series of children's books about her adventures, AND she wants to be a dentist when she grows up, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity! I basically just took a bunch of photos of her (in a white coat, interviewing for a job, etc) and then used Photoshop to make them look like sketches, and put together a photo book with captions then printed it at CVS. The actual dental part of the book involves her diagnosing a complicated fracture on another dog (Bug, actually) and convincing her to go to the vet, where she's in time to have vital pulp therapy and can avoid a root canal! Yay, Red Panda! :) The actual book quality is pretty crappy (I would have used Blurb, which makes beautiful books, except that I finished the project late at night two days before it was due, so I needed next-day printing.) and I'll never print another book at CVS, but I think it was a creative enough and dental enough project to be adequate for the class.

So, that is what's going on this quarter. I should go work on my business project.

*I'm not sure what I was smoking when I wrote the previous post. It sure was nice thinking I only had 2 exams, but I have no idea where I got that impression!

Weekend fun

2011-04-04T19:21:00.003-04:00

The spring quarter of 3rd year is vastly different from the rest of vet school, so far. Not because I've started clinics -- I'm back in classes again until May. But because previously, I was cramming as much information into my brain as possible, studying, camping out in the library, with another exam always looming and no time to get behind. It was stressful, but busy (which I like).

This quarter, I have a much smaller courseload than usual (only 24 credits or so!) and I opted not to take the surgery lab elective (I didn't really like the previous surgery lab that was required, it involves a lot of busywork, and this lab covers a lot of procedures that are complicated, difficult, and very poorly simulated on healthy tissue -- which I already opined about a couple of years ago so I'll spare you. They're not terminal surgeries, in this lab -- most are actually on models rather than live animals, which I think it ethically preferable but no more useful than practicing sick-animal surgeries on beautifully healthy tissue). The lab is a big time suck, and by not taking it (I think it's 1 or 2 credits) I got myself a HALF DAY most of the Mondays and Tuesdays this quarter! That is so awesome. I can hardly believe my luck. :)

Anyway, not only is my courseload extremely light compared to other semesters, but a lot of the classes don't even have exams. One of them requires a "creative project" as our only graded contribution, and seems to prioritize creativity over medical value, so I'm working on a children's story about veterinary dentistry featuring Red Panda, who is pretty much the cutest dog in the world and has deprived children everywhere of a book about her for far too long. Other than that, I think I have 2 exams. So, not a lot of pressure.

This leaves me with free time!!! I love free time. I never use it wisely (I've watched 2 entire seasons of Gilmore Girls in the past month, and finished the series this afternoon, which makes me sad. I'll miss Rory and Lorelai.) but it's nice to have, anyway. For one thing, on weekends when MM is free, we can do fun things together!

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, so we decided to walk downtown. We ran across a sandwich board advertising an open house, and took a short detour to check it out. It was a BEAUTIFUL 3-level townhouse with 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and a deck on every floor! In retrospect, there was a ton of space wasted in hallways and stairwells, and each room was actually pretty small, but it was still beautiful and made me want a house. :) After that, we had brunch at a little coffeeshop that makes good waffles and crepes, and a mean hot chocolate. Then we continued our walk, stopping for a GIGANTIC slice of pizza (MM was still hungry; his crepe was pretty small) and then turning homeward down a pretty residential street with another stop to pick up a coal oven-fired pizza for dinner. We took public transportation about half the way home since we were tired -- we walked more than 6 miles, which is not bad for a Sunday stroll!

Near the end of our walk, I also dragged MM into a Walking Company store to try on Danskos. He has these shoes that aren't really meant for standing on your feet all day long, and I've been trying to get him to try Danskos for a couple of years now. I can't wear them myself; I've tried on dozens of pairs and the arch of the shoe hits well in front of the arch of my foot, rubbing irritatingly against the ball of my foot and leaving the back of my arch hanging off in space. I discovered Ariat clogs a few years ago and live in them -- they seem to be a pretty similar product and fit me perfectly. My only complaint is that they only come in black and brown. Danskos come in all SORTS of colors! Including this cool pink pattern:

which I LOVE. Aren't they pretty!?!?! I tried them on, thinking maybe my arches had magically moved back half an inch and would allow me to wear these shoes, but sadly it was not to be. Even though they're pink. And have a cool pattern. :( But, MM did find a pair of shoes that he said made his feet feel LESS tired and sore than they were before he put them on, which is the true mark of a great shoe (in my experience, even shoes that feel perfectly fine in the store usually end up being uncomfortable. If there's the SLIGHTEST hint of discomfort in the store, I'll be in pain after 10 minutes of walking. I've never found a shoe that makes my feet feel better with them than without them, so these are pretty much magical). And they look decent, too, which is a rare feature of very comfortable shoes. We came home and ordered them for $20 less online, and I can't wait for them to arrive! His feet are going to be so happy. :)

You can probably just skip this one

2011-03-26T15:44:00.004-04:00

I think I'm going to rant. About parents, which may seem odd since I'm soon to become one. In the past year or so, I've noticed a disturbing phenomenon that I fervently hope I don't succumb to -- in the city where I live, there is a HUGE population of parents who seem to think that the entire universe revolves around themselves and their offspring. There are a lot of variables I may not be accounting for -- maybe identical proportions of non-parents and parents behave this way, and I only notice the parents because their behavior is more likely to affect me (more on this in a minute). Maybe the narcissists have ALWAYS been that way, and it's only because I happen to meet them when they're parents that I notice it. Maybe it really is okay (?!?!?!?) for parents to behave this way (I really doubt that).

Anyway. Here's the most common scenario -- I'm walking one of my dogs, early in the morning, and a mother (or nanny, who knows) is approaching from the opposite direction. With one of those stupid, double-wide tandem strollers that takes up THE ENTIRE city sidewalk except for about 8 inches. First of all, I think these things are an abomination to begin with -- WHY ON EARTH would you design (or BUY?!?!?) a stroller that's wider than most sidewalks? In the suburb where I grew up, the thing literally wouldn't even FIT on the sidewalk! Here in the city, you get a few inches of clearance. So, the woman strolls blithely along, smack in the middle of the sidewalk, not even making an effort to keep to one side, where passersby would at least have those remaining 8 inches to squish themselves along through.

Which, you know, is annoying! You don't suddenly OWN the entire sidewalk just because you've reproduced. And why are these strollers so popular? Do little Susie and Timmy both just HAVE to be able to sit "in front", so you couldn't POSSIBLY have a stroller whose seats are arranged in series instead of in parallel?!?! What on earth is the problem with a normal-width stroller that just has an extra seat in front of or behind the regular one?

So, that's annoying already. THEN. THEN this oblivious woman almost runs over my dog's foot. With her monstrosity that, once you add the weight of the kids inside, has to weigh at least 50 pounds. This happened so many times that when I see one of these idiots coming, I stop walking and interpose my body between the idiot and my dog, so that if they're going to hit someone, it will be me -- people seem to take a modicum more notice of a human they're about to run over, than a dog. And, surprise surprise! They actually find a few extra inches to move over and avoid me!

This works fine most of the time. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bear and I came around a corner and ran into an idiot who was going straight through the intersection with one of these things, and he was a few feet in front of me, so I didn't have time to insert myself between them, and she missed his foot by literally about half an inch. I was too surprised to say anything, but I feel like I should have pointed out the near miss and asked that she be more careful in the future. If she actually HAD run over his foot, I'm not sure what I would have done -- I hope that I would have gotten in her face and yelled at her. It would be well-deserved.

The other problem I run into a lot, is people not supervising their children properly when they're walking through the city. There's a subset of the under-5 crowd in my neighborhood that thinks it's really funny to run full-tilt at my dog down a hill, and then dodge aside at the verylastsecond. For one thing, this is an incredibly stupid thing to let your kid do to a strange dog -- luckily it's only happened when I'm with Red Panda or Mr. Bear, and they're both great with kids and completely unfazed (Red Panda thinks it's a fun game. Mr. Bear is completely indifferent). But with a dog who doesn't like kids (or even who likes kids in normal circumstances but doesn't appreciate being charged by a stranger) this could result in a very serious injury to the child.

In this case, since it's usually Mr. Bear that I'm walking when this happens, I'm more worried that the kid will trip at the last second and fall on him. He's getting older, and is arthritic and not very strong, and he could be seriously injured if a 30 pound projectile launched itself into him unexpectedly. So I handle THIS issue by inserting myself between the kid and my dog, so that if the kid runs into anyone, it will be me. I'm sure that the first time some kid actually does trip and goes flying into me, I'LL get screamed at by the nitwit parent for "knocking down" their precious child. Actually, the ensuing argument might be kind of fun. :)

But the last time this happened, I totally didn't see it coming. Someone was walking their dog down the street toward us at the same time a nitwit parent was approaching with their 4 year old child. So I called Mr. Bear all the way to the edge of the sidewalk, into a sit, so that he wouldn't get worked up over the other dog. While he was calmly sitting there (I had kibble, and I don't think he even noticed that the other dog or the parent/child were there at all) the kid went running full-tilt down the hill, and at the last second, swerved aside toward Mr. Bear and jumped over his tail. He missed landing on it by a couple of inches. The kid thought it was really funny. The parent gave no indication of noticing that anything had happened. Mr. Bear turned his head to see what was going on, but that was it. But if the kid had landed ON his tail? Probably some fractured caudal vertebrae. Probably a VERY well-deserved snap at the kid. Possibly a bite (also, IMO, well-deserved). Possibly a lawsuit based on my "aggressive" dog.

I was so shocked that I just stood there with my mouth hanging open, and I'm still kicking myself for not saying something to that parent -- that is totally unacceptable behavior, both from the standpoint of the kid's safety, and for general courtesy and just common sense. He's a DOG, a living, breathing, being -- not an obstacle on the freaking playground!!! If I let my athletic dog jump over someone's KID in similar circumstances, you can bet there'd be all kinds of hell to pay. But god forbid little Timmy not be allowed to express himself!

So. These are the parents I notice in my neighborhood. I'm hoping they were just jerks to begin with, and that there's not some I-just-spawned-so-now-the-earth-revolves-around-me switch that gets flipped at some point during birth or early childhood. If I EVER act this way, I hope that someone smacks me.

Surgery

2011-03-15T20:02:00.003-04:00

On Sunday I spent the day at the giant local shelter where I did my last externship, spaying and neutering cats. It's a really good program run by a vet who's a great surgical teacher, and there's a core group of 4th year students who've been attending regularly for months and are also very competent. We work individually or in teams of 2-3 people, depending on how many people are working that day and what each student's comfort and skill level are. On a 3-person team, one person monitors anesthesia and the other 2 scrub in. Sometimes both of the student surgeons are of similar skill levels, and they usually either share the procedure (1 opens the abdomen, locates and exteriorizes the uterus, and ligates the pedicle on the right uterine horn; 2 ligates the pedicle on the left and the uterine body/uterine arteries, etc) or take turns doing the entire spay. If one of the student surgeons is more experienced, they're responsible for helping to teach the junior student as they go through the spay.

The first time I went, I was paired with 2 4th-year students who attend almost every surgical clinic and are very experienced, so I was the junior member of the team. We had a very pregnant cat to spay and the vessels were huge, but otherwise it was straightforward and went well. The student I scrubbed in with was a tiny bit quick on the trigger to make suggestions (sometimes before I'd even picked up an instrument!) which I'm not a huge fan of since I learn more from figuring things out for myself, and I was generally familiar with the procedure so I didn't really need a lot of direction. Of course I want someone to stop me if I'm about to do something stupid, or if I'm doing something incorrectly, but these were mostly pre-emptive "Next you should do x" type suggestions, which I didn't need. But she was nice, and it wasn't a big deal, and it was a productive day.

The second time I went, this weekend, was even better! I was paired with a 4th-year and a 2nd-year, and we did several spays over the course of the day. The 4th year was more experienced than I am, and the 2nd year didn't have much surgical experience, so we ran the whole gamut. The first couple of spays went very smoothly, and then I made the mistake of scrubbing in with the the 2nd year -- this meant that I was the senior student (I did not think through the implications of that fact!), and responsible for helping to teach him. It sounded like he had a fair amount of experience, so I figured it was no big deal at first, but it turned out that he really needed a lot of help. And I realized that I am NOT experienced enough to be the surgeon guiding an inexperienced student!!! I'm okay by myself (if there's someone within shouting distance that I can get advice from if something's tricky) but I felt responsible for both myself and him and that was much more stressful than working alone. The cat also had large ovarian arteries that were a little difficult to exteriorize enough to ligate, and when I broke down the broad ligament to access the ovary, a smaller vessel started bleeding (I hate when things bleed. I don't mind blood per se, but when something bleeds (at all) during surgery when I don't expect it to, I'm irrationally certain that the animal is going to DIE. IMMEDIATELY. Which obviously is ridiculous, and when someone ELSE is the surgeon, a little bleeding doesn't bother me at all because I know that a) it's not really that much blood, b) we have several options for hemostasis, any of which would probably be fine, and c) of course things are going to bleed! In other words, I can assess the situation rationally and make a decision about what to do. But when I'm responsible for that patient, my brain interprets it as a catastrophe and starts running around in circles flapping its hands). Anyway, this small bleeding vessel was easy to fix, and the cat was in no actual danger, but I don't do my best problem solving when I'm freaking out about the imminent demise of my patient, so it took me a lot longer than it should have.

I calmed down enough to suggest to the 2nd year (who was probably a little freaked out himself by that point) that he do the other uterine horn, but then I ended up finishing most of the rest of it myself because I was too worried, and because he got worried too.

The upshot is, the 2nd year got a crappy learning experience because I lacked the skill and confidence to be a good teacher, the cat stayed under anesthesia way longer than was necessary because everything took us so long since I was freaked out and therefore not troubleshooting as well as I should have been, and I felt like I'd been run over by a truck by the time the cat was finally off the table!

I think if I spend two more full days spaying with either senior or same-level students, and see more variations and get more practice when I'm not responsible for someone less experienced, I'll be fine and can try scrubbing in with a junior student again. But I was clearly not ready for it this weekend!

Weekend activities

2011-03-14T14:43:00.003-04:00

On Friday, I skipped class in the afternoon to take Mr. Bear for his first acupuncture appointment -- his hips have been worse lately, and we've pretty much run the gamut of traditional therapies (except for surgery, which I'm afraid to do since he's at least 10 or 11 and I think the recovery would be rough on him even if the procedure went fine). He had a course of acupuncture about a year ago, and I didn't think it really helped. But I thought it might be worth another try, with a different practitioner. He actually seemed better immediately afterward -- he trotted home from where I parked the car (he usually kind of plods) and then ran up the stairs (he usually goes up them slowly, with encouragement) but by the next morning he was back to his previous state, so if that's all the improvement I'm going to get, it may not be worth it. We'll give it a few weeks (he's supposed to go weekly) and see what happens.

Friday night, MM and I watched Inception (from Netflix) which was GREAT -- it was one of the better movies I've seen in the past few months! The plot was a little complicated, but it was really interesting, with good action and ended up being easier to follow than I thought at first, with a satisfying end.

Saturday MM slept in a little (the puppies are not super-cooperative once one of us gets up. The fuzzbottoms, especially, ALWAYS get up when I do, and even though I walk them right away so they'll settle down and not bother him, he usually can't go more than about 30 minutes before the pits decide they need to get up too). I got up and wasted some time online, walked Red Panda and Mr. Bear, and then MM (who has family in the deep South) made his mother's biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which was delicious!!! I usually make it for him, but it's been so long that he took matters into his own hands. :) And I worked out (biked on the trainer).

I spent part of the afternoon photographing some vintage dresses that I want to sell on Etsy. One of them has a 24" waist, which currently entertains me to no end, especially given that I've NEVER had a 24" waist, except maybe when I was 12. I don't know what I was thinking, with that one! (All right, I do. It's a gorgeous, long, pale pink chiffon and lace dress with little flowers embroidered all over the skirt, a pink sash, and cap sleeves, and I love it and would probably be willing to squeeze myself into a corset to wear it, except that I'm not sure even a corset will get me into it after Anconeus is born. Plus, where on earth would I ever wear such a dress? To my senior prom? If it were 1956? So, wishful thinking and an active imagination is what happened there!). Anyway, there are several dresses I want to sell, so I spent awhile photographing and measuring all of them. I ran out of steam before actually listing them, so that's on the agenda for this week.

Then, since it was nice outside, we took Red Panda and Monkey for a 2-mile walk to get coffee. We saw a LOT of squirrels, which Red Panda loved -- she kind of points at them, which is pretty funny for a chow mix, and every time the squirrel she's pointing at moves even a little bit, she twitches like she's about to take off after him. Eventually she reaches her breaking point and really does take off, but she's only on a 6-foot leash so she doesn't get very far. Poor girl, I think it would be the happiest day of her life if she ever actually caught one! I almost feel bad for holding her back (except that I know how awful it would be if she succeeded!) (Did I ever tell you about the time that Bug caught an opossum? I thought I did, but I don't see any posts that ring a bell. I'll post it sometime, but for now I'll just give you the punchline: it was almost as big as she was, she brutally killed it, I could barely drag her away from the corpse, and it was awful. Oh yeah, and then I had to go BACK for the corpse, since I obviously couldn't just leave it on the sidewalk, and I was afraid that it was going to magically come back to life and attack me, giving me rabies and removing half my face, and I almost cried getting it into the trash bag. So, no more wildlife for the dogs!).

We also did our laundry, including a mountain of sheets/towels/blankets that someone *cough*Bug*cough* peed on over the past couple of ~~weeks~~ days (I mean, really, who would leave urine-soaked bedding in a trash bag for two weeks waiting to go to the laundromat? Even if it wasn't really soaked, just slightly dampened. And it really didn't smell once the trash bag was closed. And the bag got tossed in a corner where it was very easy to overlook! Right, no one we know).

I did nothing school-related at all, which was fun. :) I didn't really have any studying to do yet, so it didn't even matter!

Bread pudding french toast

2011-03-06T12:03:00.003-05:00

We slept late this morning! The puppies were so good. :) Mr. Bear jumped off the bed at one point and wandered around woofing softly (this is what he usually does when either the water bowl is empty, or he wants to get back on the bed but there's no room on the side for him to jump up), but I coaxed him back up his steps and he settled down and went back to sleep. It was 9:45 when we finally woke up! I can't even remember the last time I slept that late. And we would have slept even later, except that I felt bad for the dogs, who were very hungry and had to pee by then.

So, we got up and took care of the puppy children, then MM suggested french toast for breakfast. I make (in my extremely humble opinion) :) one of the 3 best french toasts I've ever had in my life. One of the other 3 is from a B&B in the midwest, and I can't remember the 3rd french toast but I'm sure at SOME point in my life I've had SOME other french toast that was better than mine. But not more than once or twice. :) If I ever have people over for brunch, I'll definitely make this -- so far MM and I have been the only lucky recipients. The disadvantage to making it for other people is that then you don't have leftovers, which would be kind of sad.

The chewier and denser the challah that you start with, the better it turns out. And you need to soak the bread slices in the custard mix until they're saturated and almost falling apart. If you have any custard left over, just dump it on top of the baking dish after you put the bread in. The whole thing takes awhile (I started at 10:30 this morning and we're not going to eat until 12:30) but it is SO worth it!

Bread Pudding French Toast
1/2 loaf dense bread (challah works well)
6 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup half & half

1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, divided
3/4 cup butter, plus more for greasing baking dish

Preheat oven to 350 F
Grease 13 x 9 inch glass baking pan, or 9 inch round baking dish
Cut bread into 1 inch thick slices
Whisk eggs
Add milk, half and half, vanilla, cinnamon, and 1/2 cup brown sugar to eggs and mix well
Soak bread slice in egg mixture for 1-2 minutes, piercing slice all over with a fork to improve penetration of the egg mixture into the bread
Transfer soaked bread slices to baking dish
Repeat with remaining bread slices
Cover with foil and bake for 40 minutes at 350 F
Melt butter and remaining 1 cup brown sugar and mix well to make sauce
Pour butter and sugar sauce over bread
Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes
Remove from oven and serve!

Right now it's in the oven for its final bake, to let the caramel glaze. T-15 minutes to gustatory ecstasy. :)

Vacation . . . . . . . possibly my last ever!

2011-03-03T17:02:00.003-05:00

Everyone who didn't elect to do externships this quarter (taking classes instead) is hot in the middle of finals right now. Most people who DID elect externships are . . . . . . . on vacation! Yay! :) It's been relaxing, although I haven't crossed much off my to-do list, which is stressing me out a little. I haven't slept in much (I get to sleep later than I do when I'm on clinics, which is nice, but the puppies have an internal alarm clock with no snooze button, and it's not set for sleeping in) but I did take a nap today (I love naps!).

I did read 2 books, both memoirs about medical residencies. There aren't that many books out there about veterinary residencies, and I figure there are probably a lot of parallels. I have 2 more books that I want to read, but I can't FIND them anywhere! How did that happen!?!? It's a sure sign that it's time to clean. :(

And I bought a netbook! I like it a lot, so far. The battery life isn't quite what the test drivers said it was (not sure how they're getting 8.5 hours out of it since I get about 5) (obviously these are independent review sites, not stores or the manufacturer -- of course I wouldn't believe those battery life claims!) but otherwise it's a nice little machine. It was pretty much the cheapest netbook I could find, and I bought it because I wanted something I could carry around with me and not worry about it constantly (you'd think my MacBook was made of eggshells filled with platinum, the way I worry about it -- MM isn't allowed to even lean one hand on my desk while it's running, because I'm so afraid of scratching the hard drive. When people put their laptop to sleep and sling it in their bookbag, I get heart palpitations. With a computer that cost less than 2 nice dinners out, I don't have to worry!). I also wanted something light and very portable, so that I can use it to write discharges on rotations -- we use an internet-based system to write discharges and order labs, and there aren't that many computers in the hospital so on my last rotation I was often stuck standing around, waiting for a computer to be free. No big deal on that rotation since it was so slow, but a MAJOR PROBLEM on, say, medicine or soft tissue surgery.

AND, I started working out again! It feels great. :) I really missed it -- on rotations and externships, I got home so late every night and was so tired from standing/running around all day that I had no energy left to exercise. And I had to get up so early already that there was no way it was happening before work. But now that I'll be in class all day, and have a relatively light workload, I'm very happy about getting back into my routine. I went running on Saturday, for the first time in 3 months -- I should actually say "jogging", since I had to walk every 4th block and averaged 10:30 pace (my very first run, years and years ago, was faster than that!). Not being able to expand my lungs completely had a lot to do with it. The fact that I currently weigh 8 pounds more than I ever have in my LIFE (and about 15 pounds more than I did the last time I ran!) has a lot to do with it, too. But, it's okay -- as long as I can get my heart rate up and move around for half an hour, I can maintain my fitness level, and then I should be good to go again once Anconeus makes his appearance. (Well, maybe a few weeks later).

Final externship - shelter medicine

2011-02-20T17:13:00.006-05:00

So, I finished my easy-peasy intramural rotation (two half-rotations, actually) and spent last week (and will spend this coming week) at a very large local shelter. We had some interesting cases at the vet school, and I learned/relearned some useful things. It got busier in the second week, but was still a very light caseload (and all outpatient cases, so I didn't have any nighttime or early morning treatments to do, or any patients to SOAP before rounds).

The shelter is interesting, but it has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never be a shelter vet. I'd like to volunteer at (or host, depending on my work situation) the weekend low-cost spay/neuter/vaccination clinics that a lot of large shelters and rescue organizations offer, because I think they're very helpful and a good way to contribute something more to the animal community than just high-end cancer care (which will almost exclusively benefit dogs and cats with parents who love them very much, and who are most likely in middle- to upper-class homes). But full-time shelter medicine is so insanely frustrating, I'd be burnt out in a week. Also, by necessity, it's lower-quality medicine than in private practice or academia (since no one can afford to do anything, generally) and I think that my medical skills would atrophy to the point that I might not be ABLE to return to private practice.

We've done a lot of different things so far at this shelter:

Behavioral assessments of newly-rescued animals
Environmental enrichment activities with the dogs
Treatments in the shelter hospital
Medical appointments in the shelter clinic where people can bring their pets
"Rounds" on the whole shelter (basically a walk-through where we -- 'we' being my co-extern friend and I -- evaluate every one of the 400+ animals in the shelter for obvious health concerns, make a list of every animal we think might have a problem, go through their medical record to see if they're already being treated for it, come up with a treatment plan, and then execute that plan)
Low-cost, high-volume vaccine clinic
Physical exams on surgery candidates
Cat neuters and spays

I like the medical appointments and surgery clinic the best, although the medical appointments are mostly EXTREMELY frustrating since no one brings their pet to this shelter for veterinary care unless they don't have the money to go somewhere else. I had one case (actually in the vaccine clinic, not a medical appointment) that was an older, sweet, very timid black lab mix who was clearly neglected -- her toenails were so long that she couldn't walk properly, and I was able to cut an INCH off of most of them, and more than that off of a couple. The owners asked me about a "hot spot" on her back, which was immediately obvious as flea allergy dermatitis -- alopecic, pruritic, crusty, scaly -- I felt so badly for this poor dog. I explained the problem to them, and recommended Frontline (for $15) to get rid of the fleas (there are products that are probably more effective, but that's what the shelter carries) and they said no. So she's just going to stay that way!!!!!!!! Meanwhile, one of the owners asked if cat nail trims are also $10 (as they are for dogs) and when I said yes, he said, "Great! Because I have 6 cats I need to bring in!". So, he's going to spend $60 on nail trims for his cats, which he could either do at home or just SKIP for the time being, while his poor dog is miserably itchy because she's allergic to fleas. I wanted to punch him.

They're not all like that. A lot of the cases are people who love their cat or dog and honestly just do not have the money to do whatever it is the animal needs. I can't decide which one bothers me more -- the owners who don't care, or the ones who genuinely can't afford it.

Tomorrow we're supposed to ride along on a raid of a cat hoarder halfway across the state. It's not a scheduled activity (we're supposed to be doing something else tomorrow), and I just found out about it a couple of hours ago. I'm hoping to convince them that I could help out in some other way instead -- I get carsick as a passenger, so there's no way I'm riding in someone else's car for 8 hours roundtrip (ONE hour roundtrip would be really pushing it). My car has been making a scary-sounding grinding noise on acceleration, and we've been avoiding any long drives in it since we haven't had time to take it to the mechanic, so an 8-hour drive isn't really what it needs right now. Hoarders are not known for their hygiene, and I'm worried about zoonoses. And finally, what they really want us for is to have extra hands helping with the bulk labor of stuffing dozens to hundreds of cats into cages for transport -- driving 8 hours to be an extra pair of hands, when there are many other helpful things I could be doing instead, seems like a gigantic waste of time. So, I'm going to go in a little early tomorrow and talk to the person who's organizing this trip, and make my case for working in some other area tomorrow. I suspect I'm just going to refuse, if they disagree -- I'm not convinced this is safe (especially since I'm pregnant!) and it's definitely a very inefficient use of externship time, especially since we only have 12 working days there. I'm hoping I won't cave and let myself get talked into going. :)

On other fronts, we picked a daycare center! I am SO relieved to have that taken care of -- there are places in the area with waiting lists longer than a human gestation period! That means you have to be on the waiting list before you're even pregnant! I was afraid they were all going to be like that, but we visited 3 out near MM's clinic, since he's going to do pickup and dropoff (not many daycare centers will take your child at 5 AM when I'll often need to be at the hospital to start my SOAPs for the day, and most won't let you leave him there until 8 PM or whenever the heck I finally finish). We liked 2 of the 3, and one was literally 5 minutes from his clinic even with traffic, so we gave them a deposit and we're good for August!

First clinical rotation!

2011-02-02T08:32:00.003-05:00

I got an easy service for my first intramural clinical rotation, which is REALLY nice -- some of my friends had ICU or internal medicine as their first rotation, and I can't even imagine how stressful that would be!

When I say "easy", I mean I'm being spoiled rotten, so far. For example, the first day of the rotation, we had 3 cases. The second day we had 1. (That's a "one" without another digit behind it, in case there's any confusion!). That means we have the entiiiiiiiiiire day to work up each case. Add to this the fact that there are 5 students on the service, and you have one very relaxed rotation! Oh, and did I mention that we have Fridays off?

I'm simultaneously extremely grateful, and a little disappointed. Grateful because this is the perfect way to get introduced to clinics -- I have all the time in the world to figure out how to navigate the hospital computer system, go about seeing an appointment, find all the appropriate paperwork, practice writing discharge instructions, and figure out/remind myself of where all the labs and everything are.

Disappointed because this would have been the PERFECT rotation to have as my first one back after maternity leave!!! Can you imagine? I'd only have had to send little Anconeus* to daycare for 4 days, the first 2 weeks, and I've have gotten home at a reasonable hour every night to see him. That would have been a great transition. Instead I might get . . . . . . . . I don't know, what about soft tissue surgery, with its 16 hour days?

But, for the time being, it's nice to have this as my first rotation. I haven't felt like an idiot yet. :) I'm figuring out how the hospital system works, and I have 4 4th-year students helping me out. Pretty sweet, huh?

Oh, and my case yesterday was an ADORABLE Golden Retriever puppy, with a relatively minor complaint (it seems - hopefully that remains true!) who was absolutely thrilled to be in the hospital (I'm not being sarcastic -- he was so happy and excited to be there, getting all that attention, making new friends and sniffing new smells, he was even happy when we put him in the wards!). He was so much fun, I wanted to take him home with me. :) And his dad was really nice, and seems very invested in his well-being, which is perfect. :)

*No, we're not really going to name him that!

Ah, grad school. How I don't miss you. :)

2011-01-26T11:18:00.002-05:00

I had dinner a couple of nights ago with my grad school mentor (NOT my grad school PI, to whom the word "mentor" does not remotely apply, and about whom I still have the very occasional nightmare, including startling awake sweating and hyperventilating, and whose dinner invitation would guarantee I'd be out of town, if not out of the COUNTRY, on the suggested day . . . . . . . and a couple days on either side of it, just in case).

Whew. As I was saying, I had dinner with my grad school mentor, whom I really like and haven't seen since I defended! And my post-doctoral PI, who's also great. And his 4 current students, all really nice and friendly people. I miss working there, actually.

It was a nice dinner; we went to an Asian place nearby and I stayed up WAY too late, but the food was delicious and the company was good, and I had a good time. My mentor mentioned this Lady Gaga video spoof and said he really liked it, so I looked it up when I got home -- it's funny, but also very, very true. :)

Second externship

2011-01-23T09:27:00.003-05:00

I've finished the first week of my second externship, and it's very different from the first externship (even though both are in suburban small animal private practices) and I like it. The main doctor is very good -- much better than the doctors I worked with at the first place. There are so many examples I could give to illustrate this point, but I'll just mention the one that comes to mind whenever I compare them:

When you're closing an incision, you tie a bunch of knots on your suture to (duh) keep the ends together. Most of the knot security comes from how tightly you tie the knots, and there are rules of thumb for different tissues, which throw you're on (ie, we're taught that on an ovarian pedicle, your first throw should just provide appositional tension, the second should be tighter, and the third should be as tight as you can make it without breaking the suture), different suture materials, etc. But the general consensus is that a surgeon's knot with 2-3 additional throws, tied under appropriate tension, is great for many applications with many materials. The OTHER general consensus is that if you don't tie your knots securely, you can slop as many throws as you want on there, and you might still be hosed. And when you're putting tons of throws in, your knot gets taller . . . . . . . . and taller . . . . . . . . and taller . . . . . . . . and who wants a half-inch tall knot poking them in the skin from the inside, because you put 15 throws on your fascial closure? That seems like common sense, right? Especially with dogs and cats, who, unlike humans, cannot be instructed in the various kinds of badness that could result from them messing with their incision when it irritates them, and are inclined to lick/chew/rub the heck out of it even when the knots are a normal size.

Anyway. At the current externship, the doctor does 3 or 4 throws, they're each tied with appropriate tension, and a very small, secure knot is left. At the FIRST externship, the doctor would do (literally) 13 or 14 throws, and she wouldn't secure ANY of them. As soon as she cut the tail, the last 2 throws would already be untying themselves, AND she was leaving the poor dog with a (literally) half-inch tall knot poking into his next layer of tissue!!! I pointed out once that her last throw was untying itself, and she laughed and said, "Oh, ha ha, yeah, I don't tie them very tightly so that's why I do so many".

That's pretty freaking stupid.

Anyway, that's what I picture when I compare the two places in my head -- the neat, tight, secure, tiny knots of the second place, and the towering stack of insecure, unraveling knots at the first. That's a pretty good metaphor for the practices as a whole.

The other thing I like about the second place (aside from the main doctor's overall competence) is that he asks me a lot of questions -- what could be causing the problem we're seeing, what diagnostics should we do, how could we treat it -- and he's not satisfied with one or two answers, he wants a list of differentials! Which is exactly what I wanted out of these externships, so that's great.

The third thing I like is that the other two doctors are really nice, and one of them is my age (although she graduated in 2007) and she's very friendly and outgoing and I have fun hanging out with her when business is slow.

The fourth thing I like is that they see a lot of exotics! About 20% of the practice is rabbits, which is awesome, and they also see a lot of birds, turtles, lizards, snakes, hamsters, guinea pigs, and mice. I had zero experience with any of these species (well, except mice, and that was research, not medicine) before working here, and learning about something as simple as proper restraint for a rabbit (which is nerve-wracking!) is useful. Plus I get to hear a lot of discussions about husbandry, which is the most important part of most exotics' health.

He also explains a lot about why he's doing things from a communication/management standpoint -- why he said this particular thing to the client, why he made that decision about personnel, etc. Since he owns the practice, he's obviously very invested in its success, whereas the doctors at the first place just showed up for work in the morning and left as soon as their last patient left (or when they finished their phone calls) without any interest in improving the practice. Overall it's been a really good experience so far!

The first day was a little hairy. It was a surgery day, and he wanted me to scrub in on all 5 procedures he was doing, including repairing the foot of a declawed cat whose other vet had left the end of the 3rd phalanx on 3 of the 5 toes. I felt a little weird all morning, like I really wanted to sit down, and didn't need to scrub in on the first surgery, so I was just observing in the OR when I felt so lightheaded that I had to leave and go sit on the floor. Even then, I thought I was going to pass out -- I was sweaty, bradycardic, and really out of it. After five minutes or so, I felt better, and he was already opening on the second procedure, so I went back in to observe that one (he asked if I wanted to scrub in and I said it was probably better if I didn't). A few minutes later, I started to pass out again and had to leave and sit on the floor! After that, I brought a stool into the OR and watched the rest of the procedures sitting on the stool, and was fine. It was really weird, though -- surgery doesn't bother me at all, it never has, and nothing he was doing was unusual. I just felt like, every time I stood up (anywhere) for more than 10 minutes, I was going to pass out. By early afternoon I felt much better, which was good since I couldn't see appointments while sitting on a stool, and finished out the day without any other problems. And then I was fine all rest of the week, so I don't know what was going on that day!

Necropsies

2011-01-13T18:49:00.003-05:00

(In which I out myself as a lunatic).

I just read an interesting post on The Critical Veterinarian, and I started to leave a comment, then decided (when I realized how loooooong I was going on) just to post it over here and spare her comments section my novella.

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't think I could authorize a necropsy on one of my dogs. I know this is completely irrational; as a scientist I recognize it as totally ridiculous; and as a vet student I recognize it as a detriment to the field since I know a LOT can be learned from a necropsy. But I don't think I could do it. I would have no problem with a necropsy being performed on my own body, and I think the cases I've seen on pathology rounds are really interesting, and when I have my own difficult cases I'm sure I'll be happy when a client authorizes a necropsy and disappointed when they don't. But having been in the post room, seeing those (very thorough) dissections, and picturing the furry little body that I've loved for so long splayed out on a cold table with samples being taken from every organ and blood pooling in the drainage channels . . . . . . . . I really don't think I could do it.

I know this makes no sense at all. No one LIVES in those bodies anymore. I'm sure the deceased dog couldn't possibly care any less what happens to its cast-off body! Just as I'm sure I won't care what happens to mine when I die. But having loved, and cuddled, and worried about, and protected that little body for so many years, I can't imagine letting a necropsy be done to it.

This almost seems borderline unethical -- I'm SURE I will have clients that I need to ask to let me do a necropsy, so that both the client and I can find out for sure what was wrong with their dog. How can I ask that, if I can't agree to have it done to my own dog?

And WHY does it even bother me? Rationally, I know it makes no sense. I think that, unfortunately, even as a medical practitioner and scientist, I have an irrational streak, especially where animals are concerned. When I was little*, if I had a piece of candy shaped like an animal (chocolate Easter bunny, anyone?) I had to bite the head off before I ate any of it, JUST IN CASE it could feel pain. I never ate a gummy bear any way other than by first biting off the head. I used to** CRY about the fact that not all of my stuffed animals fit in bed with me at once, because I was so worried that I would hurt their feelings, that the ones who didn't fit would think I didn't love them. I used to have a very serious rotating schedule of which stuffed animals slept in the bed, so that they would all have a turn. There was a part of my brain that knew, rationally, that none of this made any sense. But that was not the part that controlled my behavior. I think that's the part that wins when I think about necropsies, even though so much of my brain knows they're an excellent tool and source of valuable information.

* Okay, I still do this.
** But not this! Thank goodness. Although I do still have just a few stuffed animals, and if one of the dogs somehow gets hold of one of them, I still feel terrible about it, as if it's really being injured.

I LOVE snow!!!

2011-01-12T13:30:00.003-05:00

I'm crazy about it -- it's beautiful, it's fun, it sometimes gives me a free day off from school or work, it's awesome!!! We have been very lucky in snow, this past month. We got (as did most of the country) another load last night, relatively little by the standards of the past year, but more than I ever remember getting as a kid, when I wished DESPERATELY for enough snow to cancel school! I used to wake up early on days that snow was forecast, and look out my bedroom window to see if the tips of the grass blades were visible above the snow in our front yard. If they were, I probably had to go to school. If they were not, it was a snow day!!!

Anyway, the benefits started last night. I was supposed to work (at my externship practice) until 9 PM. But by 4 PM, all of the evening appointments had called to cancel (none of them sounded very exciting, so I don't think we missed much). By 6:30 we'd sent our last appointment home, and decided to hang out for half an hour to see if anyone else called. No one did, so at 7 PM I hit the road! I was home by 7:45, and in bed by 9:30. Aaahhhhhhh, sleep. :)

This morning, I woke up early and looked outside, and the roads looked not-terrible-but-not-great. So MM decided to go in on time (darn him. I tried to twist his arm with tales of how much fun we would have making french toast and playing board games in our pajamas, but he decided to be all responsible. Phooey.). I got up on time and tried to figure out if the school health clinic was open or not because of the snow (podiatry appointment, which apparently are hard to come by -- I'd had to wait 2 weeks for this one, and it was a double-booking, not an actual appointment. The GP who scheduled it for me said that podiatry gets a lot of cancellations, and I should be able to get in. Otherwise I could wait almost a MONTH for an actual appointment.) Anyway, to make a long story short, they were open (despite all evidence to the contrary) and I hiked over there. The podiatrist was nice, and seemed quite competent, although he did say, "You're almost five months pregnant?!? You don't LOOK five months pregnant. Have you had anyone confirm this?" (I think he was kidding. I think. I know I don't look 5 months pregnant, but really -- what did he think I did, just up and decide I was pregnant one day, and then figure I'd wait until I started having contractions to look for an OB?). But, he was looking at my toe, not my reproductive tract, so that was fine.

Then, I called out from work. :) When I left yesterday, there were 4 appointments on the books for the entire day (snow) and half of those would probably cancel (snow) and driving all the way there and all the way back to sit around for most of the day with one appointment every 2 hours didn't sound very useful. I think it was a good choice, since when I called, the tech laughed and said they still didn't know which doctor (if any) was going to cover today, and without a doctor there's really not much to do!

So, SNOW DAY!!!!!!! So far I have spent a ridiculous amount of time online (I had a lot of Dear Prudie to catch up on!) and eaten an entire movie theater-sized box of Milk Duds for breakfast/lunch. Now I think I'm going to watch a movie. Hopefully at some point I'll find time (ha ha ha) to review some Derm. And that's it!

Things I urgently need to review

2011-01-09T07:49:00.000-05:00

My week in private practice has, as I'd hoped it would, revealed gaps in my basic knowledge base that are pretty . . . . . . . . well, glaring. Things that would make me look like a giant idiot in clinics (things that DID make me look like a giant idiot at work, on the occasions that I happened to be asked about them! Fortunately, most of them were things that I didn't get asked about, but would have been stuck floundering if I had been).

One was the basic gist of hyper- and hypoadrenocorticism. Common signalment and presentation, how to diagnose them, how to treat them, potential complications. (Even *I* know that ACTH stimulation is for hypo and dex suppression is for hyper, though!).

Another is hyper- and hypothyroidism. I was more or less okay on these, except the diagnostics. For some reason, I could never remember that hyper is total T4, and hypo is free T4. I ended up with a convoluted mnemonic that takes so long to work through that I think I end up looking like I'm guessing anyway, by the time I finally spit out the answer.

Another is ANTIBIOTICS. Despite enjoying and doing well in Pharmacology, I evidently learned absolutely nothing! Broad spectrum antibiotic? I can think of ONE. Good for Gram negative? Beats me. Good CNS penetration? Something . . . . . . . small? (Do you SEE what I MEAN?!?!? This is a disaster). This is something I REALLY need to review this weekend.

I also want to review clinical pathology (I know that's a really broad category, I'll just hit the main points) and dermatology (ALL of derm, briefly). We see a lot of skin cases in private practice, and I should be more familiar with the differentials and treatments.

Just as a point of interest, I asked MM about this a couple of months ago, wondering which areas out of the vast spectrum of things we've studied so far are things that I really need to KNOW backward and forward -- things I'll use all the time, and/or things that will make me look like a giant idiot if I don't know them in clinics. This was his list (and if any practicing vets have additions or comments to make about it, I'm really interested in hearing them!):

Endocrinology: Cushing's, Addison's, diabetes mellitus (general overview, and signs that the patient's drugs need to be adjusted since everyone responds differently to treatment)

Pharmacology: broad knowledge of antibiotics, anesthetics, anti-emetics

GI: pancreatitis, differentials for vomiting

Ophthalmology: infectious vs endocrine vs immune-mediated problems

Clin path: blood gases, causes and signs of acidosis and alkalosis

Those were his big concerns, things he either uses a lot, or would think someone was an idiot for not knowing. Would anyone like to add anything? I want to review the things that it's really useful for me to know, but I don't have time to go back and redo the first 2.5 years of vet school, so I'm interested in the really crucial topics.

First week of externship

2011-01-06T18:47:00.004-05:00

I'm almost halfway finished with my first externship, two weeks at a local private practice. It's a medium sized practice, with 4 doctors (who have staggered schedules, so there's never more than 2 working at once and sometimes only 1) and a bunch of technicians.

The first thing I noticed is that the technicians are really nice!!! When I worked as a "technician" (I wasn't certified or licensed, but that's what the hospital called all of us) before vet school, it took forever for the other techs to warm up. I guess partly it was because I only worked Saturdays, so it was awhile before they were used to seeing me. And partly it was because the hospital was a relatively unhappy place run by a money-grubbing whore who only cared about milking every client for every last penny he could squeeze out of them (and the saddest thing was that this guy was a VET -- so let me give you a free piece of advice, from which this man would have benefited greatly: do not go into veterinary medicine so you can make a lot of money. If that's what you want to do, go into business or . . . . . . . I don't know what fields make a lot of money, actually! But find one, and do that instead. There ARE vets who make a lot of money, but most of us don't. And owning a practice is more likely to make you a lot of money than just being an associate, but it's still rarely a ticket to wealth. So save yourself years of expensive education and hard work, and do something else. This man was an awful, totally uncaring person who did not give a hoot about any of our patients' or clients' welfares, and was only interested in the bottom line. Any time I hear a client say to a vet, "All you care about is money!", which makes me cringe and is almost always totally untrue, I think of this man).

Well. That was quite a tangent. Anyway, the techs at my old job weren't very nice, for a long time. Like, months. My intractable cheerfulness and irresistible charm :) eventually wore them down, (in all honesty, it was probably my willingness to do whatever scut presented itself) but it took a long time. So I was quite happily surprised to find that this crowd was nice from pretty much the first hour I was there! It's a pleasant working environment.

The doctors . . . . . . . . hm. I've worked with two of them so far. Both have been practicing for at least 6 years (that's long enough to be a VERY good vet) and one of them is decent. The other is very questionable. From what I hear, one of the other vets (with whom I haven't worked) is even worse, and the 4th is rarely there. So, I guess I got the "good" two. The questionable one is also not very confident, and spends a lot of time rationalizing and justifying her decisions to me, which makes me uncomfortable, since I DON'T agree with a lot of what she does, but I don't think it would be appropriate (or productive) for me to say that. And because I think it's really weird that someone who's been practicing full-time for at least 6 years feels like she needs to constantly justify herself to a 3rd-year student. I mean, that's a bad sign! So there's a lot of nervous tittering (on her part) followed by vague non-committal statements meant to sound reassuring (on my part), which I don't like.

This doctor just has me follow her into appointments and sort of repeat the physical exam after she does it, and then when we leave the room she might ask me for a couple of differential diagnoses. Which is okay, except that I expected a LOT more discussion of differentials (I intended these externships to be practice for clinics, where you're expected to give exhaustive lists of differentials and appropriate diagnostics for every single symptom a patient exhibits -- the SOAP sheets go on for pages and pages, because you're following a dozen or more differentials. And so far it's been completely useless for that).

The other doctor is better, but not great. He is very self-confident (he's kind of a blow-hard, and spends a lot of time talking AT clients instead of to or with them, which can be as bad as nervous wishy-washing) and immediately upon meeting me (on my 2nd day) announced that he was probably the one who would let me do the most, and would also expect the most from me. Then he sent me (alone) into his first appointment (a complicated cancer case which had already been to 3 different practices), with instructions to work it up. Yikes! It ended up going okay, and he had me see a lot of appointments that day, which I liked. He would go into the room after I had done the exam, tentatively diagnosed the patient, and told him which diagnostics I wanted to do, and talk to the owner himself. So that was fine. At the end of the day, he told me to familiarize myself with his surgeries for today, because he would ask me a lot of questions and want me to be very involved. So, I wrote down all his procedures for today so I could review the relevant anatomy, think about possible differentials for all the masses he was removing, and review the surgical techniques.

And then? I did NOTHING. Nothing! Well, I neutered a cat, which I've done several times before and takes about 5 minutes. He did not ask me one question, let me place one suture, or even actually talk very much about the surgeries and why he was doing things a certain way, or what he thought was going on. He mostly talked about triathlons, which he discovered I have also done, and talked at great length about how fabulous his gear is (bike frame, bike components, etc) and what fabulous deals he got on everything. That was my entire morning.

This afternoon was better; we saw appointments again and had one moderately interesting case. But I basically spent 4 hours this morning listening to him bluster about his athletic prowess. How. interesting. No. really.

Not.

I'm working with him again tomorrow. I'm hoping it snows tonight; the appointment schedule for tomorrow was extremely light, and my car is completely useless in the snow, so I already told them that I probably won't be able to make it in if there's snow. INSTEAD, I will go to another veterinary clinic and shadow a much better vet, who also happens to be extremely handsome and funny and interesting. :)

(That would be MM, in case anyone is concerned about my husband). :)

Happy New Year!!!

2011-01-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

MM and I spent a wild night partying on the town, as usual!

Oh, I'm too funny. :)

Actually, I made my deeeeelicious spaghetti and clams from a few weeks ago, along with an arugula/cucumber/spinach salad with a homemade olive oil/lemon juice dressing (I had this for lunch the other day with some crusty bread and it was excellent!). For dessert, we wanted to make ourselves a banana split, which I've been wanting to do for weeks but somehow we never get around to it. It ended up not happening (again), because part of the problem has been that you need to be pretty hungry to put away a banana split (even shared) and by the time we eat dinner, we aren't. Cause I'm a good cook. :) Now that I think about it, the odds of us being hungry enough after spaghetti and clams were never very high . . . . . . . well, maybe next week.

And we rented The Expendables from Redbox, which I was excited about seeing. I LOVE action movies, especially when they feature Jet Li. This movie SUCKED!!!! Holy cow. There was no plot, that I could tell. The writing and acting were terrible. Stallone's eyebrows had been plucked into these inverted Vs of permanent surprise, and it looked ridiculous. Even the ACTION wasn't very good! I can't even imagine how hard it must be to film and edit a long fight scene to make everything look realistic. But these are professionals, so surely they should be able to do that? One of my action movie pet peeves is when you're watching a good fight scene, and they cut to another angle, and you can PLAINLY SEE that the bad guy is just standing there, posed, waiting for the good guy to hit him. That happened so many times! Plus, practically every action star I could think of was tossed into this movie, and as a result, no one had much to do. It was very boring, and kind of sad, and I got ready for bed halfway through. I think I was asleep by 10.

I've never been a big fan of going out for NYE, partly because it's usually freezing (not a fan) and there are huge crowds of crazy people everywhere (not a fan) and I worry about drunk drivers on the way home (the drivers in this city are crazy enough when they're sober!). Plus, this year I can't even drink because . . . . . . . . . I'm pregnant!!!!

Yep. We decided we weren't getting any younger, I'll be 38 when I finish my residency if all goes as planned, and I can't possibly imagine being pregnant during my intern year or 1st year of residency. Which leaves the 2nd year of residency as our next window of opportunity, when I'll be 36. That was making us nervous -- I'm totally fine with waiting to try to have a potential* second child when I'm 36, but not even starting until then? Didn't seem like a great idea. Which in retrospect was probably true, given that it took us 8 months of trying this time, and that's with charting and clockwork cycles and good, um, timing (sorry, TMI, I know).

But, so far it worked! I'm 17 weeks pregnant and due in June, and I have enough elective credits to take up to 10 weeks of maternity leave if I want to use up every single day of vacation time (I'm going to talk to our dean of students to see what the medical leave policy is like in case I either need more time -- better not! -- or if I want to leave a 2-week block for boards studying and maybe even have a vacation at some point). And if I can't take any leave, then I'll probably just suck it up and take all 10 weeks at once, since first babies tend to be late and I'll just lose all the time I schedule as vacation before the baby's born (I can't change my clinical rotation schedule once it's set, so this has to be all decided within the next 3 weeks) and could easily end up with only 8 weeks of actual maternity leave if I go late.

*I say "potential second child" because we always figured we'd probably have 2, but we'd wait and see how the first one went before committing to another. And I have felt like CRAP (leading to tons of sleeping, tons of cutting class, and very little studying) all semester. It's actually been a very easy pregnancy in the grand scheme of things (I don't know HOW people with hyperemesis gravidarum survive!!!) but even so it's been enough to convince me that I NEVER want to do this again. And I'm not even halfway done! I'm afraid I'll change my mind as soon as this one's born, so I keep reminding MM of how sick I feel all. the freaking. time. so that he can remind me (not that that ever does any good) if I forget. We'll see what happens.

Almost the end of vacation . . . . . . .

2010-12-30T16:50:00.002-05:00

. . . . . and I'm sad. :( It's flown right by! When finals ended, two whole weeks off sounded like forever -- I think most of the first week was sucked up by Christmas preparations (baking, shopping, wrapping, decorating) and also lots of reading. :) This week I've done a fair amount of reading (I've read 3 1/2 books this week and hopefully will finish the 4th tomorrow), only baked 1 batch of cookies (a delicious chocolate butter cookie -- I was looking for a recipe my grandfather used to make when I was little, and he can't find it, and my uncle suggested this one as a candidate. It wasn't the recipe I was looking for, but it's very good nonetheless!)

1 batch of chili and cornbread made for dinner
2 times I've worked out (sigh)

also,

2 loaves of bread baked (cranberry bread for MM, and soda bread mostly for me although he liked his raisinless loaf a lot too)
3 days until I go back to work :(
3.5 books read
4 movies watched

also,

4 batches of cookies baked with MM (spritz, gingerbread, chocolate butter cookies, and chocolate oat PB cookies)
5 new games played with MM (all of which were bought for Christmas)
6 days of cat-sitting for a friend (very easy task, I just had to feed her and change her litter every morning, and she only lives 3 blocks away)
7 trips to the grocery store (it's only 2 blocks away so very easy to run over there . . . . . but yes, I probably have a problem) :)
8 degrees cooler our refrigerator now is, after throwing away most of its contents, moving all the freezer items to the new chest freezer (thanks, Dad!), all the salvageable refrigerator items to the backseat of the car (classy, huh?), and leaving it open and unplugged for several hours to . . . . . . reboot itself? I assume it's thawing itself out, although it's supposed to be frostless so I'm not really sure how that works. All I know is that 3 or 4 times a year, the temperature in the fridge starts creeping up, and up, and up (despite the freezer working fine) until it sits at 44 F for a couple of days and we bite the bullet, clear it all out, and let it defrost. It was convenient this time that it's below 40 F outside! I just stashed whatever I was sure hadn't spoiled (milk, eggs, butter, etc) in the car. :) And now it seems to be okay again. I assume it's either a problem with the thermostat that regulates the fridge part, or with the fan(s) that blow the cold air down into the fridge.
9 hours of sleep averaged every night
10 hours spent napping (ahh . . . . napping)
11 new ebooks downloaded to my iPod, most of which were free!
12 days I've had off already (I LOVE vacation!!!)

also,

12 inches of snow we got over the weekend!!!

We also cleaned the living room (you can see the entire rug! The whole thing! Really! And I did my laundry (I haven't folded it yet, though). And I still need to swap out all my summer clothes for winter clothes, which will involve a massive cleaning of the floor under the bed, which I think is covered in a layer of dog hair about 4 inches deep, so I'm not super excited about that. I also spent half an hour today looking at houses in the greater Richmond, VA area, where gigantic, beautiful houses on large lots can be had for a song, which was silly because we couldn't possibly move there until after residency which means at least 6 years, so why torture myself? But it's fun to daydream about buying a house. :)

Ahhhh, vacation

2010-12-22T09:25:00.003-05:00

I love being on vacation. I LOVE it. I've actually never done this before -- I always went back to lab full-time as soon as finals ended, and pretty much worked until the next semester started. I might take 2 or 3 days off, but I would feel anxious and guilty about taking any more time than that.

But not this time. :) This is probably the last real, uninterrupted vacation I'll ever have -- we go straight through clinics without a break, so once school starts again it will continue nonstop until next May when I graduate! And this semester was a lot of work. And I calculated (very discouragingly) that if I worked a full-time week in lab, I would bring home LESS than MM makes working ONE 8-hour vaccine clinic shift. And I thought, "You know what? It just isn't worth it. It's worth WAY more to me to have an uninterrupted block of relaxing free time, and the money isn't going to make any difference at all, in the grand scheme of things." So I TOOK THE HECK OFF!!! :)

So far I have been a lazy bum, which is exactly what I wanted to do. :) I read an entire book and started another, I've gone grocery shopping a couple of times (I think grocery shopping is fun, probably because I like to cook). I made a big pot of homemade chili and a batch of corn muffins for dinner the other night. I baked a couple loaves of Irish soda bread yesterday. I've taken a couple of naps, done dishes, spent half a day doing Christmas-related errands, and worked out a couple of times (I hate running in the cold, so I bought a workout set called the Brazil Butt Lift from Beachbody Fitness -- it's the most hilarious name ever, but it's a serious workout! I'm in decent shape, and I could barely get up and down the stairs for 2 days after I did the first one! I actually think it's harder than the Plyometrics workout in P90X, which is supposed to be extreme.).

Today I would like to do my laundry, which I haven't done in at least a month (MM makes fun of me for having so many pairs of underwear and socks, but this is why! It lets me go an entire month without doing laundry!), and I need to return some WAY overdue books to the public library, and go to the post office. And do a bike workout on my trainer, probably while watching Gilmore Girls. Although Ghost Whisperer is always a good bet too. And . . . . . . . that's it! That's my busy day! :) Then I'll probably read some more, and wrap MM's Christmas gifts.

Oh -- and merry Yule!

Silent night, Solstice night
Silver moon, shining bright
Snowfall blankets the slumbering Earth
Yule fires welcome the Sun's rebirth
Hark, the Light is reborn!
Hark, the Light is reborn!

(Ellen Reed)

DONE with Core!!!

2010-12-18T09:54:00.000-05:00

I have sat through my last required lecture, finished my last required course, and taken my last core examination in vet school!!!

I can't believe I've been in vet school for two and a half years. I remember being nervous on the first day of school. I remember the year before I started school, seeing someone walking down the street outside the vet school carrying a dog skull, and excitedly poking MM in the ribs, saying, "Look! I think that girl's a vet student! She must be studying for an anatomy exam!". I remember loooooong days in anatomy lab, listening to my dissection partners bicker. I remember walking down the street in October of first year, admiring the pretty yellow leaves and thinking (secretly) that it was fun to be going to spend the day in our bright, sunny library, studying anatomy and development! I remember getting so stressed over some exams, and staying up SO late the night before because I'd procrastinated and not started studying early enough ahead of time. I remember having lunch every day in the lounge with my friends, laughing and talking for an hour, having such a good time -- I've never looked forward to lunch like that before. :) I remember poring over old exams, trying to figure out which lecturer was likely to repeat their questions and therefore save me two hours of studying (this was usually around 11 PM the night before the exam) by just briefly skimming over their slides instead of memorizing every last detail.

And now that's all over -- I'm a little sad! It took me over a year to convince myself to apply to vet school, because I was DREADING having to sit in class again. And I was really worried about studying -- I was always a terrible studier, as my grades in college will attest! And then it turned out that I kind of enjoyed both things, and turned out to be a not-bad-at-all studier! At least as far as remembering things for the exam goes. Remembering things for REAL LIFE is a a totally different matter. :)

My friends are all scattering -- first for winter break, which is normal, and then afterward some of us are doing externships around the country, some are doing several weeks of large animal electives at the large animal campus, and some will still be here at school. Some of them I won't see again for almost 3 months! After being together all day, every day for 2 1/2 years (well, I guess it's really only 1 1/2 since I didn't get to know most of them until the beginning of second year) that seems so weird! And I'm TERRIBLE at staying in touch with people -- I hate talking on the phone (seriously -- to the point that I almost never answer it, even if I hear it ringing, and then I'll text the person a reply after I listen to their message. That's pretty bad). I'm not conversationally impaired in everyday life, I just really don't like the phone. And this Gchat thing? You'd think I'd love it since I prefer texting to talking on the phone, but I've never even used it. Or any of its cousins. That makes me feel old. :)

But, at the same time, it's really nice to be done. I don't have any studying to do! We had a big party last night at an aquarium across town, to celebrate being done with Core, and we stayed until midnight. Every so often I would get this feeling that we should leave soon because I had so much studying to do today . . . . . . . . and then I would realize that I didn't! That's such a novel feeling. :) I need to get some more binders to organize my notes and exams from this semester, do that organizing, switch out all my summer clothes for winter clothes (which are currently buried in boxes under mountains of dog hair under the bed), and bake Christmas cookies!!! Oh, and clean this disgusting apartment. And return a bunch of stuff that I've accumulated over the past month by buying it online and forgetting to return it. And wrap Christmas gifts!

Derrrrrrmatooooooology

2010-12-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

I don't know how to make a title sound dejected. Imagine Eeyore was saying it.

Anyway, I'm not really dejected, that's an exaggeration. I just am SO not interested in studying for Derm! I can't seem to concentrate no matter what I do. I got off to a GREAT start this morning -- I got up at 6:45, we took care of the dogs, I was studying by 7:45 (don't even remember the last time that happened, except on exam days when I'm cramming!) and I finished 2 whole lectures without any disruptions.

7:45 to 9:20A - Study diligently.

9:20A - Take a break to do Mr. Bear's massage and stretches on his right side (I always have to just catch him laying on the other side when I want to do his PT, since he won't lay on his side on command and hates being restrained/pushed around/tipped over).

9:30A - Read Dear Prudie (I love that column. I'm not sure why, but I'm always entertained by it. The Monday live chats are the best because they're much longer than the regular Thursday columns) on Slate.

9:45A - Check all my email accounts (nothing interesting or urgent).

9:55A - Check to see if we'd had any new grades posted (no).

10:00A - Read all the new blog entries in my list.

10:20A - Figure it's really time to get back to work, and start a new lecture. It's on alopecia. Alllllllopeeeeeecia (Eeyore, again). I'm just not excited about it.

10:45A - Check Orangette to see if there are any fabulous new recipes (of COURSE there are!). Copy and paste the recipe for Whole Wheat Sablés with Cacao Nibs into Word, edit it (I have a thing about tablespoon being abbreviated Tbsp. I always have to change it to just T. And I don't like hyperlinks in my Word documents) and then (since we don't have a printer) make a quick post-it cheat sheet and decide to definitely make these cookies later.

11:00A - Scour the internet for cacao nibs, which the recipe requires. Get sidetracked by all the gourmet chocolate and wonder if MM would like some for Christmas. Decide we have enough candy in the house (and I've gotten him chocolate as stocking stuffers practically since I've known him, so I'm afraid it's getting old. If chocolate can get old. Can it?)

11:15A - Realize that even if I ordered cacao nibs rightthisminute, they would be unlikely to arrive by this afternoon, when I want to make the cookies. Figure I can pulse some Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips in the food processor and substitute that.

11:20A - Back to alopecia.

11:30A - Remember that there's a 2-hour refrigeration required between making the dough for the cookies, and baking them. Decide that really, the only reasonable thing to do is make the dough NOW, so that I can chill it and then bake them later. Go make the dough.

12:00P - Realize that I am NEVER going to finish studying for this exam if I don't get back to work, PLUS I wanted to not only finish studying Derm (which is cumulative, darn them, meaning I also have to go back and restudy all the stuff that was on the midterm) but also start studying Medicine, which is on Friday, and is on neurology, which is very complicated.

12:02P - Go back to studying alopecia.

12:05P - Text MM offering him a deal to let me finish the spaghetti and clams leftovers if I make the spaghetti and sauce again tonight.

12:06 P - Back to alopecia.

12:08P - Decide to write this post.

ARGH!!!!! Maybe I should just scrap alopecia and start with a different lecture? I'll try that.

Spaghetti and clams

2010-12-13T15:35:00.002-05:00

I had my first of 3 in-class finals for the week today. So what did I do last night? Cook, of course! :) I went to the grocery store in the morning for strawberries, cream, and waffles, and came home with about 20 pounds of groceries. Including an AMAZING bag of mahogany clams! I’d never heard of them before, but I was passing the seafood counter and noticed a lot of bags of clams in the ice bin, so I stopped to take a look. Normally they’re too expensive so I skip them, but these bags were only $6.99. Not bad for a few handfuls of clams! I talked to the seafood guy about them, and he said they come from the deeper waters of New England, and have a more delicate shell than littlenecks (which were $14.99 for maybe 20 clams), but are about the same size. So I figured, why not try them?

Then I started to lift the bag out of the ice . . . . . . . . . it weighed EIGHT POUNDS!!! I got 8 pounds of clams for $6.99. How is that even possible?! That’s 88 cents a pound!!! Do people hate mahogany clams THAT much?!?! They were practically paying ME to take them!

So, I trudged home with my 20 pounds of groceries (wishing I’d driven), and announced to MM when I got there that I was making spaghetti and clams for dinner. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “On an exam night? Are you sure that’s what you want to be doing the night before a final?” (he knows me too well) :). So I said yeah! Sure! No problem! It’ll be quick and easy!

(Here’s the part where I say it took 3 hours and I burned myself twice and almost cut off my thumb and had a meltdown because of all the studying I wasn’t getting done, right? HA!!! It took maybe 45 minutes from starting the water to wash the clams, to dinner on the table). Oh, yes. This IS what I want to be doing the night before a final!

Without further ado, spaghetti and clams a la Life in Vet School:

Clams

In a large skillet, saute 3 T olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic for about 2 minutes.
Add 1 T butter and stir until melted
Add maybe . . . . oh, I don’t know. Say ½ cup white wine. I used rice wine, which is not labeled for drinking, but is great for cooking.
Add a generous sprinkle of garlic powder.
Heat until reduced a little (you want maybe ½ inch liquid in the pan. I guess how long you reduce it depends on how big your pan is)

While reducing, scrub your (delicious, beautiful, EIGHT POUNDS of) mahogany clams under cool running water
When reduced, plop those babies in the pan! Cover it up! Steam them til they open! (About 5 – 10 minutes, and give the pan a good shake every now and then. It seems to encourage them to pop open.)

I had to cook my clams in 3 batches, because there were so many of them (8 pounds. Did I mention that?)

Remove cooked clams to serving bowl, throwing away any that did not pop wiiiide open on their own, because they might kill you! Turn heat up to max, and reduce the heck out of the cooking liquid (because the clams release a lot of water while they’re cooking and now you have three times more volume than you need, and it will boil over when you put the next batch in).

When it looks like a good volume, toss the next batch in! Repeat until done!

Spaghetti
While the clams are steaming, boil some water for your pasta, and cook the pasta however you usually cook pasta. You don’t need me for this part.

When the clams are done (and you have THROWN AWAY any that didn’t open on their own) you can either use the cooking liquid as a base for your spaghetti sauce, or start from scratch. I started from scratch because the cooking liquid seemed really salty, and because one clam (ONE CLAM!!! Out of EIGHT POUNDS!!!) didn’t open, and I was paranoid about it leaching toxins out into the liquid. I don’t think that’s a valid concern, but too bad. I like my liver and my nervous system, and I will be irrational about protecting them if I want to.

Clam sauce for spaghetti

Saute an unreasonable amount of minced garlic (6 large cloves? Try 4 if you don’t think garlic belongs on everything except chocolate) in maybe . . . . . a quarter cup of olive oil, on medium heat for about 2 minutes.
Add 2T butter and stir until melted
Add maybe . . . . . . oh, I don’t know. Say 1/4 cup white wine. No, say 1/3 cup. Somewhere in there.
Open one can (a can-of-tuna-sized can) of minced clams and drain the juice into your pan. Save the clams for a few minutes from now.
Add some powdered garlic (yeah . . . . . don’t expect to sit near anyone tomorrow)
Add some ground pepper. A generous sprinkle.
Add about 1T minced parsley (I used dried. Fresh is better, but dried was fine)
Cook over medium-high heat until reduced by 1/3 to ½ (you want it to stick to your pasta, which it won’t if it’s too watery, although you don’t have to reduce it as much as you might think – it won’t get gravy-like or syrupy or anything like that – because the oil and butter will help it coat the pasta)
Throw in the minced clams from the can you drained the juice from
Heat until the minced clams are heated through
Toss your cooked pasta thoroughly in this delicious sauce, grab your gigantic bowl of steamed clams, and eat!

(This image brought to you by MM -- not bad, eh?)

This was one of the best dinners I’ve ever made. The only reason I don’t make it on a weekly basis is because fresh clams are so darned expensive (although honestly, the sauce alone was so insanely delicious – and did not involve a single fresh clam – that I should just make THAT every week regardless of whether I have fresh clams to go with it or not) and finding these mahogany clams was a stroke of great luck!

We have leftover spaghetti, but, sadly, we ate all the clams. I’ll probably buy a bag this weekend to make this again. It was REALLY good.

One week to go!

2010-12-11T10:48:00.003-05:00

One week until the end of core!!! We had our official last core lecture on Friday right before lunch -- an interesting, case-based Neurology lecture by a clinician I really like. Next week I have 3 finals, 2 of which will require MASSIVE amounts of studying, and hopefully the 3rd should be okay. Then I will have finished 2.5 years of vet school, including the entire core curriculum! I can't believe it's been two and a half years -- that seems like so long, looking back, but I also feel like it flew by.

I get 2 weeks off for the winter holidays (yay!!! Although I'll probably spend some of it in lab, trying to get this cursed paper out) and then I have 2 private practice externships (each 2 weeks), one rotation in the vet hospital, one externship at a large local shelter, and then I go back to lectures for two months (but all clinically-based electives, which I think will be interesting). And THEN, in May I start clinical rotation full-time!!!

I'm excited and nervous about the externships. I'm doing my "real" externships (at the places I'm interested in for internship and residency) late in 4th year, since I plan to use them as working interviews and obviously want to be as competent as possible by the time I get there. So really these private practice externships are for practice -- I don't get graded on them (it's pass/fail), and I don't get any credits, I just wanted to get some experience working up cases before I start "real" clinics at the vet school. So I guess there's really nothing to be nervous about -- I'll be supervised, so I can't really do any damage; I'm not getting graded; and I highly doubt I'd ever want a job at either of these practices so if they think I'm a complete moron the impact on me will be minimal. I just HATE being an idiot, and I'm worried that I won't remember anything and I won't do a good job. But really, I should relax and enjoy it, since they're basically freebie practice rotations.

Friday afternoon, to celebrate the end of core classes, I went to an Indian buffet with a bunch of friends, which was delicious and fun but (of course, being a buffet) I ate way too much and spent most of the rest of the day in a food coma. Yesterday evening, MM and I rented Valentine's Day, which was really cute!!! It has a great cast, including 3 of our favorite actresses (i.e., we both have massive crushes on them) and we both loved it. :)

Today, it's back to the grind! I have soooooo much studying to do -- our Medicine final is mostly on neurology, which is interesting but complicated (and one of the lecturers - who did 5 lectures - was completely incomprehensible). Our Dermatology final is cumulative, and the instructors seem to think it's a 5-credit class with the amount of outside reading they've assigned (it's only 3). And my Biochemistry elective is a kind of weird structure -- we had 21 lectures, and all the lecturers gave us 2-5 questions at the beginning of the quarter. The final will comprise 5 lectures (a random, different 5 lectures for everyone), out of which we have to pick 4, and answer the questions for those 4 lectures. So it's not THAT bad, since we already have all the questions, but it's all essay questions. Answering and then learning the answers for roughly 40 essay questions, all on completely unrelated topics, is going to take awhile.

Winter

2010-12-06T15:03:00.002-05:00

One thing I love about winter is holiday cookies. I love cookies in general, and my father and grandfather are both skilled bakers with a wide array of traditional holiday cookies that I look forward to every year -- pizzelles, biscotti, spritz cookies, peanut blossoms with Hershey kisses, filled cookies (this must be an Italian thing -- you make a cookie crust and fill it with a weird mix of grape jelly, apple butter, nuts, and other things I can't remember offhand, all cooked on the stove until it's a thick paste, and then wrap the crust around it and bake the whole thing. It sounds odd but is delicious!), chocolate chip cookies, Russian teacakes, Mexican chocolate cookies, and often some random recipe my grandfather feels like testing out this year.

I inherited the cooking/baking genes from this side of my family (thank goodness!) and most years I either make a subset of these plus my own stuff plus whatever MM really wants (together we usually make chocolate peppermint bark, chocolate toffee candy, and I usually make almond bark for him since he loves it and it's so easy it's impossible to have two people working on it), or MM and I just make my own stuff/his stuff and then I spend a day at my Dad's helping him with his array.

It's a little early for holiday cookies, though, so right now I am (or was, and probably will be again, although I'm trying hard to resist) contenting myself with those tins of Danish-style butter cookies you can buy at the grocery store. The problem with these is that they are delicious, and they also come in different shapes, and I am somehow always convinced (even though I'm POSITIVE they all come from exactly the same batter) that the different shapes taste different, so every time I open the tin I have to have at least 5 cookies (one of each shape). I bought a (small, thankfully!) tin last week, and I ate the whole tin (THE WHOLE TIN) minus 2 cookies I saved for MM (wasn't that thoughtful?) in one sitting while I read, the day I bought it.

Now I'm craving them again, except the fact that I've done exactly 3 workouts in the past 3 weeks, and the fact that for breakfast today I had two bags of cheddar popcorn and a package of Starbursts, are conspiring to discourage me a little. I COULD go buy a tin and give it to MM, with STRICT instructions to only let me have, say, 3 cookies a day no matter how hard I plead for more. But that might make me resent him for being the cookie police (even though I forced the role on him) and also, how pathetic would that be?!??!?!? I have this mental image of myself, sobbing on my knees with my arms around his legs, BEGGING for another serving of cookies . . . . . . . . that's just insane.

Maybe I'll have a couple of Lorna Doones instead.

One thing I do NOT love about winter is the cold! I don't like running in the cold -- I can never figure out exactly how much to wear, and I end up freezing or sweating halfway through, and I hate running with a shirt tied around my waist, flopping all around. Plus my nose runs so copiously I get little snot icicles freezing from the tip (hot, I tell you) and my hands freeze no matter how many pairs of gloves I wear! I even tried wearing a pair of those tiny stretchy gloves inside a pair of fleece MITTENS, on the theory that my fingers could help keep each other warm that way, but I don't think my fingers actually release any heat. I think if you looked at me with those infrared night-vision goggles, I would appear to be handless and footless. So that didn't work. That's part of the only-3-workouts-in-3-weeks problem.

BUT, I DO love SNOW!!!!!! Last year was the best year of my entire life (all 32 years of it!!!) for snow. I have waited for snow like this since I was a tiny child. I never thought I'd actually see it, unless I moved to Alaska or Vermont. I doubt it will ever happen again in my lifetime, but I think I'll be forever hopeful, now!

Fuzzy suits with little bear ears

2010-12-03T21:04:00.002-05:00

I think (and have, all my life) that dogs are cuter than babies. I don't mean that CUTE dogs are cuter than not-so-cute babies; I mean that (although I've certainly seen many babies that I thought were very cute) I have never seen a baby that I thought was as cute as an average-looking dog.

I worry (not very hard, just in passing) that I won't think my own children are cuter than my dogs. Would that make me a bad parent? Will I automatically think that MY child, regardless of what he or she actually looks like, is a paragon of aesthetic perfection? Or will I look at my kid, and look at Red Panda, and think, "Ehhh . . . . . . . RP's got much cuter ears. And she's fuzzier. And she's . . . well, she's just cuter than the kid!"? I'm afraid I probably will.

Fortunately, there IS an at least partial remedy for this problem. Those fuzzy sleeper suits with little ears on the hood? Holy cow, those things are CUTE!!! And they're so snuggly -- they instantaneously raise the cuteness factor of any baby by at least a factor of ten. When I see a baby wearing one, I want to pick it up and squeeze it!

You know what? I just realized how these suits work -- they make babies look more like puppies. Fuzzy with cute little ears on top of their head? Maybe this is hopeless.

(I realize this is not a serious problem. If I think my dogs are cuter than my kids, so what? I'm the dogs' parent too, so I don't think that makes me a bad parent. I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me about this, but oh well. I do plan, when we have children, to invest in several of these suits, to try to even the field a little between my human children and my puppy children). :)

I don't really like surgery

2010-11-19T21:52:00.004-05:00

It seems like everyone (EVERYONE) gets to vet school and starts counting down the minutes until their first surgery course. The first time that YOU get to be the primary surgeon on a live dog or cat, who needs to wake up and go home and live a long and happy life after the surgery.

I wasn't really counting down the minutes; I think that surgery is cool, but it wasn't this giant mystery or anything. I'd scrubbed in on a few surgeries as a tech before vet school, volunteered at the SPCA a few times helping with (and a couple of times, doing) spays on feral cats, and one of the perks of being married to a vet is that I get to scrub in on/assist with pretty much whatever he's doing that I'm interested in. :)

This semester is our first real surgery course. We've had a couple of didactic courses before, but this semester everyone spays a dog (in addition to assisting on another spay, and being the anesthetist for a third). I was kind of looking forward to it, but I wasn't that excited about it. For one thing, it's kind of a pain in the ass -- the dogs come in from the shelter on Monday morning, and we need to take care of them every morning and night until they return to the shelter on Friday (with 4 dogs of my own, this is not a novel and interesting activity. It just means that my OWN dogs don't get as much exercise, since I need to wake up early every day to check on my spay dog, and stay late every day after school). And for another thing, I've realized that I'm really just not that into surgery!

I'm SURE that if I do a lot more of it, get a lot more experience in different situations, see all kinds of variations of normal (and abnormal) anatomy, and get a feel for what's okay and what's not, I probably won't feel this way anymore. But right now, my opinion of surgery is this: if everything is going really well, it is EXTREMELY boring. If everything is NOT going really well, it is EXTREMELY stressful. That's it. Boring or stressful. I've never been like, "Wow! That's really cool!" in surgery (in class, when they're describing a really clever technique, I sometimes think that. But IN surgery, never.) I don't think it's that interesting, and I'm really afraid I'm going to kill my patient! Every time! And I hate cutting things! Holy cow, every time I ligate an ovarian artery and then have to transect it, I hem and haw, and check it 360 degrees to make sure there's no fat or subcutaneous tissue (3 or 4 times) and then I check my ligature to make sure the knots look okay, and then I 360 it again, and then I check that the tension on the ligature is good, and then I take a deeeeeeeeeep breath, and then I hold it while I transect. My heart rate is increasing just thinking about this! It's really stressful.

So, I don't really like surgery. I know it's extremely important, and I am SO glad there are people who are in love with it and want to do nothing but stand in the OR cutting and suturing all. day. long. (heck, all NIGHT long, too) who can take excellent care of my dogs when they need it. :) I am grateful to those people! But I think they're crazy.

My group only has one spay left, and I cannot WAIT to be done. I'm actually done already, because I was the surgeon for the first spay, and the anesthetist for the second, so next I get to be the assistant. Which means that all I really do is stand there observing, occasionally hand an instrument to my partner, occasionally retract or dab or hold something, and try to catch the eye of a real surgeon if we need help with something.

And then it's back to medicine, which is very interesting and much less stressful. :)

I should pre-write random posts for lulls like this . . . . and apparently this post is about lunch

2010-11-15T11:28:00.003-05:00

I love reading my blog. Seriously, I love it -- I've probably read the last post 15 times, mostly the parts about the puppies in their Halloween costumes (there are not enough words in the world for all that cute!). Today I opened the blog and saw the same old post yet again and thought, "Jeez. This has gotten really boring. I hate when bloggers never update their blogs." Then I realized a) this was entirely my fault, and b) I was the only person who could fix it, so here we are. It's kind of like when I was in elementary school, and I used to pack my own lunch every day -- in the evening, I was too busy playing or reading to care what the heck I ate for lunch the next day, and I resented my lunch for taking me away from whatever activity I was enjoying. So I would just throw my default sandwich-of-the-month in the bag with a juice box and bag of pretzels, toss it in the fridge, and forget about it. The next day, I'd get to school and unpack my lunch and think, "UGH -- ANOTHER salami sandwich?!?!?! I HATE salami!!! I've eaten it every day for 3 WEEKS!!!" but that night, what do you think went into my lunch for the next day?!?!?

There are many foods that I couldn't eat for years, because I completely exhausted my interest in them by eating them every day for weeks/months at a time. PB&J? Couldn't stand it for years (actually, this was largely because I hate the weird consistency that peanut butter and bread develop when they've been sitting together in a sandwich for more than a few minutes -- the bread gets kind of mushy, and the peanut butter gets kind of hard and stale? So now I love PB&J, but I bring a piece of bread, a jar of PB, and some jelly to school with me and make my sandwich right when I'm ready to eat it -- delicious!). Salami? Will probably never eat it again as long as I live. Ham? Turkey? Years of aversion. Even PIZZA, because we used to have it for dinner every Sunday night -- I got so tired of it that from when I was maybe 10 until I was 18, I could not possibly have been less interested in pizza. What kind of teenager doesn't like PIZZA?!?!? It's practically a law of nature that they love it!

Nowadays, since I do my own cooking (and am darn good at it, if I do say so myself!), I have TONS more lunch options, and that makes me very happy. :) I love leftovers for lunch, and whenever I cook I try to make at least double the recipe so that we'll have plenty of lunches. MM and I are currently working our way happily through the vat of beef stew that I made in the slow-cooker a couple of weeks ago (it's been frozen, I'm not eating 2-week-old beef stew). And this weekend, MM made an EXCELLENT homemade (totally from scratch! 20 Roma tomatoes and all!) spaghetti sauce that we poured over whole-wheat spaghetti and a batch of homemade meatballs. We have enough leftovers for probably 4 more lunches, which is so cool!

The only problem is freezer space. We have a lot of frozen fruit and vegetables in there, a lot of dog food, a lot of random leftovers from ages ago that I can't bear to part with, and there's just no more room. But one of my friends gave me the best idea last week -- she got a mini chest freezer as a wedding gift!!! That will solve ALL of our freezer problems! We can stock the chest with dog food and roasts and stuff that we're storing longer-term, and leave the regular freezer for the things we use every day! They're not even that expensive -- it looks like you can get a decent one for under $200. I think that's going to be my Christmas gift this year. :)

(I started this post intending to ramble about eggnog chai and eggnog lattes and random things I'm currently in love with, but somehow my tangent about my lunchmaking deficiencies completely took over. So, this post has been brought to you by the letter L.)

Happy November!

2010-11-01T16:31:00.005-04:00

"This is the night when the curtain
lifts briefly in the wind of stars.
This is the night when the veil
shreds in the wind's shards."
(P. Monaghan)

Last night was my . . . . . . . hmm, I guess maybe my second favorite holiday of the year? I'm not sure -- I love it and the winter solstice pretty equally. The new year, and the return of the light.

And they're the prettiest -- fall leaves and pine trees covered in snow! And awesome decorations. :)

Plus I love dressing the puppy children up in cute costumes -- this year, Red Panda was going to be a pumpkin. I tried her costume on when I bought it (Old Navy had great, cheap dog costumes this year!) and she was the most ADORABLE pumpkin ever!!! Bug was going to be a dinosaur (Red Panda's outgrown costume from a few years ago -- it's funny, I thought she was full-grown when I adopted her, and she doesn't seem any bigger than she ever was, but that dinosaur costume definitely fit her the first year I had her, and definitely does NOT fit her now. I couldn't even get her legs in the sleeves, let alone fasten anything!) (and before anyone gets any bright ideas, she's NOT FAT. Really -- I keep the dogs at the very low end of their healthy weight range to hopefully [pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease] extend their lifespans, and I guarantee you she's not fat. She's a 4. On the body condition scale, not in jeans.) :)

Mr. Bear was going to be Hugh Hefner (I was at a loss. And he has this maroon quilted jacket thing for when it's SUPER cold outside, and I thought I could put that on him without compromising his dignity too much. Mr. Bear is a dignified dog. I will not insult him by dressing him up as a bunny rabbit or some such nonsense. The other dogs . . . . . . . not so much.). Monkey was either going to be a hoodlum or a PE coach (hahahahaha). :)

And then I was SICK!!!! Ugh. I spent the whole evening alternately slumped miserably in front of my computer trying to finish a paper for a 1st quarter class (our whole grade for the class, due today), and running to the bathroom thinking I was about to hurl. Fun, huh? So we completely, 100% failed to observe the holiday. We didn't even get a PUMPKIN!!! (I'm hoping I can sweet-talk MM into stopping at the grocery store for one tonight so we can at least roast pumpkin seeds!). So, no puppy costumes. No puppy trick-or-treating.

Bummer.

But, I'm much better today (I ate actual food, not just Gatorade! And it was GOOD -- I had some water buffalo mozzarella with crusty bread and a sliced ripe tomato. YUM!).

In very cool news, my Cardiology professor turned out to be the dear, sweet man I always suspected he was and curved the HECK out of the final!!! Half the test was an essay, and we pretty much knew what the topics were beforehand, so I spent quite awhile organizing 3 essays ahead of time and knocked that one out of the park. A tenth of the test was calculating the mean electrical axis of a heart from a set of ECGs, which is something I think is actually fun and enjoy doing (seriously), so I knew that would go well, and the other 40% were multiple choice questions. Some of the MC I had no idea about. The essay was a given. The MEA was fun and easy -- until I started talking to a few of my friends about it afterward, and they all had a result in a different quadrant . . . . . . and then I realized that when I drew Einthoven's triangle, I made the left leg leads both NEGATIVE when they're both POSITIVE so all the polarities were wrong. So there was 10% of the test down the drain right off the bat, never mind about the various MC questions I guessed on. I spent the next few days periodically berating myself for taking this stupid elective, which I didn't NEED for anything and which was THREE credits and which I did NOT need a bad grade in (the final was all there was). And then they posted the grades, and he curved! I think he really just loves cardiac physiology and wants everyone else to love it too, and feels that if you put the time and effort into taking the class and studying (which he can sort of gauge overall from the exam as a whole) then you should get a good grade. Even if you had a giant brain fart during the actual exam.

Bless his heart. :)

And now, I should be studying for our first exam of 2nd quarter, which is in our biggest class of the quarter, and which I stayed home from school today to study for instead of going to lecture, and have now accomplished all of exactly 2 lectures.

Almost the end of 1st quarter!

2010-10-20T14:03:00.002-04:00

I'm tired!

I have one exam to go (Cardiovascular Physiology), one mini-paper to write (basically just a review of a couple of primary papers), and a resume/budget/goal sheet to turn in. Oh, and the finishing touches to put on a take-home group final, but it's basically done. I've finished a group take-home final, and 3 in-class finals.

The exam today was in Medicine III, our general medicine course. I really like this class -- this is the 3rd installment (of 4), and it's by FAR the most clinically relevant class we've had in vet school. They cover pretty much all the body systems in depth, telling us all kinds of things we'll need to know in clinics. This exam covered skin tumors and endocrinology, and endocrinology is really interesting (but complicated). The exam went basically okay, but (as usual) I was teetering on the cusp between an A and a B, and based on what I know for sure I got wrong, I'm not that optimistic about an A. It's a lot of credits (our biggest class of the semester!) so I really studied for the first 3 exams, but they're always short exams where each wrong answer counts a lot.

Anyway, it's over! And next quarter we have Medicine IV, and we're going to cover neurology! I'm really looking forward to that since the neuroscience course we had first year was completely baffling and I think the brain is really cool.

I'm trying to motivate myself to start studying for Cardiology, but I'm just not feeling it. I'm tired and want a nap. I need to email my resume and cover letter (I have to rewrite my cover letter, first) to a couple of practices where I want to do externships in the spring (I should have done this a MONTH ago, and the deadline is only a week and a half away so I'm really pushing it). I hate asking people for things, and I feel like applying for an externship is asking them for a favor (since they're not really benefiting from my being there, since I don't have much clinical experience yet) so I think that's why I'm dragging my feet. I also need to walk the puppies. I also need to wash the mountain of dishes that has piled up in the sink. And I really want a nap!

This weekend will be fun, though -- MM and I are going "fake camping" on Saturday! The last time we went camping we loved hiking, and being outside, and the beautiful fall leaves, and the campfire! And the hot dogs and s'mores, and relaxing in the woods with our adorable dogs. The sleeping on the freezing cold, rock-hard ground? Not such fans. Plus lugging all the gear there for just one night was a pain, and cleaning everything afterward was a pain. So, we decided to go camping but not sleep there! We're going to drive to the state park Saturday morning, rent a campsite, have a campfire and go hiking, and then when we get tired . . . . . . . . we'll come home!!! I think this sounds like a vast improvement over last year. :)

And then on Sunday we're going to get dim sum, which we haven't done in awhile!

And then on Monday, classes start again! Boo. This is the first time we've had an academic quarter, with a bunch of finals and then new classes afterward, with no time off in between! I'm used to a nice winter break, or summer vacation. Now I get a nice . . . . . 2-day weekend. But it's okay, I'm doing my first set of surgeries this quarter (3 spays, rotating through being the surgeon, assistant, and anesthetist) so I'm looking forward to that.

If they were people

2010-10-05T19:15:00.003-04:00

So, TWAAW had a (hilarious, of course) post the other day entitled, "If My Dogs Were People . . . ". That got me thinking about what my dogs would be like, if they were people. Then my friend J emailed me about what HER dog would be like if she were a person, and I figured I would reciprocate. :)

Red Panda would be a little kid -- she's permanently puppy, which is one of my favorite things about her, and I can't imagine her as an adult. So she'd be a little kid, maybe 5 years old. She'd be the sweetest person you ever met in your life, and she'd always be running up to her mom, hugging her, and telling her she loved her. She would introduce herself to every single person she met on the street, and hug them too. Anytime she went somewhere, she'd have to leave the house an hour earlier than anyone else would need to, because of all the time she'd spend saying hi and hugging everyone that she ran into. She would love to run and play, and she'd be athletic, but she wouldn't be that great at sports because she wouldn't care about the rules -- she'd be that kid in the outfield who always missed the easy fly balls because she was looking at a butterfly instead. But she'd be so adorable and sweet that no one would care, and everyone would always let her play on their team anyway. And she would always be SO HAPPY for whoever won, even if it was the other team! Unfortunately she'd be really easy to bully, and the one or two hard asses who were somehow immune to her cuteness would always be taking her lunch money or her toys, which would make her sad. But then someone else would run up and offer to share their lunch with her, which would make her even HAPPIER because it meant she got to hang out with her friend! Instead of walking down the street, she would skip along, singing and twirling. She would like to wear dresses and skirts that flared out in a big circle when she twirled. She would get really upset whenever anyone was mad at her, and try to make up with them right away. She would also get really upset if anyone was mad at anyone else, and try to get everyone to make up and get along again!

Mr. Bear would be that really laid-back guy that everyone likes, even though he doesn't care at all whether you like him or not. He would have a couple of really close friends that he would do anything for, and he'd be nice to everyone but he'd be basically indifferent (not in a snobby way, he's just not that into people). He would always be the one to settle things down if they got out of hand, and any time he raised his voice everyone would stop what they were doing and behave, because he never gets mad (and because he's just an authoritative person that everyone naturally listens to). He would probably live alone in a very tastefully-decorated apartment, and he would always be listening to NPR and to classical music (he really likes Baroque composers), and he'd be a good cook. He really likes to read, and he wears small, round reading glasses. He tends to wear a lot of khakis and sweaters. He would be really good at his job, but he would kind of keep to himself and not really go out much with his coworkers. People would wonder if he was gay (he's not, but he's probably a permanent bachelor). He really enjoys spending time with his mother. :) He would be a great congressman or senator, but he'd never run for office because he doesn't give a hoot about politics.

Bug. Bug would be that crazy maniac who always seems to be on speed. She'd never have much money because she'd keep getting fired from jobs for either fighting, stealing, or just plain not working. She's not a bad person at all -- she's actually very sweet, she just has no impulse control at all. She would drive a motorcycle, really fast; and she'd smoke, and she would never turn down a dare no matter how crazy it was. Luckily she's extremely athletic so she hasn't gotten seriously hurt yet. She tries to act all tough and cool, but she really really really really really wants everyone to like her, even though she would NEVER admit it. She loves being the center of attention, and she can't stand being alone -- she lives with a bunch of roommates and she's ALWAYS arguing with them about EVERYTHING, but she would be really sad if any of them moved out. She exasperates people. When she was in school, her teachers always wrote "Bug doesn't fulfill her potential" on her report card. She's very intelligent, but she mostly got Cs in school because she was too easily distracted (and she was always fighting with the other kids!). It takes a long time to get to know her and see what she's like beneath her tough, argumentative exterior, but she's really sweet once you do. (Most of the time. She gets this look in her eye every now and then that actually scares you, but you can usually snap her out of it). She wears ripped jeans and a leather jacket, and a necklace with a skull on it. She tells tons of jokes (most of them dirty) and she really wants people to laugh at them, even though she pretends she doesn't care. She's a total adrenaline junkie, always looking for the next exciting thing to do.

Monkey would be enigmatic. She'd be a fairly private person, and she's had many careers. She's very focused, and can spend hours working tirelessly at a task. She can be very excitable and impulsive, though, and she tends to shout a lot and get all worked up over nothing. She has a big chip on her shoulder and sometimes tries to start fights with strangers on the street over imaginary slights, but luckily she hasn't gotten into any serious trouble yet. She likes spending time alone, and she's very athletic but she likes individual sports like running (she's not much of a team player). She likes to bake. She also wants you to like her, but she'd never admit it. It hurts her feelings when someone is mad at her, but she pretends she doesn't care. She's very butch, and people wonder if she's gay (she is, and she just might have a crush on Bug). She's best friends with Bug, but in a frenemies kind of way -- they're always hanging out together, but they're ALWAYS arguing. She's very smart, but she didn't like school, and she's not into intellectual pursuits. She'd work in a physically demanding job, like construction or on an oil rig. She has a tattoo that says "Dad" in a heart. :)

Venipuncture

2010-09-25T14:58:00.003-04:00

This has nothing whatsoever to do with vet school.

I had to have blood drawn this morning, and instead of going to the $$Outpatient Lab$$ at my university, I found an online lab that would do the tests for 1/4 the price. So I had to drive out to a burb to go to some collection center where I assume they collect samples for many different companies. Fine, fine.

I reached the block on which the center should have been, and there was no address corresponding to the one on my confirmation sheet. So I drove around the block, saw the address before mine and the address after, and a giant parking lot (shared between those two addresses) where the building should have been. After 2 phone calls to MM (who was out walking the dogs and didn't have his phone) and one to Google 411 (who couldn't find a listing) and then scrolling through my phone's memory and calling every. single. number. that I didn't recognize, I finally managed to get their answering machine. A couple of minutes into the message, they mentioned (not on the website! Not when I made the appointment! Not on the confirmation sheet they emailed me!) that they're actually in The Such-and-Such Building on the OTHER SIDE of the block.

I don't get this -- if you're on the other side of the block, then you're actually on the other STREET. Not the street it says on your website. But, whatever. I was only 2 minutes late at this point, so I hurried over to the building they casually mentioned on their answering machine, and pulled the door. It was locked. So I went to the next door. It was locked. I ran into a guy having coffee on the patio and asked him how to get into the building. He said, looking at me as if I were an idiot, "You have to go in the front door." Okay. Thanks, buddy. I'll just do that, then. Only, would you mind telling me which of the dozen or so doors the building has is considered the FRONT door?

He gave me directions to the front door, and I ran around the building (it's a big building) and got to the nice front door with the giant entry mat and automatic-open button for wheelchairs, and yanked the handle, which, of course, was locked!!! I cursed a couple of times and figured I was already late, so I may as well just run the perimeter of the building and try every single door I passed, which is what I did. On the third wall of the building, I finally found a door that OPENED!!! And went inside. And got to the waiting room, which had two other people in it. And I sat down, and waited. Then I got bored and started playing Bejeweled on my iPod. I played an entire game and started reading a (really dumb but free) novel on the Kindle app I downloaded (I LOVE that feature!!! It ensures that as long as I have my iPod with me, I will never truly be either bored, or wasting time. It's awesome) and read a couple of chapters, until FINALLY, 30 minutes past my appointment, I got sent back to a room.

The technician came in and set everything up, and inserted the needle into my left arm (I have great veins. You could throw a dart from across a dark, smoky bar and hit my veins. The ones in my left arm are marginally inferior to my right, but they're still awesome. I can do one-handed venipuncture on myself, either arm, and have NEVER had to stick myself more than once [before you conclude that I'm an IV drug user -- when I was in grad school, one of the post-docs in my lab worked on human lymphocytes and needed donations regularly. There was no way in hell I was letting some random basic scientist touch me with a needle, so I did my own collections. It was EXTREMELY easy, and never hurt at all. I don't think I ever even left a mark]).

Anyway, the technician inserted the needle and got nothing. This was not surprising to me, since I had watched her insert the needle next to my vein instead of into it, but she seemed confused as to why no blood had entered the tubing. So she moved the needle over and jabbed it in a little farther. Pulled it out a little and jabbed it in the other direction. Pulled it out again and jabbed it deeper. Said, chuckling, "All these veins, and not one of them wants to give me any blood!" (I politely refrained from pointing out that it's easier to get blood from a vein if you put the needle, oh, I don't know, INTO THE VEIN!!!!). FINALLY she managed to actually hit a vein (thank you god) and drew my blood, and I left.

I spent 90 minutes (including driving) on this little adventure, to accomplish what I could have done myself in 2. Plus I would only have had one stick, instead of five. And it wouldn't have hurt. And I would not have the tricolor bruise that now covers the entire inside of my elbow, from the "random jab" method the tech used to insert the needle (personally, I think it's easier to identify a vein and then put the needle directly into it, but maybe that's just me).

/rant.

I feel better now! I also feel amused by the thought of how totally unsuccessful this woman would be as a veterinary technician -- can you imagine trying to do this to a cat?!? Believe me, you don't get six attempts to hit a vein in a cat. And cat veins are about 10% the size of mine.

More reproduction

2010-09-22T19:51:00.002-04:00

Of domestic mammals, of course. No personal experience.

I've done 14 lectures and have 6 more to go. The 6 more to go are by FAR the longest and most detail-packed of the 20 lectures. I saved them for last because . . . . . well, I guess because they're by far the longest and most detail-packed.

As a study break recently, I've been watching Legally Blonde on Surf the Channel. It's great because:
1) I love that movie!
2) I've seen it so many times that I practically have it memorized, so it's easy to watch one scene and go back to studying instead of getting sucked into the plotline
3) It doesn't have the kind of plotline that really sucks you in anyway
4) It's very pretty and sunny and California-y, and then very pretty and autumny and New England-y (all things I love!)

Unfortunately, I haven't accomplished enough this evening to warrant a study break, so I'm stuck with my Repro notes. I actually wish they did a lecture on human conception and embryogenesis -- there are so many OTHER species that we have to learn about, what's one more? And it would be really interesting to know, for instance, whether a human is more similar to a cow or a horse! Did you know that the bovine embryo elongates to almost 12 inches before it implants?!?!? Probably because in order to prevent luteolysis, it has to contact as much endometrium as possible in the uterine horn ipsilateral to the corpus luteum (in cows, secretion of PGF2a is local, and only affects the ovary ipsilateral to the uterine horn producing it). Whereas the equine embryo remains spherical during early gestation, because it ZOOMS all around the entire uterus, contacting as much endometrial surface as it can, because PGF2a secretion is systemic, and it has to contact a minimum of 2/3 of the total endometrial surface area to cause enough PGF2a inhibition to prevent luteolysis. The little horse embryo, before it finally implants, travels the equivalent of the length of 2 football fields! How cool is that?!?!?

Now, I'm pretty sure human embryos don't do either of these things (I'm definitely sure they don't elongate like bovine embryos) but I'd like to know what they DO do. Maybe they're more like pig embryos!

French toast face-off. And camelid reproduction.

2010-09-19T20:44:00.005-04:00

Yesterday (as I said) we went to the Oktoberfest downtown (apparently Oktoberfest really, actually does start in mid-September. Who knew?). It was a lot of fun! 6 of our friends went, and we met them there. It was PACKED, but they got there early enough that we got spots at some picnic tables under some plastic canopies, so we were in the shade! It was pretty hot, so that was great. The food was good (they serve these giant soft pretzels that I love, so I was looking forward to that) and the beer was relatively cheap. I was hoping they'd have the fruity lambic that is the only beer I find remotely tolerable (beer? It smells like urine. Seriously. And I've never actually tasted urine, but it tastes like I imagine urine would taste. YEEEUUUCH. I would rather be thirsty than drink beer, and I have a mini panic attack if I'm separated from my water supply for more than 10 minutes, so that's really saying something.) but they were only serving the five beers they had on tap for the Oktoberfest since there was such a high volume of people. Which was fine, since I anticipated this and brought my water bottle! I was a little bummed that I didn't get to have my cherry beer, but that's okay.

So, we spent about . . . . . I don't know, maybe 2 or 3 hours there? It was so noisy that I was hoarse when we left, from shouting at my friends to be heard. I also accidentally outed myself as a giant nerd by knowing all about DragonCon -- apparently my friends thought I was cool! Holy cow! I think that's a lifetime first. I had no idea. It was pretty short-lived, though, so I didn't really have time to get used to it. Anyway, we had fun. Then we decided to walk home, which was a nice walk (I love walking around in the city) but a little farther than I meant to walk in flip-flops. We stopped at Starbucks right after we left the bar and I had a Double Chocolate Chip frappuccino -- wow, that was good! I wish they would smash up the chips a little more, though, because when all the liquid was gone there was a giant pile of chocolate chips at the bottom of the cup, and I didn't have a spoon so they went to waste. :( Between running the dogs, walking home from Oktoberfest, and then walking the dogs later, I covered about 8 miles yesterday!

Oh! Also on the way home, we stopped at a running store so that MM could get fitted for running shoes. He's been running in these ancient (you could carbon-date these things) Adidas sneakers that he's had since I've known him (!) -- no wonder his back hurts when he runs! So they assessed his gait, and gave him 6 or 7 different pairs to try, and I was bossy and made him try them on the treadmill (I think he felt silly), and he ended up with the guy version of MY running shoes! How cool is that? We're an Asics Gel-Nimbus family. :) They were pretty expensive, so we decided not to buy them right then, and when we got home we found them on eBay for $35 less than the store was charging. Score!

Then I studied. A little. A very little. Then we went to bed earlyish.

Today I woke up at 7:30 (WTF? I could have slept until 9:30!) and couldn't go back to sleep, so we both got up, walked the dogs, I studied, and we did a french toast face-off. Those delicious peanut butter-filled crunch-covered chocolate chip-sprinkled french toast sticks from my "haiku", and the crunch-covered berry sauce-drizzled french toast from the place up the street.

We love them both. How could we choose just one?

Well, the PB-filled had once again returned to their sublime state of a couple of weeks ago, when I first had them. They were DELICIOUS. The berry-drizzled was a little soggy from steaming up its plastic takeout container, and the crunch is a critical part of their appeal, so that was unfortunate. But both were excellent. I think what we really took away from the experience is that from now on, instead of ever eating at either establishment ever again, we're going to get takeout from BOTH every time so that we can share both french toasts at once!

After that, I studied. :( What did I study? Reproduction. Not just ANY reproduction, but camelid and small ruminant reproduction.

Want to guess how much I care about camelid reproduction?

Never mind -- it's too boring to even waste 5 seconds guessing about! I'll tell you everything you need to know -- dystocias don't really occur, so just let the damn hembras be. Don't give them progesterone if you think they might be pregnant, because they're completely dependent on the corpus luteum throughout gestation, and luteolysis will terminate the pregnancy. Wait until they're 18-24 months old before you start getting in a snit over them not getting pregnant, because they don't reliably reach reproductive maturity until then, so even though they'll breed earlier than that, it's likely that nothing will come of it.

The end!

If I were going to be a camelid veterinarian, I'm sure I would be riveted by the finer points of each detail of the camelid estrus cycle, breeding soundness exam, gestation, parturition, and behavior. But, I'll bet you a nice shiny quarter that I will NEVER see a single alpaca (in a professional capacity) in my life, so the fact that I spent half of a gorgeous Sunday memorizing all the details (I spared you the soul-crushing tedium, no need to thank me) really annoys me.

And, now I have the cow to look forward to. Hurrah!

First exam down. Productivity down, too.

2010-09-18T11:49:00.002-04:00

Our first exam of the year was on Wednesday, in General Medicine. It was largely on hematology, which is both interesting and useful, but also overflowing with little details (I'm more of a big-picture girl). I studied a lot (but not enough) for it -- I didn't have time to cover everything a second time, and I already know of at least 4 mistakes (that's more than 10% of the exam).

Next Thursday we have a Reproduction exam, and then General Medicine again the following Monday! Then we have at least one exam each week for the rest of the quarter. So there isn't really a lot of time for catching up if you fall behind.

But, today is a GORGEOUS, absolutely perfect fall day! So when I woke up, I ran the dogs -- Red Panda and Bug have both been getting a little too excitable and in each others' faces over the past week, which usually means they're not getting enough exercise. So I ran Bug for a couple of miles (since she has the most energy, the most endurance, and is the biggest problem when the dogs get riled up), Red Panda for a few blocks, and then Monkey for a few blocks. Since it's so beautiful outside, everybody and their brother is out walking their dogs, which made for interesting runs. :) I think I crossed the street 6 separate times with Bug to avoid other dogs, and that was even considering that half our run was through campus where there aren't any streets and we didn't see any other dogs!

Then I called the local pub that has my beloved chicken wings, and asked if I could place an order for takeout. The guy sounded a little surprised (maybe they don't do takeout very much?) but said sure, so I ordered my wings, and he said, "Ah -- you're getting the best thing on our menu!" (I totally agree!). They're sitting in front of me, waiting to be devoured (they're covered in maple syrup -- I can't eat them and type at the same time). When MM gets home from work in an hour, we're going downtown with our friends for an Oktoberfest (in mid-September?). And THEN I need to study!

I'm cold - put on a sweater

2010-09-11T19:38:00.002-04:00

If MM and I ever have children, I hope I won't be one of those mothers who's always saying things like, "I'm cold -- go put on a sweater!" or "Sitting like that can't be comfortable -- put your feet on the floor" (hello -- if it wasn't comfortable, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be sitting like that!).

I've been chasing Mr. Bear around the living room all day with a pillow. He's laying on the floor, keeping me company while I study. But he keeps putting his head in places that look uncomfortable, like propped at an angle against the table leg, or on the wooden floor. So, I get him a pillow! And he picks his head up to see what I'm doing, and I stick the pillow in the spot where his head was, so it'll be right there when he puts his head back down again! And then he puts his head down for one second, decides he doesn't like the pillow, and moves away to another spot. Where he puts his head in some uncomfortable-looking position, which induces me to go get the pillow and put it right behind him (or right in front of him) so he can put his head on it if he wants to. Only he doesn't want to, and apparently having the pillow there is annoying, so he looks at it disdainfully, gets up, and moves. Repeat x10.

He loves pillows, though. He's always stealing MM's pillow when he gets up in the middle of the night. And sometimes (which I LOVE!!!) he'll lay next to me with his head on my pillow (I die of happiness). So it's not like he's categorically opposed to them. He just doesn't want this one, apparently. But he LOOKS uncomfortable. So I keep bringing it back over to him.

(Perhaps this has something to do with why it takes me 6 hours of studying to cover one hour of lecture. If I would let my dogs sleep where they want instead of relentlessly trying to persuade them that they want pillows, I would probably be a lot more productive).

I guess school is back in session

2010-09-11T17:36:00.003-04:00

It's 5 PM on a beeeeeaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuutiful Saturday afternoon. And I'm studying every possible kind of anemia a dog or cat (or ferret!) could ever get. Yay. At least I'm sitting in front of my open window, where I can see the leaves or a couple of very green trees across the street and enjoy the breeze. And I went running this morning, with Bug and then Red Panda, which was great. And I got my hair cut! You can't even tell (as it has been for the past couple of years, it's relatively long and straight with long layers. All the difference I can see is that the layers are a little more obvious. Probably only to me) but it was on my to-do list. And tomorrow I may (or may not, since it was the other guy's idea and I haven't heard from him about it yet) go trail-running with a couple of friends from school!

(Do I have a congenital inability to just say "X sucks" and leave it at that? Why do I always immediately think of 157 other reasons why life is great as soon as I think of a complaint about something? I probably would never even have noticed this about myself if not for this blog -- as I was writing the above paragraph, I thought, "I feel like I've written this before". And it turns out that I haven't written that exact thing before, but it sure as heck is a common pattern! And then I realized that I do it all the time, not just here. I mean, I'm glad I'm that way -- it sure beats sitting in a mopey funk all the time, and it means that I'm pretty much always cheerful because the bright side! It's always right there! But I do think it's a little odd. And I know that other people can sometimes find it annoying.)

Anyway. There was my monthly dose of self-discovery. :)

So . . . . . anemia. Yeah. Let's talk about something else.

Remember those french toast sticks from last weekend? Well, I had them again this morning. And . . . . . . huh. They were quite a bit different from last time! Last time, they were rolled in tiny little dark chocolate chips after being cooked. And there was a LOT of peanut butter in the middle. And they were very large. This time, none of the above. They were still good, but I feel like I may have been a little hasty in my ardor for them. Can you have a take-back on a haiku? I'm not really sure how that works. I guess to be really fair, I should have them again as a tie-breaker. Maybe today was just an off day! Now I feel sort of obligated to have them again tomorrow. :) Although, you know what? They're $8. For 3 french toast sticks. That seems a teeny bit unreasonable (it was TOTALLY worth it last weekend. But the ones I had today were not). I need to find out what the crunchy deliciousness is that they roll them in, and then maybe I can just make them myself. That would be the best solution.

However, from the same establishment, I also had chicken wings with a maple brown sugar glaze and some sort of cinnamon butter dip. And they were REALLY good. Plus there were about 15 of them in the order. I think they were worth $8. I would write a poem about them, but we saw how that turned out with the french toast sticks.

It would be a little gross to have french toast sticks and chicken wings for breakfast two days in a row, so now I'm not sure what to do -- I have to do a quality comparison! How else will I know if they're actually as good as I think they are? But I also feel like I should have an arugula salad and a bowl of Fiber One for breakfast tomorrow, to make up for today.

You know what? This is a vet school blog. Maybe I should talk about vet school sometime. How about now? Actually, I should be studying. Maybe later.

Holiday Weekend

2010-09-06T22:41:00.003-04:00

This was a very nice, relaxing weekend.

Most importantly, Mr. Bear was very cooperative for his resuturing (with the aid of an "empty" jar of peanut butter on which he worked diligently to extract every last molecule within reach of his tongue. I am so thankful that he is so food motivated -- I can get him to do almost anything, for a kibble. A KIBBLE!!! I actually can't USE high-value treats when I work with him on something new, because he becomes overwrought with excitement about the food and doesn't hear a word I say. So, one kibble and we're good. The local block was painful enough to require more distraction than a mere kibble, hence the peanut butter. Which was very effective!) and his incision currently looks good. We bandaged it after resuturing, and changed it on Saturday, and took it off today to let it air out. As soon as we took the bandage off he started licking it, so now he's wearing a beautiful floppy blue E-collar around his neck. He was a little depressed about it at first, but he quickly adjusted and doesn't seem to care about it at all. He ate his dinner just fine with it on, and started licking his leg again within 2 minutes of our experimentally taking it off, so he's going to keep it on for now. I'm debating whether I should leave it on him, or rebandage his leg while we're gone tomorrow. I'm afraid it will fall off, leaving him easy access to his leg . . . . . . but if we rebandage his leg, I'm afraid he'll be irritated by the bandaging and spend the day licking at that instead.

Secondly, I went rafting with a bunch of friends on Sunday. It was FUN!!! I'm sore from paddling, and it was a very long day (we left at 8:30 AM and got home at 10 PM), but it was a lot of fun. We stopped for a picnic halfway through the rafting trip, and then swam in the river for awhile, and then on the way home most of us stopped at a steakhouse for dinner. I had a great time!

Thirdly, I started studying today. My first studying in 3.5 months! I'm pretty slow, and easily distracted (hello, what else is new?) but it is semi-interesting material and very clinically relevant, so I actually kind of enjoyed it. Plus I only did it for a couple of hours, which makes a big difference.

Fourthly, on Saturday I fell in love!!! Love, love, love -- there's a pub in our neighborhood that just started serving brunch on the weekends. And they have these French toast sticks

Peanut butter-filled
Crispy chocolate-drizzled bread
Banana-dipped bliss

-- that's a haiku (syllabically, anyway. Not in any other regard. If you're an English major and I just offended you, I'm sorry and I don't want to hear about it). I love them so much that I just composed a poem in their honor. They're amazing. They're . . . . . well, I pretty much described them up there, so I guess I don't really need to do it again. I just want to emphasize how delicious they were, and how they were rolled in chocolate chips after being cooked, and how delicious the banana dipping sauce was, and how SAD I am that I have to wait another FOUR DAYS to have them again!!! WHY must they only do brunch on the weekends?!?!? At least it's already Monday night, so it's only four more days instead of five. They were really, really good. We also shared an omelet that was really good. But wow, compared to these French toast sticks it was nothing.

Moving on. Fifthly, tomorrow I'm going running (TRAIL running!!!) with a friend from lab. I haven't been trail running since I moved here! That was 3 years ago! I used to trail run a lot, in the midwest -- there was a state park with a gorgeous, steep, technical, 7.5-mile trail which was only about 30 minutes from my apartment, and I ran on it almost every weekend for about a year. I loved it, and I really miss it. I usually ran with a friend and sometimes another one of her friends, but if she ever couldn't make it I had no qualms about running there alone. I was only ever nervous a couple of times, and never for any substantiated reason. Then I moved here, and there is no WAY (NO WAY AT ALL) that I would ever even think about trail running anywhere around here by myself. And I didn't know anyone that's into trail running, and I tried to join a group that has a listserv but they always ignored my emails so I never actually found them. So I was really happy to meet this new friend! I don't know exactly where we're going, since she's the one who always goes with other people, so I'll just pick her up around dinner time and follow her directions. I can't wait!

Mr. Bear's recovery

2010-09-03T17:44:00.003-04:00

Bear had 2 skin lesions removed this morning, which sort of resemble the benign melanocytoma we removed about a year ago from his shoulder. I have them (sitting next to me!) in formalin, waiting to be submitted to Pathology on Tuesday. I'm encouraged by the fact that neither of them appeared to be deeply invasive, although the one on his rear leg had penetrated all layers of his skin and MM had to remove a bunch of subcutaneous fat to try to get a "margin" -- the skin layer just peeled right off, so the fat was a separate excision. I know the pathology report is going to come back saying that we did not get a clean margin (since we're not submitting the fat), and while there was nothing VISIBLE in the fat underneath, I guess we just have to hope that we really got it all. And monitor that spot closely. The lesion on his foreleg did not appear to have penetrated all layers of the dermis, so hopefully we will get clean margins all around on that one.

He's very out of it from the anesthesia -- he woke up quickly, and I hung out with him in recovery for about half an hour, then brought him home 3 hours ago, but he's still clearly not himself. He's been very anxious, wandering around whining (he only does that when there's a bad thunderstorm) and shaking a little bit. I'm not sure how much of it is dysphoria and how much is pain, and even laying on my lap doesn't seem to comfort him much, which I feel terrible about. He wouldn't take anything by mouth until an hour ago, when I finally got him to take some alprazolam and tramadol, and he seems marginally calmer since then.

My poor handsome son. :(

Update 9:20 PM -- Mr. Bear started eating again, was quite excited about his dinner, went for a walk around the block, and is not whining and pacing quite as much as he was earlier. Seems calmer and more comfortable. Yay! He does require carrying down the stairs (I can kind of "spot" him going upstairs, but that doesn't really work on the descent) but has been climbing on and off the couch and bed.

However. I left him (with his dad!) for 15 minutes to run to the store for some groceries, and about 15 minutes after I came back, I noticed that the incision on his foreleg was completely open. Despite the fact that he did not TOUCH either incision during the entire afternoon while I was home with him, during the 15 minutes I was gone (and MM was doing the dishes) he apparently licked off the surgical glue and disrupted the underlying sutures to the point that the whole thing dehisced! The little bastard!!!

MM is currently (bless him! And hurray for being married to a practicing vet!!! :) :) :)) on his way back to the clinic to get all the gear to fix him back up again, so that he doesn't have to get stressed out by going back again himself. The idea is to do a local block and resuture him here at home (I'm anticipating the use of generous amounts of peanut butter) and then bandage it to keep his tongue away. (We didn't bandage it to begin with because he never does things like this. Really.) Hopefully he'll cooperate; if not we'll have to take him to the clinic after all and do it there. Which will probably mean getting home around 1 AM (I'm so tired!). Fingers crossed that he cooperates!

I finished!!!

2010-08-29T22:44:00.010-04:00

I finished the bag!!! I LOVE it!!! It's bigger than I thought it would be (I may not have followed the seam allowances quite as tightly as I should have), and I had a little issue with the straps. But it's done!

(Bug was investigating)

I love it. :) I did not love making it. It was extremely frustrating, and annoying, and took FOREVER. In fact, if you figure that my working time is worth $20 an hour (isn't that sad?), this bag is worth approximately $300! (Actually, $320 if you count the materials!). It was a good learning experience, though. In several ways. For one thing, it made me a better seamstress. For another, it taught me that I will never create anything from fabric again without a rotary cutter. For another, I learned that when I really have no idea what I'm doing, I should follow the directions -- this brings me back to the straps.

All my life, I've trusted my own judgment over anything else. My father had me read a book when I was about 13, that he said changed his life forever. It was about a guy who was told by someone in authority that he had to get a message to another camp. And the guy had NO IDEA what the message said, and he DIED delivering it. He knowingly gave up his LIFE to deliver this message. Dad's POV was that this was a fabulous, inspiring story about responsibility. My take on it was "Was this guy INSANE?!?!?!?!?!? He gave up his LIFE to deliver a MESSAGE when he didn't even know what it SAID?!?!?!?! This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life!!!!!". I didn't tell my dad this -- when he asked me what I thought of it I think I said it was interesting. But to this day, I think back on that story with incredulity and . . . . . . well, disdain, that the guy would give up his life for something that may have been completely trivial.

Where on earth was I going with this story? . . . . . . . . Oh, right -- the straps! So, the instructions said to sew the straps on the outside of the bag, before attaching the lining. This didn't make any sense to me, because I wanted to hide the attachment point, so I wanted them to be between the shell and lining. So I thought about it for awhile, read that part of the instructions several times, tried holding the straps against the bag and imagining how it would turn out with them in various positions, and it seemed to me that they should go on the inside of the shell. Since I always go with my own judgment when I'm in doubt, of course I sewed them on the inside of the shell!

Well, it turns out that I'm a little topologically challenged (I'm still not actually sure how this thing turned into an actual lined bag, even though I'm the one who made it) because when I finished sewing the lining to the shell and then turned the bag inside out (you sew the front of the lining to the front of the shell, and then flip the whole thing inside out through a hole you leave between the straps), the straps ended up in between the shell and lining. Lost in no man's land. NOW what the heck was I supposed to do?!?!?! The logical thing (which I did) was to just cut off the straps and reattach them to the outside of the bag, so they're just about 3/4 of an inch shorter than they were supposed to be, which is no big deal. BUT, I think the POINT of sewing them to the outside of the shell before you attach the lining is that they somehow end up in the seam allowance, so you can't see where they attach (again, topologically challenged. Not sure I'm interpreting this correctly). And the way I did it, you can totally see where I sewed them to the bag, and it looks a little sloppy.

So, the most important lesson I learned from this is that, when I truly have no idea what I'm doing, it may be better to follow directions instead of relying on my own judgment. That's tough to do, because the latter has been a good strategy for pretty much my entire life. But that's probably because there are few situations in life where I really have no idea what I'm doing (I mean, usually you have SOME idea, right? How often are you truly, genuinely clueless? It might feel like that sometimes, but even then you usually have some idea of what's going on).

But anyway, life lessons aside, it's done!!! I swore to myself and to MM (and asked him to remind me of that if I ever forgot how bad it was!) that I would never do this again, while I was making the damn bag. As soon as I finished and saw how pretty it is, I thought "That was FUN!!! I think I'll make another one in a different color!".

Sewing project update

2010-08-28T15:58:00.002-04:00

Having spent about 2.5 more hours today, I now have all the pieces cut out and interfaced, and I have assembled the outside of the bag!!! This was after I almost threw the sewing machine out the window because the needle REFUSED to pick up the bottom thread no matter what I did, so I had to download the manual from Brother's website. I swear I was doing everything exactly the way they said to in the manual, but magically after I did it one more time using their pictorial directions, it worked. Whew.

Then I snapped at the dogs a couple of times. Then I bit MM's head off (sorry, dear). Then I spent 10 minutes reading the (single page) of instructions for the bag over and over and over again, completely unable to understand how this thing is POSSIBLY going to turn into a tote bag when I'm done! But somehow, it appears as if the outside (minus straps) is complete! Now I have to do this all over again for the lining -- I really don't see how the lining is possibly going to be able to be sewn INTO the shell I've already made. How will it fit? How will all this fabric fit under the presser foot of my sewing machine? How will I sew through this many layers of fabric? How on EARTH is everything going to line up?

People who think sewing is relaxing? Are crazy. I think this is the highest my blood pressure has been in weeks!!!

So I started this tote bag

2010-08-27T14:14:00.005-04:00

I'm tired of looking for a bag that's big enough to hold at least one 3-ring binder and my laptop, but not so big that it looks like I'm embarking on a week-long trip every time I leave the house. I also want it to be pretty, not some weird-ass fabric that looks like someone repurposed it from their grandmother's basement curtains. I would also be very happy if it had inside pockets, because I carry a bunch of little things around with me (pens, more pens, phone, iPod, toothbrush and toothpaste, lip balm, keys, another set of keys, gum, hair ties, etc) and it's nice if I can find them all without having to dump all the contents of the bag out onto the tabletop everytime I need something (professors LOVE it when you do that during lecture!!!).

Apparently such bags are rare. So I decided, what the heck! I'll make one myself! It'll be fun! I can use my sewing machine, which mostly sits on the closet floor, taking up space and preventing me from ever putting away my suitcase, which now sits out on the living room floor and makes it look like I'm perpetually embarking on a week-long trip.

Anyway. I decided a pattern would be helpful, so I looked around on Etsy (love!) and found one for a bag that's 16.5 x 12 x 5 inches -- perfect! And it's a simple pattern. Seriously, this pattern is so simple that it doesn't even EXIST -- the designer just tells you the dimensions of the fabric panels that you need to cut out, and then briefly explains how to assemble them! That's great news, because I think pinning endless pieces of delicate, tissuey pattern paper to fabric is somewhat tedious.

So, cool. I downloaded the pattern. Bought some fabric. Even read through the instructions ahead of time and bought some fusible interfacing to line the fabric with! (Are you impressed yet? I sure am). This morning I figured since it's my last day of vacation before school starts (so, so sad) that I should make my bag. It should probably take about an hour, maybe two if I have trouble with the sewing machine, and then I can go into lab at lunch to finish up a couple of things my PI wants me to give him. So I made myself a caramel macchiato, got out my fabric, looked at the instructions again to see what sizes the pieces need to be, and started measuring.

The only problem is, the fabric is wider than the available floor space in the living room, so it keeps bunching up and makes it hard to cut. The only other problem is that I also don't have a rotary cutter or tailor's chalk or anything that makes it easy to measure and cut fabric, and when I try to just lay the tape measure down alongside my cut line and use the scissors I found in the kitchen, the tape measure keeps moving around. Oh, and the dogs keep wandering through the living room, jumping on and off the couch, which necessitates walking right across my giant swath of fabric each time.

But it's okay, because of course I have a solution (I'm really smart). I'll make my OWN pattern from regular 8.5 x 11 paper, and then I'll just pin that to the fabric! So, I spend about 35 minutes creating a pattern from printer paper, measuring and cutting and taping all these pieces of paper together. Then I decide that instead of wrestling with this giant piece of fabric, I'll just cut out a piece that's about the size of the whole shebang, and then subcut that smaller piece. That works pretty well, and about two hours after I started, I have all the pieces cut out. (Well . . . . . . . all the pieces for the outside of the bag. Each piece has a twin for the inside of the bag, and I may or may not have forgotten to buy fabric for the inside. But that's okay, I can get everything else ready and then pick up some plain canvas tonight. At . . . . . . Walmart. . . . . or something. Walmart still sells fabric, right?)

Okay. I start cutting out the interfacing. This is much, much easier because a) I already have my fabric panels cut out as a guide, and b) it's cheap, so I'm not as worried about making sure my arrangement of the pieces is as absolutely efficient as possible so that I don't waste anything. I get all the interfacing cut out, and iron it on to the back side of the fabric -- I really like ironing! It's very relaxing. When most of the interfacing peels back off the fabric (the instructions that came with the interfacing SAID, and I QUOTE, "Fuses easily in seconds") and I have to iron it back on again, it's a little less relaxing. Plus the instructions said to use a "gliding action and slight pressure", and it works a lot better if I lean most of my weight on the iron and crush the fabrics together with it, one spot at a time. But it's okay, because I'm getting a good upper-body workout! I didn't even expect that!

Now all my interfacing is attached. It's 2:30 PM. I started at 10:30 AM. I still have to find and buy the lining fabric, cut it all out, cut out all the interfacing for it, iron them together, and sew the bag. Oh, and design (and make) my own interior pockets, because this pattern doesn't have any. I think that my estimate of one hour working time may have been a tiny bit optimistic. I actually (getting a tiny bit ahead of myself) thought that I could design my own pattern (it really is a very simple pattern) and then make these bags to sell online! I love making things, and it would be a fun, easy way to make a little money during the semester -- I could just whip up one bag every Saturday morning while I drink my caramel macchiato, and then spend the rest of the day studying! Except, as it turns out, I would need to charge approximately $496 for each bag, to make it worth all the time and aggravation. And, in order to finish early enough on Saturday to have a "rest of the day" for studying, I'd have to get up around 2 AM.

I have to go to lab, now. I'll just leave my fabric pieces (they're so pretty!) here on my desk, and quickly put the finishing touches on the bag when I get home.

Hallelujah! Crap, crap, crap!

2010-08-26T11:43:00.003-04:00

Good things first -- Mr. Bear's bloodwork came back looking good! No serious abnormalities, no hypercoagulability, sweet.

Then we had his abdominal ultrasound today, to look for mets. I wore old, crappy clothes that I wouldn't mind throwing away after today, because I knew I would never be able to look at them again since they'd be the clothes I was wearing when I found out Bear had metastatic cancer. The radiologist was super nice (she's the same one who scanned him when he first presented to ES last year with his pyloric perforation), got him in right away, and didn't see anything notable except heterogeneous mottling in the liver and spleen, which were consistent with what they saw a year ago and aren't uncommon in older dogs. Otherwise they could be suspicious of metastases, but since they've been more or less the same for a year, that's a lot less likely.

So, the best part of my life is apparently not going to end today. :)

Now we need to schedule an MRI to see if he has a brain tumor. (sigh)

Bad news second -- when I was doing his PT exercises yesterday, I found a darkly pigmented lesion on the inside of his left hip. It is smaller than, but very similar to, the benign melanocytoma that we removed last summer, kicking off the whole pyloric perforation saga. In dogs, melanocytic growths are usually benign. At mucocutaneous junctions, or on the digits, they tend to be malignant. In male dogs, on the prepuce or ventral abdomen, they also tend to be malignant. This one is on his leg, but veeeeeeery close to his prepuce and ventral abdomen. So it's making me very nervous.

Later in the day, I was just petting him, and I like to ruffle the fur on his front legs back the wrong way and then smooth it down again. As I was doing this, I noticed ANOTHER melanocytic lesion on his right foreleg. It's larger than the one on his flank (maybe 6x10 mm; the flank lesion is a 5mm circle). Both are flat, which also makes me nervous -- the original lesion last year was raised and round, and when I took it to pathology they said it was good that it was raised since that likely meant it was growing out instead of in. The current lesions are flat -- so are they invasive?!?!?? Since I'd already found 2, I went on a body-wide hunt for additional problems, and found another round (slightly raised) lesion on his left shoulder, below the spot where we removed the original one.

This isn't looking fabulous. MM thinks they look benign, but at least in humans, a lot of benign-looking skin lesions turn out to be bad news. That's probably not the norm, but I know many people whose GPs or dermatologists brushed off a spot as nothing, and the second opinion biopsied it and found malignancy. It's very weird that there are (at least) three of them -- benign melanocytoma in dogs is usually an isolated lesion. There could also easily be more than 3, since Mr. Bear is a very furry dog and it's really hard to get all the way down to his skin. They could potentially be hemangiosarcoma mets, which would be horrible.

Mr. Bear. I would like to ask you for a favor. You are fabulously helpful to my veterinary education, because I not only learn so much from discussing you with the many clinicians who work on your various cases, but I also pay rapt attention to any lecture topic with any relevance to any problem you've ever had, thereby emblazoning the information indelibly in my brain. But you have thoroughly done your duty in that regard, and I would really appreciate it if you would cease helping me learn about veterinary medicine. From now on, for the next few years, I would love it if you would be the most medically unremarkable dog on the planet. Everything normal. Nothing to see here. Please?

Cerebrovascular accident?

2010-08-24T10:42:00.001-04:00

Bear was completely normal all day on Friday. When we went to bed at 11 PM, he was fine. He woke me up at 1 AM laying across my knees in an odd position, so I moved him over to my right so that my knees weren't being torqued. When I moved him, he lurched wildly to the right and his hind leg fell partially into the space between the mattress and wall (only about 4 inches wide) and laid there panting anxiously with wide eyes and rigidly extended front legs, unable to move his hind leg back out. This was completely abnormal. I tensely barked at MM (sorry, dear!) to turn the light on, hauled Bear back onto the bed, and we evaluated him. He was obviously panicked, with a left head tilt, bilateral vertical nystagmus, rigid forelimbs, absent conscious proprioception in all 4 limbs, and unable to stand. MM grabbed his stethoscope and ausculted him, and found a tachycardic irregularly irregular arrhythmia with pulse deficits. I just hugged Bear and tried to calm him down.

We threw our clothes on and MM carried him (flailing wildly) down the stairs to the car, and we ran him over to the vet hospital ER. Luck was on our side -- it was empty, and the on-duty resident was extremely nice, and let me stay with him the entire time (the last time he had to go to the ER, the on-duty resident was an incompetent bimbo who didn't even perform basic diagnostics, and left me in the waiting room for FOUR HOURS -- despite the hospital policy of students being allowed into the ER with their dogs -- while she sat around the ER nurses' station eating pizza and chatting with the students, and Bear sat in isolation with a rabbit, of all things. I HATE that woman). So I was really happy that the resident this time was both competent and nice.

She and the students on their ER rotation did a neuro exam (his cranial nerve reflexes were normal) and ECG, took a complete history, and we discussed the possibilities. The primary differentials for this set of clinical signs are geriatric vestibular syndrome, intoxication, a cerebrovascular accident (either ischemic -- a stroke -- or hemorrhagic), and a brain tumor. He didn't have access to anything toxic, which pretty much ruled out intoxication, leaving us with the other three.

We were there from 1:30 to 5 AM, and during that time Bear improved rapidly. By 5 AM his nystagmus had decreased markedly, his ECG had returned to normal, CP was present (though delayed) in all 4 limbs, and he could stand unassisted although he couldn't walk. The acute onset and rapid recovery make a cerebrovascular accident the most likely cause, although we need an MRI to be sure. Because he was stable, and there wasn't really anything they could do for him in the ER, we took him home and went to sleep.

In the morning (well, later in the morning), he ate well, was able to walk (although the left head tilt persists and he tends to fall to the left), his nystagmus had resolved completely, and his CP was normal in all 4 limbs. Over the next 24 hours he continued to improve, and Sunday morning I walked him all the way around the block, even incorporating some of his PT exercises into the walk. Yesterday I took him for his normal PT walk of about 0.8 miles and did almost all of his PT exercises, which he did easily -- I was especially happy to see that he lifts all 4 feet appropriately to step over an obstacle, an exercise that he sometimes has trouble with even normally. His continued improvement is a good prognostic sign, although we still need to determine the underlying cause of the incident -- if it's ischemic, it could be embolic (septic is unlikely since he's healthy, parasitic is unlikely since he's on Heartgard year-round, or metastatic), atherosclerotic (unlikely since he's not hypertensive), or thrombotic (we need to do a coagulation profile to evaluate that). If we find an underlying cause, depending on what it is he may be likely to have another event. If we do not find an underlying cause, it's less likely that it will recur.

So, this week he gets to have chest rads and an abdominal U/S to look for metastatic disease, and bloodwork up the wazoo (that's the technical term. It means "a lot" for any laymen who may be reading this) :) to see if he's hypercoagulable, has renal disease, heart disease, thyroid disease, or some other endocrine dysfunction. I am very lucky to have a friend who's a neurologist, who's going to do a thorough neuro exam on him, and we're going to talk about imaging -- he recommended holding off on the MRI if the other diagnostics are clean, because his guess is that it's vascular; but if it is by some chance a brain tumor and it's in an operable location, I want to find out NOW instead of weeks from now when it has progressed and he has another event.

My son is old. He's an old man. I don't even know how old he really is, because he's a rescue (and they lie, lie, lie when it comes to dogs' ages -- I know their intentions are good, because the younger a dog is the more likely he is to be adopted, so that practice could actually be saving lives. But I also hate it because even though I KNEW they do that, I still mostly believed them) and all I really know is that he was a young adult when I adopted him -- they said he was 2.5 years old, but he could have been 5! And I've had him for 7 years, so he could be anywhere from 9.5 to 12 years old.

He's had melanocytoma, and has arthritis, hip dysplasia, partial hearing loss, muscular atrophy in all 4 limbs, and now probably a stroke (or a brain tumor, which would be so much worse that I'm - although this sounds insane - hoping it was a stroke!). He's happy and excited about food (hooooo boy is he excited about food!), and walks, and rides in the car, he's curious about things and his cognitive function appears excellent, and his teeth and coat are in excellent condition . . . . . . . . but I'm afraid. Because despite all of that, it seems like when a dog gets old, and things start going wrong, they don't stop. It's a degenerative slide that you might be able to slow down with aggressive care, but not by a whole lot. And I'm really, really afraid that we've begun it.

Sophisticated living

2010-08-22T12:15:00.007-04:00

This morning, MM and I woke up early to do our couples yoga together. Then I made us each a caramel macchiato in our new espresso machine (yay!!!) and then we sat down to peruse the New York Times and New Yorker. When we had read both of them from cover to cover, we had a lively discussion about the current state of US foreign policy while listening to Don Giovanni. This is a pretty typical Sunday morning for us. I'll probably go in to lab to work on my cancer cure in a little while.

:) :) :) :) :)

Actually, I woke up early to take Bear outside while MM slept in. Then I really did make us macchiatos (I love my espresso machine!). Then . . . . . . . MM watched cartoons, while I colored in my new Winnie The Pooh coloring book!!! It's a really nice coloring book -- I found it in the dollar bins at the front of Target last night when I was there looking for binders. It has a nice mix of very detailed pages, and very simple ones with large features, and some games! And of course it involves Winnie the Pooh, whom I love dearly.

I was actually a little reluctant to admit this to MM when we first met, because he told me a story before we even started dating about an ex-girlfriend who was obsessed with Winnie the Pooh, and had her whole bedroom decorated with him, and this was one of the things he really didn't like about her. Okay, first of all, I'm not obsessed, I just like him. Well, not just him (actually, the more Pooh stories I read, the more I find his personality a tiny bit annoying, but he's really cute and cuddly-looking) but the entire population of the Hundred Acre Wood. I would like to spend a few weeks there, and hang out with all of them!

And I have a very nice set of retractable Crayola colored pencils (30 colors!) that haven't seen the light of day since Anatomy ended. So I spent a relaxing half hour this morning coloring the first page of my book!

The other thing that happened while I was at Target occurred in the office supplies aisle. I was looking, as I mentioned, for binders for next semester (probably the last set of binders I'll EVER! HAVE! TO! BUY!!!) and the pickings were slim. Target has this really pretty line of Greenroom binders that I love, so I was hoping to find them again (I bought a couple last year).

(Look at those flowers! Aren't they pretty? And cheerful! Just the thing for livening up an underground, UV-lit classroom).

Anyway, I could only find a couple, and I wasn't crazy about the designs. I knew Target usually has a big back-to-school display somewhere, but I hadn't seen it, so I asked the woman standing next to me if she knew if they had a display like that this year. She thought for a minute and then said, "Oh, for back to school? You mean, for the kids? Yeah, I saw one on the other side of the store."

"For the kids". Yep. You bet. I'm here shopping for my . . . . . um . . . . . my 8-year-old. Little . . . . . Tallulah-Phoebe*. :)

It's okay. I can't really blame her, I had already picked up the Winnie The Pooh coloring book by then. I headed to the other side of the store, found my binders, and was on my merry way.

Back to my espresso machine -- as I mentioned a week or two ago, I have begun a torrid love affair with caramel macchiatos. Delicious, expensive, and full of sugar caramel macchiatos. I've tried them from 3 different local coffee shops (one giant chain, one smaller chain, one local independent café) and they're all wonderful. I love them so much that I've begun to customize my order -- half regular and half decaf espresso. One pump of vanilla, not two. No foam (it takes up too much room and then I only get half as much drink). People like this annoy me a little -- it should not take FIVE MINUTES to explain your coffee order to the barista! And being a person that annoys me a little annoys me (plus I'm cheap and it pains me to shell out $3 or $4 for a cup of coffee), so I started looking for espresso machines. I had 3 criteria: it had to be small (our kitchen has one countertop that's about 18x30 inches!), it had to be cheap (see above), and it had to work.

And I found THIS!!!

It was $34 on Amazon, and it's small, and so far it works great! And for $34, I only have to use it about 10 times to cancel out the money I would have spent buying these infernal drinks elsewhere, and so far I've used it 6 times. I've had it for 2 weeks. I think that's a good start!

* When I first heard about the Shopaholic series, I expected them to be so dumb**. Who wants to read about someone whose ENTIRE LIFE revolves around shopping? Are you kidding me? And then I was in the library looking for some fluff reading for the beach a few weeks ago, and I was in a hurry, and I found Confessions of a Shopaholic, and I really needed to get back to work so I didn't have time to browse endlessly. So I borrowed it. And I loved it! They're really cute books, Kinsella is a very funny writer (I rarely actually laugh when I'm reading a book, and she makes me laugh a lot), and the main character, while admittedly a bit shallow, is actually a very nice person that I wouldn't mind knowing in real life!

** Given that I also thought this of the Harry Potter series when it first came out (the shame, the shame!) I should have kept a more open mind. It took me until I think Book 4 came out to read the first one, because I was convinced it was just a fad and they'd suck, and I only grudgingly started the first book because a close friend INSISTED that I would LOVE it, and rarely does that. I would have missed out on so much!!!

The joys of a dataless lab meeting

2010-08-20T18:15:00.000-04:00

I have to give lab meeting on Monday, and this summer represents the most unsuccessful 2 months I have ever had in my current lab!

I was supposed to do four things this summer:

1) get Western blots for another lab member's project working on the LiCor Odyssey (a wicked cool, quantitative, 2-color infrared scanner for Westerns)

2) do a bunch of quantitative PCR on tail and MEF DNA from 2 lines of mice to look at the amplicon we found by array CGH, in many more samples than we can afford to analyze by CGH

3) analyze the same DNA by Southern

4) do FISH on cells from the same 2 lines of mice to look for amplification of one particular gene

Let's see how those turned out, shall we?

1) The Westerns are working, thank goodness. I would officially be dead weight otherwise. But I did a lot of these in grad school, so it wasn't too much of a stretch to get them working in this lab. So I don't really deserve a whole lot of credit on this one.

2) qPCR. Designed and ordered 8 primer pairs (one on each side flanking the amplicon as controls, and 6 within the amplicon). Tested them on 6 samples. One pair worked. Ordered 7 primer pairs for round 2. Tested them on 6 samples. No pairs worked. Spent days titrating every possible combination of primer concentrations, for both rounds of primers, trying to find conditions that would amplify and give a good dissociation curve. Nothing worked. Discovered that my PCR products were probably too big for optimal quantitation (hello, they were like 200 bp! What do you want?!?!) and designed new single primers as matches for one of each old primer, that would make a smaller product (apparently they need to be about 70 bp. Back in MY day . . . . . well, never mind). Finally got the new primers in and spent days doing qPCR on every mouse tail DNA sample I have. Turns out there's a HUGE amount of apparent variability in copy number within each genotype, which makes no sense at all. Discover that tail DNA is of relatively low quality and I should try the MEF DNA instead. Try the MEF DNA . . . . . . and it looks like it works. Hurray!!!!!

The problem with this qPCR is that you can only run one 96-well plate at a time, and it takes about 2.5 hours. A 96-well plate only actually gives you 16 samples, because you have to run them in triplicate, each paired with control primers for some other chromosome. Then you have to do this 7 times, once for each primer pair. Then you have to work around the 2 other people in lab who are ALSO trying to do qPCR at the same time. Then you have to be in the lab when each run finishes, because apparently the machine tries to commit suicide if you leave it running overnight. Plus I haven't actually gone through and counted all my samples, but there are a heck of a lot more than 16 of them!

But, actually, I am quite favorable disposed toward qPCR at the moment, because it is the only thing that has pulled my summer out of complete nonproductivity. So, yay qPCR!!!!! For you're a jolly good technique, for you're a jolly good technique, for you're a jolly good te-e-chniiiiiiiiique . . . . . . which gave me some passable data!

3) The Southerns. Ah, yes. The Southerns. Southern blotting, if anyone is unfamiliar with it, is a way to analyze DNA -- you cut it up in specific ways with restriction enzymes, run it out on a gel, transfer it to a nitrocellulose membrane, and then use radioactive pieces of DNA that are complementary to your sequence of interest to see where your sequence is running, how much of it is there, etc. It's kind of a pain because most steps in the procedure require an overnight incubation/run/transfer/whatever, so the minimum time from start to result is about a week. You're not actively working on it for most of that time, but you do have to wait that long for a result. And my lab does a lot of these, but no one had ever looked at my region of interest before, so I had to design the whole strategy myself -- make a huge restriction map, design primers to make candidate probes, order the primers, make the probes (6 of them!) by PCR, gel purify them, and then test them on old blots. How many people think they worked?

You guys are so smart!!! The blots were either totally blank (no signal), or totally black (overexposed from super high background). So I decided that I would use tail DNA (what IS it with tail DNA?!?!? Why does it suck so badly?!?!) to run mini blots so that I could test all the probes at once, to save time. Spent a week on this and got a semi-okay result with ONE of the probes, and nothing with the other 5. Turns out tail DNA sucks all around! So my PI did it himself with some of his old blots, and we got 2 more good-looking probes. At least it's progressing, but it's frustrating that my boss had to do it himself!

And finally, the FISH. This is another way to look at DNA, and stands for fluorescent in situ hybridization. Basically you label a DNA probe (with a fluorescent dye this time, instead of radioactive isotopes) and then hybridize it to cells that have been arrested in metaphase and then fixed and dropped onto slides so that they burst open and their chromosomes spread along the slide. You dye your chromosome of interest with "paint" that colors it either red or green, and coincubate it with a probe labeled with the other color. Then you stain the whole thing with DAPI, which binds nonspecifically to DNA and makes each chromosome show up blue. When you image it (if it works), for each cell that spread you see a field of blue chromosomes, 2 red chromosomes (whichever one you painted) and 2 green dots on each red chromosome (corresponding to the DNA that your probe hybridized to). You can look for various anomalies this way -- missing copies of a gene, extra copies of a gene, translocations moving your gene to a different chromosome. It's pretty cool. But for me, apparently, it doesn't work.

I got labeled probe from one of the grad students in the lab, and hybridized some slides -- lots of noise, no real signal. So I took her DNA prep and relabeled it myself. Hybridized two slides -- no noise, no signal. Went back to the freezer stock and regrew the bacterial cultures up, repurified the DNA, relabeled, hybridized one slide (at least I'm getting smarter about how many slides to stain!), nothing. Tried one more time in duplicate using two different labeling methods -- and it looks like I got specific staining in one spread from one slide. This, boys and girls, is not a successful experiment.

Somehow, by Monday, I have to creatively arrange and massage all of this into a presentation that makes it appear (to the very astute eyes of my PI) that I have not, in fact, spent the summer sitting around eating chocolates and ordering shoes online. Which I have NOT!!!! I really have been working pretty hard, which is what makes it extra frustrating that none of it is working back!

Today might be good!

2010-08-11T10:23:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was kind of annoying. I was in a weird mood for whatever reason (no reason at all, actually, since I've been getting borderline-enough sleep, I started running again [yay, broken toe!], and I've been pretty good about eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and not much caffeine and sugar. Plus I'm not super stressed at work, plus I miss my friends and am actually kind of looking forward to school starting again in a few weeks!) and just felt sort of apathetic about everything. I was dragging my butt around in lab, forcing myself to do things that I really didn't care about doing, feeling like I could just as easily sit and stare at the wall. It was very weird.

THEN I got pissed off because there's a new student rotating through the lab (a very intense, know-it-all type of guy) who idiotically irradiated me because I wasn't paying attention (well, mostly because he's an idiot, but I also should have been watching him more closely). He was labeling probes for a Southern blot, and we do our radiation work in the same room where we store all of our refrigerated and frozen reagents. I had a kind of bad feeling about his level of competence around radiation so I was avoiding that room while he was in there, but later in the afternoon I was putting some things away in the fridge, and he came in behind me. He was standing right behind/next to me, waiting to get into the fridge after I was done, and when I turned to leave I saw that he had been holding a 15mL tube of blazingly radioactive Southern probe about a foot away from me, with NOTHING between it and me! Of course he was shielding himself appropriately, but apparently it escaped his attention that he would need to concern himself with people AROUND him as well. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably not that big a deal -- we all get exposed to radiation every day, and I probably get a bigger dose of irradiation every time I fly across the country than I did standing there for 10 seconds with New Guy exposing me, but it was extremely irresponsible and completely thoughtless, and I'm annoyed. I need to talk to him, because I don't want him to do that to anyone else, but I needed to calm down enough first to do it nicely instead of ripping him a new one. Argh. I don't regenerate ova every 2 weeks like you do sperm, New Guy! I'm old enough as it is!

The evening was nice after I left work, and then I had a nice walk with Mr. Bear this morning. He bit me because I wasn't quick enough to give him his treat (we're doing sets of 15 reps of sit-stand, sit-stand to strengthen his hips, and I give him a treat after every 3rd rep) and he tried to snatch it out of my hand! Little punk. I like it when he's a little feisty, though, because I think he's only like that when he's feeling good, so I hope his PT and massage and fish oil and J/D and everything are helping him. This morning he also wrestled with Monkey before we got out of bed! They never play -- he'll wrestle with Bug a little bit when we get up, but Monkey usually just barks at them. This morning MM took Bug out when he got up (he takes a long time to get ready, so I sleep a little later than he does), so she wasn't there to interfere, and he played with Monkey instead! It was really cute. :)

So, that was the first good thing. The second good thing was that I stopped at the Post Office on my way to work, and my copy of Hondo and Fabian came in!!! Hurray!!!! I hope MM will read it to me as a bedtime story tonight!

The third good thing is that I caved and bought a caramel macchiato -- I LOVE (lovelovelove) them, but they're a) unhealthy and b) expensive, so I try not to buy them. I walk past this coffee shop every single morning on my way to work, and as I pass it I assess my level of desire for a caramel macchiato, and if it's low enough then I talk myself into waiting until tomorrow. I've successfully talked myself into waiting until tomorrow since last Thursday! So this morning I finally did it. And man, is it good!

So, today is looking like a good day so far! I did get stood up this morning, but I can move past that. MM and I were supposed to have a telepathic donut date -- we both kind of wanted a donut last night, but weren't quite in the mood for one right then, so we decided that we would have a donut date this morning! Our jobs are in opposite directions from home, and the closest donut shop is at least a couple of miles away, so we couldn't really have an in-person donut date. So we decided that it would be telepathic -- at 8:45 this morning, we would both eat a donut, and think of each other. But I wanted my coffee a lot more than I wanted a donut, and I didn't want BOTH, so I bailed on the donut. At 9 I texted MM to apologize for standing him up, and he replied that it was okay, because HE didn't have HIS donut, EITHER!!! He totally stood me up!!! (Okay, I stood him up first. But at least I TOLD him about it!). Hmph. I guess I can forgive him if he does a good job reading Hondo and Fabian tonight. :)

Oh! I almost forgot the 4th good thing! We moved lab meeting to noon today becuase my PI has a meeting this morning, so he's going to buy us PIZZA for lunch, to eat during lab meeting!!! How cool is that? It's not quite as good as chocolate cake and children's books, but I certainly realize that I can't expect that every week. :)

Best lab meeting ever

2010-08-04T13:12:00.004-04:00

My PI and his wife are expecting their first baby in a few weeks, so this morning in lieu of lab meeting, we had a surprise baby shower for him. We decided that as gifts, we would all buy a book or two that we loved as children. I was a child so long ago that I couldn’t find any of those books, but I DID find this bit of awesomeness:

The illustrations are beautiful, and Hondo and Fabian are both adorable!!! I was actually tempted to keep it for myself, I love it so much. But then I figured it’s not the only copy in existence, so I gave it to my PI for his baby, and then I went back to lab and ordered a copy on Amazon for myself! I can’t wait to read it again!

The shower was fun. It was even more fun because it meant we got to skip lab meeting and (blech) journal club! My PI was surprised and seemed happy about the shower, although he was disappointed when he realized we weren’t having journal club (I guess that’s how you separate out the hardcore scientists from the people like me, who would much rather read children’s books and eat cake than discuss a paper. This is one of many ways I know I’m not supposed to just be a PI). We made a funny little Powerpoint presentation about the baby, he opened all his gifts while we ate breakfast food and cake, and then we convinced him to read us a story!!! He did a great job – he read Mouse’s First Day of School:

It was a very cute book, and he read it in his “storytelling voice”, and stopped after each page to show us the pictures! It was great! We liked it so much that afterwards, we convinced him to read Fox in Socks, which was also fun (Mouse was better). Then he said we could take a nap, but we all had work to do so we went back to lab.

That was the best lab meeting ever!

Urban wildlife

2010-07-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

I was walking Bear and Red Panda two mornings ago, and we had just turned a corner about 4 blocks from our apartment when I saw a giant rat go flying across the sidewalk -- literally, he was about 2 feet in the air. He landed sternally and started twitching, and I assume he'd been poisoned. He unfortunately was only about 3 feet in front of us when he took his last leap, so of course both dogs thought this was the MOST EXCITING THING EVER!!!!!!!!!! and it was difficult to convince them that we really should move on.

Bear was interested, but Red Panda really wanted to catch (I guess I should say "catch", since he was just laying there at that point) the rat. She's actually a pretty good hunter -- in my old city, where we had a fenced backyard, she would occasionally catch a bird out of the air. The birds would sit on our lawn, and when I let the dogs out, sometimes one of them would be just a little too slow to take off, and Red Panda would leap into the air and grab him as he tried to fly away. I started having to yell at the birds through the closed screen door before I let the dogs out, to give them time to get away (yeah, my neighbors loved me!)

But now that we don't have a yard, she's only walked on-leash and being attached to me seriously slows her down. So she settles for "catching" dead things. Last week MM was walking her, and she "caught" a dead squirrel. He was just laying by the sidewalk, and when they walked past, she grabbed him. MM was turned the other way watching Monkey (making sure she doesn't chomp a stranger occupies a lot of our attention when we walk her) and when he turned back around again, Red Panda was trotting merrily toward him, head high and tail waving proudly, with her "catch" dangling from her mouth! He yelled (in a very tough and manly way, I'm assured) and startled her into dropping it and then yanked her away. Poor baby Panda -- she was so proud of herself, and no one appreciated her efforts at all!

The rat was still there when I walked Bear last night. I went to visit him, and to make sure he was really dead. I feel bad for him just laying there on the sidewalk by himself, with no one to care whether he's still alive. I thought about burying him, but I'm not sure where I would do that, having no yard. I also felt bad for him having to die of what appeared (I've never seen a rat jump like that before!) to be a painful poisoning. Most rodenticides are anticoagulants, so you die from internal bleeding, and I would think you'd just be lethargic and exercise-intolerant and eventually you'd slip into unconsciousness. I bet this was bromethalin, which causes convulsions and hyperexcitability. Anyway, when we first saw him, and he was just laying there gasping, I briefly thought about cervically dislocating him to end it quickly, but I was worried that he might be more reactive than he looked and would suddenly jump up and bite me, causing me to scream in a much less tough and manly way than MM did when Red Panda "caught" the dead squirrel, not to mention the fact that I don't really need a set of puncture wounds from a ROUS and of unknown history. So partly I was visiting him to make myself feel less guilty about leaving him there that morning (if he'd still been alive I would have caught him and . . . . . I don't know what I would have done after that). This makes absolutely no sense at all, because I have no problem at all* with killing mice that are making disgusting messes in my apartment, and I would sure as HELL kill a rat that got into my apartment! I guess the difference is that I use traps that kill them quickly, so that they won't be in pain.

I went to visit him again this morning, and he was gone! I wonder what happened to him?

* Well, I feel bad about it. But I still do it. Especially if I've been finding mouse poop in my pantry and holes chewed through boxes of food!

Would you rather . . . . .

2010-07-05T16:10:00.003-04:00

Yesterday MM and I went down to the beach for the evening. Two of our friends are there for the week, and invited us down to see the fireworks, so we headed out as soon as we finished at work. The drive there was great -- no traffic, took about 90' including a stop for gas and dinner, and we had a GREAT time watching the fireworks on the beach! It was an excellent show -- lots of variety, probably 30' long, and we were only about 400 yards from where they were firing everything off, and it was so loud I could feel each explosion in my ribs, and dazzlingly bright, and everything a fireworks display should be. :) We even had little pieces of cardboard raining down on us from the explosions! Plus it was really nice to see our friends. We probably won't see them again until our other friends' wedding in a few weeks.

We headed home around 10:30, and in the first 90 minutes managed to go 3.4 miles. Seriously, I could have hopped there on one foot faster than we drove! The problem was that we were on a little island, with 3 toll bridges being the only way off. So the thousands of people who'd come to see the fireworks were cramming onto these 3 tiny bridges, and it took forever. When we finally got there and paid our $1.50 toll, I was ready to kill the bridge authority! I just wasted AN HOUR AND A HALF of my LIFE to give you a DOLLAR AND FIFTY CENTS?!?!?!?!?

Anyway. To pass the time (the unending, interminable, painfully slow time) we started playing Would You Rather. You know, where you make up a pair of options and the other person has to choose between them? Most of them are extremely silly (I asked MM if he would rather go to work covered in glitter, or wearing purple eyeshadow. He chose the glitter, because he thought he could explain that away as an accident more plausibly than he could explain purple eyeshadow!). Eventually, after maybe an hour, he asked me my favorite ever Would You Rather:

MM: "Would you rather have . . . . . . . . a dog that could talk and think for herself, but wouldn't necessarily make the right decisions, or a regular dog?"

LIVS: "What do you mean, 'make the right decisions'?"

MM: "Like . . . if they could talk and think for themselves, but they always wanted to go . . . . . . . to the circus. They were ALWAYS asking to go to the circus -- '[in a little dog voice] I want to go to the circus! I want to go to the circus! I want to go to the circus!' -- ALL the TIME, and it was like, 'NO, we're NOT going to the freaking CIRCUS!!!'"

LIVS: [laughing so hard I couldn't talk]

Where the heck did the circus come from? And why was he so exasperated? He sounded like someone had actually been pestering him nonstop for days to go to the circus! Which, as far as I know, none of our dogs have.

I eventually decided on a regular dog, which really surprised me. We agreed on the terms of the talking dog as having a dog that can talk, and is the cognitive equivalent of a three year old, who really might spend all day and all night incessantly pestering you to play with her, feed her, pet her, give her a chew, throw her toy, pay attention to her . . . . . I would LOVE to be able to talk with my dogs, but having a permanent three-year-old would be too exhausting.

I did propose, a few months ago, getting one of those phones with giant buttons like the ones assistance dogs can be trained to use to call 911. It would have multiple buttons, and we would train the dogs to use the phone in emergencies. I live in fear of our building catching fire when we're not there, and this way the dogs could CALL US and tell us there was a fire and we could come home and rescue them! It could also have a button for Intruder Alert, an Illness/Injury button . . . . I don't know what else. Originally I wanted a button for when they need food, but MM said I would get 3,698 phone calls every day saying, "Mom, I'm hungry." "Mom, I'm hungry." "Mom, I'm hungry." so we nixed that one.

I'm not sure how to teach them concepts as complex as fire and illness and how to connect them to a button on a phone, though.

Week 4

2010-07-03T12:58:00.001-04:00

I can't believe a MONTH of my LAST EVER summer break is already over!!!

It's been a decent month; the first 2 weeks I worked like a maniac trying to get my poster finished for a conference. It was worth it, the conference was awesome -- the students got to sit in on the agency's study section! I got to hear what they liked and didn't like about dozens of grants, and I noticed that 4 or 5 issues were brought up over and over again with the grants they rejected. One thing that surprised me was that they REALLY hated over-ambitious proposals -- that was probably the #1 cause of death. I knew it wasn't a good thing, but I didn't think it would be the primary reason why grant after grant was rejected. They were more likely to fund a kind of bland, solid but not exciting grant that was definitely doable in the funding period, than a super exciting grant that they didn't think would get finished in time. It was a fabulous learning experience. And the hotel where they held the conference was great! We each got our own room, and the beds were sooooo comfortable, the food was good, they had vats of ice water with cucumber slices or lemon or orange wedges in it (I LOVE cucumber water! I'd never had it before, but it's great! And how easy is it to just slice up a cuke and throw it in a pitcher of water?).

Hobbling my way through the airport with 2 carry-ons, crutches, and my broken toe was less fun. I got an amazing upper body workout! I could barely move my arms the next day. But luckily, once I got to the hotel, I didn't really need to go anywhere except from my room to the conference room to the patio for meals, so I mostly left the crutches in my room and just walked very carefully. There was a big dinner on the last night that all the trustees and major donors attended, and I wore a black dress to match my black orthopedic boot. :)

When I got back I chilled a little on the lab schedule. This is my 5th day back, and so far I've never worked later than 9 PM, and twice I got home by 6:30! I cooked dinner! We took the dogs for long walks! Watched tv! Cleaned! It's been great. I think this is what it's like to be a normal person with a normal job! :) It's pretty fun!

I started taking Bear to physical therapy because he has a lot of muscle wasting in his hips. He has hip dysplasia and some osteoarthritis, and I was worried that he may also have some neurologic abnormalities. Luckily doing treatments in Medicine has allowed me to get to know a couple of the neurologists, and one of them took a look at him last weekend and thinks he's okay neurologically. (Whew). I was really worried about degenerative myelopathy since he's a shepherd mix, and I still need to do bloodwork to rule it out, but Dr. Neuro thought it was unlikely. So now we have a program of exercise (I think the physical therapist underestimated his fitness level -- she told me to start him at 7-8 minutes of uninterrupted [ie, not his usual walk 10 feet - sniff - pee - walk 6 feet - sniff - pee routine] walking 3x/day and work up gradually from there, and back off if he seems painful after a walk. I've been walking him 2x/day for 6-8 blocks, which takes 20-30 minutes, and is only a little more than his previous distance, and he seems fine with that so I'm going to continue it. I would love to add a third walk, and he does go out to pee a 3rd time, but I get home from work late enough that the 2nd and 3rd walks wouldn't be separated by enough of an interval to really make them separate workouts. I'm planning to add a 3rd workout on the weekends and leave the weekdays as 2x/day for the most part.), stretching, massage, and strengthening exercises.

So a chunk of each evening this week has been occupied with that, and I may be suffering from placebo effect and wishful thinking, but I think he seems a tiny bit better today than he did a week ago. When I walked him this morning (gorgeous outside!!! I didn't want to go to work!) he was prancing happily along, not seeming stiff or painful at all. I love when he's like that. :)

We also ordered a set of stairs to help him get on and off the bed (he can do it himself but it's kind of high, and Dr. Neuro thinks he has - and I agree - a couple of type II discs and should be limited in jumping on and off things) and put down a rug in the living room that we bought about a year and a half ago and which has been rolled up in a corner since then (still in the plastic wrapper!) to give him better traction on the wooden floors. I hope it all helps!

Today we're going to take a picnic dinner to the park where we got married a year ago! We're taking the fuzzbottoms (they were our ring-bearers :) ) and it's a little hilly so I hope that will be good exercise for Bear. The pits are going to stay home with a big stuffed Kong for Bug and a thick slab of rawhide chew for Monkey (they're just too crazy for polite company. Plus WE want to be able to eat our dinner, not spend the entire evening tackling Bug to get her out of the food). I need to leave work and go grocery shopping, and start cooking!

Back stories

2010-07-02T16:56:00.002-04:00

Our back stories for the dogs (especially the pits) have been expanding lately, and I was wondering if anyone else has these stories about their dogs (or cats).

(I also have been noticing lately that I pay a LOT of attention to Bug -- she is the butt of at least a dozen jokes a day, her nicknames have proliferated completely out of control -- Old Chicken Bone is the latest, which I will address in a minute -- I sing to her, dance with her, play with her, talk to her, and just generally INTERACT with her more than with any of the other dogs! Even though I LOVE the other dogs MORE than her! How does that make sense?

I think it's because she's a squeaky wheel. She's like that annoying kid in class who's always talking when he's not supposed to, jumping out of his seat, getting into fights with the other kids, spilling paint everywhere, eating paste, being a maniac on the monkey bars, telling jokes in the middle of class, interrupting conversations, and just generally being a pain in the neck . . . . . . . . but who gradually, insidiously grows on you until you realize you LIKE him!

She definitely has a TON of personality. Unfortunately most of it is annoying personality, but she's overflowing with it. She is absolutely hilarious, and is always underfoot -- even Bear, who follows me around to the point that he sits against the side of the tub while I'm in the shower, waiting for me to get out, can often be found snoozing on the bed by himself. Not Bug. If I happen to notice that she's not around, I sprint into the other room to see what trouble she's getting into, because it's guaranteed that if she's alone, it's because she's Up to No Good. So I guess it's that she's always soliciting interaction . . . . . . but whatever the reason, I feel bad about it! I love Bear way more than I love her, and I don't pay nearly as much attention to him.)

Anyway, back to the back stories.

I used to have a little lab mix, a beautiful little dog, whom my ex-boyfriend kept when we broke up. She is the crown princess of a small eastern European country, and her parents (the current rulers) are very progressive and have worked all their lives to establish democracy. This is anathema to some of the families currently very powerful under the old system, and there have been numerous assassination attempts. So Bella went into hiding, for protection. When her parents eventually die, she will have to return to her home country and assume leadership. I hope this doesn't happen for many years, but I understand that her people need her.

Bug. Where do I start? Bug was pretty young when we met her, so she doesn't have as much experience in the world as the other dogs. She fell in with the wrong crowd at a very young age and became a gang member. She's famous on the streets for being able to safely eat chicken bones (or so she insisted the other night when she wanted the leftovers from the fried chicken I made for dinner) and was known as Chicken Bone Wiwi (the Wiwi is a nickname of a nickname -- it's a long story. Okay, a different long story). We suspect that she may be involved in drugs, possibly using the mice that live in our building as runners to supply her with methamphetamines and crack, which helps maintain her exhaustingly manic energy level. There . . . . . . . is a rumor that when she lived on the street she may have been involved in prostitution, but we sincerely hope that this is fabrication. I hesitate to write that since it may just be propagating a lie, but since neither she nor anyone she knows will ever read this, I guess it's not doing any harm.

So does anyone have any good histories on their dogs? Have they led lives as interesting as my dogs did before I met them? :)

Blah

2010-06-21T21:18:00.003-04:00

Today is a blah day.

I woke up tired from getting home from work too late and not getting enough sleep.

When I was walking Bug (extremely anxious -> dog-aggressive Bug) this morning, I crossed the street to avoid a foufy little white dog that was coming toward us. When we got almost to the opposite sidewalk (we were still in the street, between 2 parked cars) I heard a loud rustling coming from the bushes in the yard in front of us, and thought, "Wow, that is one big squirrel!". And then out of the bushes popped a big dog! He was behind a fence, so I just gave a mild "Oh, shit" and started to check for traffic to see if I could cross the street again back to our original block. There were cars coming, so I turned around again to see how freaked out Bug was (she FREAKS. OUT. when she sees another dog. Our other pit mix needed a bunch of stitches and a freaking DRAIN the last time we ran into a strange dog together -- and by "ran into", I mean "barely glimpsed minding his own business about a block and a half away". And she's chomped MM's leg on several occasions (punctures! bruising! abrasions!) when Monkey wasn't around to bear the brunt of her fury. So we're on a strict solo-walking program, so that she won't associate scary experiences with strange dogs with any of OUR dogs, because it makes her more likely to fight with her sibs).

She was staring at the other dog, and I was starting to do my chirpy, "You're okay! It's okay, little Bug! Let's go this way! Let's go!" intended to convey that everything is A-okay and she doesn't need to get upset. I had barely even opened my mouth when the big dog popped right out between two bars of his fence like it wasn't even there and came trotting inquisitively over to us! That's when I panicked. Bug thinks every encounter with a strange dog (and sometimes a familiar one, if a strange dog is nearby) is a fight to the death, and if she started shit with this dog three times her size with no owner in sight, at least one of us (probably all three) would be going home with serious injuries. Since I couldn't cross the street because of the traffic, and I couldn't get to the sidewalk because that's where the strange dog was, we were stuck between the parked cars. So I started yelling at the dog, trying to scare him away -- "Get out of here! Go! Go home! Get away! Get AWAY!!! GO!!!!!!!!!" which didn't dissuade him in the least (he looked mildly confused). I was holding a bag of poop, which I started swinging at him in a shooing motion, trying to get him to at least turn around so they weren't face to face. He could not have cared less about any of that, and kept getting closer and closer, wanting to meet Bug.

To his credit (and my great luck) he was a very laid-back, friendly brindled pit, and all he wanted to do was say hi and maybe play. The pit thing was lucky because I think Bug freaks out a little less about pits (being a pit mix herself and probably understanding their body language better) than about other types of dog.

But, since he was so laid-back and friendly, his only reaction to the crazy woman screaming at him and swinging poop toward his head was mild puzzlement, so he kept getting closer (darn him!). I started backing away, because what else could I do? (Yes, toward traffic. No, it probably wasn't the best idea. But I didn't have any OTHER ideas, and I couldn't very well let them make contact, because a fight involving Bug is really scary. Really, really scary. In retrospect, I think I should have thrown the poop bag at him, followed by both of my shoes if that didn't work. I didn't have a lot of time to think through a strategy at that moment, though). So, I was backing away, still yelling, pulling Bug back with me, and I somehow caught the front edge of my flip-flop (I think. I'm really not sure what happened) on the pavement and tripped myself, bending my foot all the way forward and falling over sideways (yes, yes, into traffic. Luckily it's a wide lane).

From my strategic vantage point on the ground, I continued screaming at the dog to go away, while he continued to look at me quizzically as he stepped closer to play with Bug (dude. She doesn't play. She's the dog equivalent of an assassin. Just go away, please?). Finally the owner came out and grabbed the dog, said he didn't know how the dog had gotten out, I scraped myself off the pavement and apologized for screaming like a banshee at his poor dog who clearly only wanted to make a new friend, he retrieved both of my shoes (yes, both shoes had flown off when I crash-landed) and apologized, looking about as confused as his dog, and we parted ways.

Now I'm that crazy lady. That crazy lady who throws poop at other dogs and screams insanely at them, when all they want to do is play. Who does all this while laying on the ground, in the street, with both shoes off, and her bright blue bra TOTALLY on display over the top of the very stretched-out gray tank top she threw on to walk the dogs. Seriously -- you could see about half the bra.

I limped home on my scratched and bruised foot, and gradually came to realize that my right big toe was becoming about three times the size of its counterpart, while turning lovely shades of blue, green, yellow, and purple. After I got the rest of the dogs taken care of, I limped the mile to work in my flip-flops, since my toe was so swollen and painful that I couldn't put any actual shoes on. I don't think it's broken, but I went to the doctor (after my labmates harassed me all morning) who ordered radiographs, and I tried to negotiate for waiting until next week (since I leave for a conference on Thursday and I'm BUSY, DAMNIT!) and seeing how it's doing then (it's a TOE!!! What are they going to do for it? Give me a boot thingy and maybe tape it up? We don't need x-rays for that!) but he gave me this horror story about what if the fracture involves the joint capsule (I need my feet to run, you know), so I'll probably go tomorrow.

Unless it feels better, in which case I'm totally not going, because I don't think a fracture -- involving the joint capsule -- would improve significantly in 24 hours.

Then I limped around (pathetically) on my giant, painful toe all day. And now it's 10 PM and I'm still at (sigh) work, and my data look like SHIT!!!!! I knew this would happen -- anytime you need data NOW, like for a poster, or a seminar, or a really important lab meeting, experiments are GUARANTEED to not work. They might be technical fails, or they might be technically beautiful and show that your hypothesis is wrong, wrong, wrong. I seem to have gotten some of both today, which was a lovely surprise. Usually it's just one or the other. But man, after all the hours I put in this week . . . . . . . having nothing to show for it is a giant bummer.

I'm going home. At least I ran yesterday morning. Thank goodness, because it will clearly be days before I can run again! And MM just texted me to say that he picked up a grilled cheese sandwich for me, for dinner! I LOVE grilled cheese! AND, I'm massively impressed with Bug, who in the end actually did nothing to either me or the poor dog I was practically attacking. I wonder if she was so impressed with the intensity of my reaction that she felt like she didn't need to add anything to it herself? Maybe that can be my strategy for surprise encounters with strange dogs from now on. If I don't mind being sent for a psychiatric evaluation, anyway.

I WANT TO GO RUNNING!!!

2010-06-19T22:56:00.003-04:00

This week has been CRAZY at work! I'm trying to finish up a bunch of experiments and make a kick-ass poster for a meeting I'm going to next week, and this combination has resulted in a bunch of very long days. Thursday I worked from 7 to 8 AM in the hospital, then from 8:15 AM to 9 PM in lab. Yesterday I worked from 7 to 8:30 AM in the hospital, then from 8:45 AM to 10:15 PM in lab. Now it's 11 PM on Saturday night, and I'm genotyping mice and doing cell death assays. And I haven't run in a LONG TIME!!!!

I can always tell when it's been too long since my last run. I get cranky, tired, easily upset by stupid little things, distracted more than is necessary by anything negative that happens, and I don't sleep as well. The bright side is that with 14-16 hour workdays, I'm tired enough when I get home that I have no trouble sleeping. But the downside is that with 14-16 hour workdays, I'm not getting enough sleep, which amplifies the rest of the crappy mood stuff.

So I really need a run. I meant to go last night, but at 11 PM it wasn't happening. Then I meant to get up early and go before my hospital shift this morning, but I was way too tired. Then I meant to go when I got done in lab tonight, but . . . . it's 11 PM.

Hopefully I'll MAKE the time tomorrow morning to go before I come in to work. I'm worried that it's going to be another really late night, because we have a family barbecue in the afternoon, so I'm going to lose several hours from the middle of the day. But I don't want to get the extra time by stealing it from running! And really, how much difference is 45 minutes going to make at work, versus how much difference it will make to me personally?

Summer has begun

2010-06-17T12:42:00.003-04:00

This blog is kind of dead during the summer. Who wants to hear about PCR, Westerns, FISH, cell culture, hours spent poring over Excel worksheets, FACS, and RNA isolation?

[crickets]

Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm as excited about writing about all that stuff as you are about reading it. So . . . .

I'm not even running, it's so hot outside. All right, it's not THAT hot. I'm just a wuss. I should run tonight -- hopefully it will be cool enough to take the dogs, they need the exercise too. Bug has been INSANE the past couple of days (no fights, just bouncing off the walls) and needs to blow off some steam.

I started work the day after Memorial Day, and picked up my project from last summer right where I left off. I'm also trying to get a paper (the never-ending-paper-that-hopefully-will-be-published-by-the-time-I-apply-for-residency-but-I'm-not-holding-my-breath paper) submitted, and I got thrown a bone of sorts, in that a grad student in the lab is trying to graduate and needs a couple more things done on her paper, so my PI asked me to do them. If all goes well (so far it's not, but I knew that's how science goes) they'll be relatively quick and easy, and give me authorship on her paper, which would be really nice because my CV is looking a little short. A lot short. My publications are at the very bottom of the first page, and other things start on the second page, and I would bet money that when someone looks at it they think the middle page (where all the REST of my publications are listed) somehow got left out when I printed it! So, I'm busy with all of that stuff, but it's extremely different from sitting in class all day listening to someone spout endless amounts of information at me, all of which has to be memorized. And when I go home at night, I'm done!!! I don't have anything to study! That is a REALLY nice feeling.

(Of course, I frequently get home at 8:30 or 9 PM and have just enough time to nuke some leftovers, walk the dogs, and shower before going to bed, but STILL -- I don't have to study!)

You know, I had this grand vision of all this free time over the summer. A typical day would go like this:

7A - wake up, eat breakfast, feed and walk dogs, get dressed for work
8:30A - get to work
all day - work
6:30 P - get home, take dogs out
7P - MM gets home, we make a delicious, healthy dinner together and talk and laugh while we eat
8:30P - we walk over to the neighborhood ice cream shop and get dessert
9P - play a game, watch tv, take the dogs for a long walk, or read together for an hour
10P - go to bed in time to be very well-rested tomorrow!

So far, that has yet to happen even once. We've done fun things, and I've definitely left work before 8 PM several times, but I only manage to do that by frantically racing around all day and then leaving a pile of stuff to catch up on the next day, and then we're out doing whatever it is we left work early to do, so there haven't been any relaxing-at-home evenings. Maybe next week. Oh, wait -- I have to get ready for (and then travel to) a conference next week. Okay, maybe the week after.

We drove up to New Hampshire for a wedding last weekend. It was really fun -- the bride is a friend from school, so several of our friends were there, and NH is gorgeous. We took a 4-day weekend (two full days were spent driving, though!) and walked on the beach, got really good coffee from a little village coffeeshop, played miniature golf, ate fresh seafood -- it was a nice little vacation. :) And this weekend I think we're going to go fruit-picking!!! I LOVE fruit-picking -- I'm not really sure why, because it doesn't really seem like it would be that exciting, and (around here, at least) it's not really any cheaper than just buying stuff at the grocery store. But for whatever reason, I LOVE it. So does MM, which works out very nicely. :)

That's about it. I have a bunch of cell culture and mouse work to do this afternoon, which I'm super excited about (yay) but hopefully won't be here very late.

Sweet weekend

2010-05-31T19:04:00.003-04:00

This was a great weekend. :)

Friday I went out with a bunch of friends right after our last final, and we drank, talked and laughed for almost 6 hours, and then I (being old), was tired and had to go home to sleep. I don't even know how long the rest of them stayed out! It was a ton of fun. :)

Saturday I woke up early (because I'm used to waking up at some ridiculous hour, panicking about my seat in the library) and then realized I don't NEED a seat in the library! Haw, yeah. Went back to sleep for 3 more hours (the puppies were so cooperative. Bless their little hearts). Got up and fed/walked the dogs, then went to brunch with 2 of my best friends. After brunch, I spent the rest of the day (MM was out with a friend he rarely sees, and then at work for a couple of hours) hanging out with the dogs, running errands (I found a gift card to Ann Taylor, who was having a 40% off sale! And there's a store just a couple of miles from my apartment! That worked out very well.) and reading. I'm reading a book about a werewolf, and it's actually very entertaining. I'll be a little sad to finish it. And then when MM got home, we took a nap! And not because either of us had been up until 2 AM studying, just because we wanted to! That was really cool. Then we took a walk (we were on a mission to find Jelly Bellies for my sister), and got ice cream, and stayed up late reading. Novels, not textbooks!

Sunday we got up around 9, I ran the dogs, made polenta and ratatouille to take to my dad's bbq, we visited my grandfather briefly on the way there, and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at my dad's house. We ate an unbelievable amount of food (including 5 pounds of snow crabs!!!), jumped in the pool whenever we got hot, and hung out and talked all afternoon. We were so tired when we got home that we went to bed at 9:30!

Today we got up at 9:30, fed/walked the dogs, I took Mr. Bear for a longer walk (not too long, since it's really hot!) which was really nice since he was sadly neglected during finals. :( Then we ran errands, including buying a new air conditioner! Yay! Our old one had to be set to 65 F and run constantly to cool the bedroom to a sleepable temperature, which we figured was costing us a fortune in electricity. So we found a relatively inexpensive new one, and brought it home and installed it (that was mostly MM. I cheered for him, and attached the little rubber curtain things that go on the sides to block out the hot air, and . . . . . yeah, that was pretty much it.). And it is already SO much cooler in here than it was with the old one! That's really important, at night -- I like to sleep in a freezing cold room with lots of blankets. And when it's even just moderately warm, when you add 4 big dogs who all like to sleep squinched up against us, it gets very, very hot.

We also went to brunch (delicious challah french toast! And amazing omelet! Oh, and iced coffee! I really love iced coffee. I made a pot as soon as we got home and stuck it in the fridge so we'll have some tomorrow!) and to the grocery store, and then we watched tv for an hour, cooked the leftover steaks from Dad's yesterday (he sent us home with the steaks they didn't cook! How awesome is that?!), and read some more.

The only work I did all weekend was taking the trash out today, and sort of peripherally helping MM install the air conditioner (I forgot -- I also said helpful things like, "Is this screwdriver magnetic? Why on earth don't we have a magnetic screwdriver?" and "Well, as long as it doesn't fall out of the window, I think it will be okay." I don't know what he'd do without me!). And it was GREAT!!!!!!!

I'm not even that upset about going back to work tomorrow. I like my job, I like my boss, I like my coworkers, I like getting paid, it's a pretty nice setup. I wouldn't kick and scream if someone said they'd pay me for another week to lay on the couch with the dogs reading novels, but I haven't seen any ads in the Help Wanted section for stuff like that lately. So this is a pretty good backup plan. I work long hours, but I'm actually being productive, and there's relatively little danger that I'll fail anything (I'm looking at you, Test from Hell!!!), and it's extremely different from the kind of work I do in vet school, so it's a nice change of pace.

(I just went back and re-read this post. I sure do like those exclamation points, huh? I should ration them -- maybe 10 per post. I wonder if I could do it?)

Things I like

2010-05-29T13:15:00.001-04:00

Uniball Signo bit UM-201 0.28mm gel ink pen.

I love this pen. Unfortunately I only bought the 0.28mm in blue ink (and I study with black ink), so I need to buy a black one, but (since my last final was today!!!!!!!!) it can wait. I bought a black one in the 0.18 mm -- skip it. It's so fine it's like trying to write with a needle, and it's scratchy and irritating and not enough ink comes out so the lines are really faint.

My seat in the library. I got there at 1 PM on Thursday, and someone was LEAVING just as I got there, and it just so happened she'd been sitting in my favorite seat! Score!

(I don't have a picture of my seat in the library. How dorky do you guys think I am?!?).
(That was a rhetorical question.)

Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

This is not my favorite flavor. Chocolate Therapy is the ice cream that I dream about. But they only sell it in the scoop shops, not in pints in the store, darn them!!!

Jack's Links beef jerky. More specifically, the teriyaki beef nuggets. Wow. I ate an entire bag yesterday! I didn't mean to (I don't think beef jerky is very healthy), but it was on sale, so of course I had to buy some (plus I haven't had beef jerky in maybe a year), and then I just barely managed to stop myself after half the bag. After all, MM wasn't home yet and he would want some, too! Then he got home and decided he liked the traditional jerky (also bought a bag of that) better, and that was all I needed to hear. Inhaled the rest of the bag.

Could explain why I ended up chugging 0.75L of water an hour later -- all of a sudden I was so thirsty I couldn't take it!

Puppy feet!!!

Have you ever seen handsomer feet than this? Look at those little feathers of blond fur. Look how he has all 4 of his feet tucked together -- the dogs always remind me of Olympic divers when they sleep like this, for some reason. Not that I've ever seen an Olympic diver in a position like that, but hey. I love the little depression on the bottom, right above the metacarpal pad, and I love that they smell like popcorn!

Zero Motivation

2010-05-27T17:06:00.004-04:00

I've been working on this one lecture for the past 2.5 hours. It's a simple lecture, by a professor I really like, who's interesting and concise and always clinically relevant. And instead of finishing it, I've bought a bunch of songs on iTunes, gone to the convenience store twice, checked my email about 18 times, read 8 other blogs, and bought a pair of jeans (Nordstrom is having their half-yearly sale if anyone's interested).

A lot of the problem is that it's the last 2 days of second year, and my brain has checked out. And MORE of the problem is that I calculated my grade in this class, and I need a 100% to get an A (obviously, not going to happen!). On the other hand, I need a 66% to get a B (should be able to do that in my sleep). So I feel like any studying I do at this point is not going to matter at all, so why bother?

And then I remember that -- hello -- I'm going to be a DOCTOR who has a RESPONSIBILITY to her patients, and it would be nice if I actually KNEW something, especially since some of this material is on very common diseases. Sometimes I feel like such a little grade grubber, it's disgusting! I actually CARE about learning this stuff! Who cares if I'm going to get a B no matter what? I should still learn it!

But then I think, who am I kidding? I'm going to learn all this again in clinics, when I really need to know it.

I'm going to turn the computer off, now.

New favorite breakfast

2010-05-27T11:45:00.003-04:00

This might be trouble. Well, it could be worse -- donuts would be worse. Coffee cake. Belgian waffles (actually, they take so long to make that they're almost irrelevant since I would never make them more than once a month). You get the idea.

Chocolate banana smoothie

1 ripe banana, broken into pieces and frozen
1/2 packet chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast powder
1/2 scoop vanilla whey powder
enough milk to make the blender work

Throw ingredients into blender.
Blend.

It is SO GOOD!!!!!!!! I just had one an hour ago, and I'm already craving another one. Except we only had 2 bananas, and I need to save the other one for MM so that he can see how delicious this concoction is, too! Argh!!!

I need more bananas, stat.

Countdown to Anesthesia

2010-05-24T19:54:00.004-04:00

Friday
Got either a C or an F (it's okay; it's a small, totally BS class in which I attended exactly 1 lecture [major tactical error, as it turns out], and I'll either be able to just retake the exam or remediate the class over the summer [horrors!!! Let me just retake the exam, PLEASE. If I put one more day of studying into this, I can get an A -- it's literally about 1,002 unrelated pieces of trivia, from which they pick 50 to ask MC questions about, and that's our grade. If I pass the re-exam, the F disappears and is replaced by a nice, shiny, um, . . . . . D.]

{yeah, that bone-chilling wail you just heard was the sound of my internal medicine residency slipping away . . . . No, really, though -- I have other redeeming qualities, it's only a 2-credit class (out of like 45 credits this semester) and I'm sure I can come up with a very reasonable explanation for it for cover letters and interviews. . . . . Do I need another parenthesis here? I lost count. Let me go back and check . . . . whoa! I started this aside way up after "F"! You know what I like about Excel? When you write equations with multiple parentheses, it makes them all different colors, and highlights the pair whenever you close one, and tells you if one is missing! I love that!}).

What was I just talking about? . . . . . . oh, right! The test from hell. So ANYWAY, I had TFH Friday morning, it owned me, I went home crushed and incredulous, quickly assessed the damage (hence the re-exam vs remediation thing), and went right back to studying.

Yeah, I wish. Actually (it's all true up until "went right back to studying") I spent the evening moping around, reviewing every page of my notes and handouts for the class so I could figure out EXACTLY what my grade was (I couldn't figure it out), had some excellent puppy cuddling, and went to sleep at 9:30!!!!! 9:30 at night!!!! That's FIVE WHOLE HOURS before my average (median, and mode) bedtime all week!

Saturday
7:30 AM -- It was AMAZING how much better I felt when I woke up! I could have slept for another 4 hours, easily, but I had to study. Actually I had to get to the library -- I might have told you about my seat before. In case I didn't, here's the thing: our library is extremely small. It has enough desks for maybe . . . . 40 people? It's very rarely full, but that's not what matters -- the problem is that there are only 3 acceptable seats in the library. An acceptable seat:

faces the entrance
is on the window side (each pair of attached desks has a window side and an aisle side)
is next to a window unobstructed by a support beam
has a working light mounted on it
is far enough back that the noisier people who hang out by the entrance are less audible
has a divider on the shelf above the desk (30% of the desks have a divider -- which blocks your view of the rest of the room and therefore many distractions -- the rest are open to the room)

Surprisingly enough, there are many people who share my taste in library seats, so if I don't get there within 10 minutes of opening, odds are I'll be stuck at an inferior desk, where I'll be approximately 42% less productive than I would be at a good desk. That's a problem.

Anyway, I got up (my alarm was set for 30' later, but as soon as I first woke up I started worrying about my library seat [once again, things I can't believe I admit to!] so I got up then), packed about 22 pounds of lunch and dinner, and headed for the trenches.

9:07 AM -- arrive at library, notice that it's closed. Sit at a table to print out some notes and organize things.

10:04 AM -- library opens, I'm the second person in the door, and I get a good seat! Hurray! The day is off to an auspicious start. Sit down, unpack, and start studying.

11:08 AM -- decide I need caffeine and run down the street to the convenience store

12:45 PM -- check my email, which turns into 20 minutes on Three Woofs and a Woo. Oh, well -- there are certainly worse things I could be doing. :)

1:30 PM -- back to studying

(and so on)

8 PM -- get kicked out of library because it's closing (okay, WHATEVER. Like no one wants to be in the library at 8:00 on a Saturday night?!? What the heck crazy kind of closing time is that?!?)

8:15 PM -- after testing out various locations around the library building as my new potential study spot, gave up and headed for super-secret-study-spot and got back to work.

12:15 AM -- so tired. Go home. MM is still awake, we re-introduce ourselves (check it out, there's a cute guy in my living room!) and then go to bed.

Sunday
7:30 AM -- woke up (same library-seat stress as yesterday. Sometimes I think this might not be normal) and ran Bug, who is a slightly less-evil little dog if she gets some exercise, took a shower, ate a quick breakfast, packed another mega meal set, and walked over to the library.

9:54 AM -- Huh. The library is already open (it's not supposed to open until 10). Well, it's okay -- it's nearly empty. Head back to my seat from yesterday and stop short -- there's someone in it. (deep breath). Well, that's okay, there are two more good seats. Turn around and head for the next one -- there's someone in it! What is going ON here? Why is this guy in my seat? Does he even KNOW why it's such a good seat? Does he care? Did he show up early to get that exact seat because he gets 42% more work done in it, or did he just randomly come in and plop his stuff down somewhere? I'm betting the latter! Okay, well, the third seat is a little inferior because the window is actually partly blocked by a beam, but it's better than an aisle-near-the-front-with-no-divider, so I guess it will have to do. Turn around to go sit over there . . . . . . . . . there's . . . there's someone sitting in it. There are THREE people in the library (besides me) and ALL of them are in the good seats. There are no good seats left.

I could go home and study there . . . but the dogs and MM will distract me all day (plus, we saw how well studying at home worked out for Friday's exam, didn't we!). I could go study in the super-secret-study-spot, but I'm not technically supposed to be there, so it's okay in the middle of the night when the odds of discovery are very low, but I don't want to ruin it by getting busted in the middle of the day.

So I sit down in the seat that used to be my favorite before they moved the dividers around and it no longer had one, and reluctantly start getting my books and notes out. Realize I'm hungry and take ten minutes to run to the coffee shop a block away, and get a good coffee and an egg & cheese sandwich. Smuggle the sandwich (verboten) back into the library (the coffee is allowed), unwrap it as quietly as I can, and eat it while I try to study. I can see the whole library. What if someone sits in the desk facing me?!? Finally decide that appearing a little insane is a small price to pay for a great study location, and walk over to the set of desks behind me. Lean over the divider and introduce myself to the nice young gentleman sitting behind it. Acknowledge that this probably sounds crazy, but I was wondering if he would mind if I borrowed the divider that's on the desk next to his -- it does sort of contribute to his "wall" so he might miss it, but one divider is still a pretty good obstruction so maybe he won't mind. He totally gets it!!! I barely even finish my sentence when he's like, "Oh, of COURSE! I always head for the desks with the dividers! Go ahead, take it -- I totally understand."

Bless him.

It's going to be a good day. I dive right into studying, all is right with the world, I crank through lecture after lecture, really digging this Anesthesia stuff.

1 PM -- girl comes and sits next to me. She's carrying a purse (a regular purse, not one of those behemoths you could use to travel Europe for a month), which seems a little odd (to put my backpack on, I have to put it on the desk, back into it while doing a fun little limbo maneuver to get low enough to put my arms through the straps, then heeeeaaaave it up onto my back with a grunt. This is not unusual among my classmates. Compared to these backpacks, her purse looks like it might be big enough for a lip gloss and her cell phone.) but whatever. She takes out a skinny little paperback book and a spiral notebook, and starts studying.

1:02 PM -- [girl next to me] sniffle

1:03 PM -- [gntm] sniffle

1:03 and 30 seconds PM -- [gntm] sniffle, clear throat
[me] turn up volume on my ipod

1:03 and 45 seconds PM -- [gntm] sniffle
[me] turn my head to see if maybe she's crying or something and needs help
[gntm] studying happily away
[me] notice she's an undergrad with an MCAT prep book. Seriously?!? Are there not approximately 18 libraries on the undergrad campus? I'm happy to have an open library policy (I might want to study at one of their libraries some day) but do you have to come and SNIFFLE next to me all afternoon when I'm PANICKING about Anesthesia?!?

1:04 PM -- remind myself that I am being insane, it's just sniffling, I can ignore it, I'll get used to it, it's no big deal. The library is full by now anyway, so there's nowhere else to go. Go back to studying.

1:04:15 PM -- [gntm] sniffle
[me] feel blood pressure hit 165/105.

She FINALLY eased up a little on the sniffling (a tissue!!! It's called a tissue!!! You blow your nose into it, throw it away, and then there's nothing in there to keep sniffling back every g*dd*mn 15 seconds!!!) and I avoided having a stroke.

2:12 PM -- [gntm] gets up and leaves.
Hallelujah.

2:45 PM -- start another lecture

and so on, and so on. I spend maybe 15 minutes on FB, 20 minutes reading blogs, and 20 minutes looking for a J. Crew bracelet I really liked that's sold out. Other than that, it was all Anesthesia, all the time.

6:30 PM -- break for dinner. Talk to sister on phone, husband on phone, eat big delicious salad and some fried rice.

7 PM -- back to Anesthesia

9:18 PM -- conference with 2 friends about the best protocol to use in the field to anesthetize a zebra versus a rhinoceros versus an exotic felid. Turns out you can't use opioids in big cats because they seize. Good to know!

11 PM -- get kicked out of library, move to super-secret-study-spot

12:45 AM -- words are swimming before my eyes, I go home. Realize when I get there that I can't possibly finish the rest of the lectures before the exam in the morning if I go to bed now, and spend 45 minutes making flashcards for cardiac arrhythmias commonly seen under anesthesia, and treatments.

2 AM -- Pack my lunch, set up the coffee pot, lay clothes out, prepack my bookbag, and go to bed. Can't go to sleep because a Taylor Swift song (well, the two lines of it that I know) is randomly playing in my head and I can't make it stop.

2:45 AM -- fall asleep.

4:15 AM -- wake up to pee (damn hydration!!!)

5:22 AM -- wake up thinking I slept through my alarm

5:24 AM -- can't go back to bed because two lines of a Taylor Swift song I swear I will never listen to again are in repeat in my head!

Monday
6 AM -- alarm goes off. Get up, start coffee, shower, eat half a PB sandwich and a Carnation instant breakfast (I LOVE those things!!! What a fabulous invention) and go to library (stopping for more coffee on the way).

7:05 AM -- Get a good seat (yay!) and study frantically. Take about 8 bathroom breaks, because I've had about 3 liters of water, tea and coffee since I woke up, and I'm anxious which makes me have to pee like a racehorse (what the heck kind of adaptation is that, I ask you? You're fleeing from a lion and you have to stop and pee?!?)

11:15 AM -- realize that I'm not going to finish the lectures before the exam (it's at 1). Stop reading and writing down condensed, paraphrased notes (the best study technique I've found so far) and just skim over the rest of the material.

12:20 PM -- alarm goes off to remind me to look at old tests. Look at old tests.

12:40 PM -- head down to exam. Take exam for two hours.

3 PM -- Go home. Look through notes to find the answers to questions I had to guess about. Feel like it didn't go horribly.

I'm not sure what I did for the rest of the evening. I know for a fact that it did not involve studying for my next exam on Wednesday.

Two more!

I have to tell you something . . .

2010-05-24T18:31:00.004-04:00

. . . that I can't tell any of my IRL friends because they might shoot me.

I like Anesthesia.

At 2:45 AM today, when I was making Mental Case (fabulous Mac app, by the way!) flashcards of cardiac arrhythmias as the last thing on my list before I went to bed (which really wasn't a very smart list since it left me with 16 hours of work to do today before the test, and a wake-up time of only 8 hours before the test), I was not happy about Anesthesia. I was tired of thinking about it, I didn't want to learn anything more about it, I wanted to curl up on the couch with my head on a fluffy puppy and go to sleep. But before that, while I was studying, I was really interested. And today, while I was studying, I was really interested. And when I was taking the test? I was like, "Wow! This is fun! I get to decide which anesthesia protocol to use for this horse! And I have a reason for the one I decided on! And then I get to figure out how to make this dog not be painful (which is just about the coolest thing ever, besides saving a dog's life, if you're me), and I came up with a rationally designed multimodal analgesia strategy!"

It was interesting! It was fun! It was the simulated version of doing a really great thing for a dog or a cat!

I don't want to give you the wrong idea, that I have fun taking tests, or anything like that (I can hear the judgements now: "sicko" . . . Keep it to yourselves, it's not what you think). I get so anxious about them that I have to pee 14 times in the 2 hours prior. I almost leaped across the library desk this morning to strangle the friend who has a cold and was sniffling a little bit because the noise. was. distracting. me!!!!!!! (At least I didn't do the thing I did yesterday. More on that later). I can't go to sleep the night before because I'm singing some annoying, annoying song in my head (at first glance this doesn't seem to be exam-related, but the occurrence is highly correlated with an exam the next day). I drink too much coffee and eat too little food and bite my nails and twirl my hair and probably half a dozen other things I don't even know I do! And then the exam itself is stressful, and then when I'm done I feel completely wrung out -- even if I have another exam the next day, all I can do is go home and either watch dumb tv or go to sleep.

So, yeah -- I have a pretty normal response to stressful exams, it's not like I enjoy them as a hobby. But some of them actually require thinking (instead of testing who memorized the most MC questions from the previous 6 years' exams, or who managed to recognize that the 845th factoid in Professor X's presentation that was only in a 6-point font footnote at the bottom of a slide he skipped in lecture was actually the LINCHPIN of the entire lecture) and I like those. And this was kind of one of them (not as much as others have been, but a lot more than I've seen lately). So, it was fun. And we have to take some bullshit classes in vet school, but Anesthesia is totally not one of them! This is something I will probably use every single day (in one form or another) for the rest of my life!

Plus it involves making cute little puppies and kittens feel better and be happy, which (I've got to say) is the highest calling to which one could possibly aspire. :)

Division of Labor

2010-05-18T18:11:00.004-04:00

I was just reading The Life of a {Law School} Wife, and she wrote a few weeks ago about how they divide up chores between the two of them, and how she picked up some slack for him during finals since he was basically living in a textbook and she had free time. Apparently some of her commenters were appalled that she would do some of his chores, saying that being in law school isn't a free pass to get out of doing your share around the house, and he should pull his own weight.

That made me think about something I haven't been too concerned with in awhile -- the fair division of labor in a marriage.

I feel like the fair way to divide things (assuming that both partners are working hard at productive, full-time jobs or school, which will contribute to the couple's future) is so that each person has about the same amount of free time. Not that each person does 50% of the chores.

Of course I don't feel that MM should do all of the housework just because I'm in vet school, and chores that affect me exclusively (like my own laundry) are exclusively my responsibility (although he's usually nice enough to let me throw some of my clothes in with his if I'm really busy and he's doing laundry). And in general, we split the rest of it about evenly. I do the dishes, then it's his turn. Then it's my turn. If I cook dinner, he washes the dinner dishes. I feed the dogs in the morning, he feeds them at night. We both run a portion of the errands, we both pay bills and do banking-type chores, we both walk the dogs. If he walks the dogs for me one morning (we usually do it together) because I have an exam, I'm happy to return the favor by walking them for him that night. But I feel pretty strongly that if one partner has an extremely time-consuming job, and the other one does not, that the partner with more free time should do proportionately more of the chores. In the summer, there are a couple of days a week when I work fewer hours than MM -- so I'll feed and walk the dogs before he gets home, vacuum, do the dishes even though it's his turn, etc. And I think it's fair if he does the same for me, when I'm studying 80 hours a week for exams and he's working 50 hours a week.

In our case, with an equal division of chores, there are periods when I would have no free time. I mean, maybe 15 minutes a day. Literally. And during those same periods, he would have hours of free time every day -- at least 3 or 4 hours to relax and do whatever he wants. So is it fair for him to leave half the chores for me, during those periods? To sit back and enjoy his hours of free time every day, while I work and work and work and THEN do half the chores? I don't think so. And I would feel incredibly resentful if that were how we arranged things. AND I would never do that to him, if our schedules were reversed -- I mean, how ridiculous would it be for me to come home from work at 7 PM, spend the evening working out, watching TV, reading a novel, catching up on some blogs, and then when he finally dragged in at 11 PM (having to get up again at 7 AM for another similar day!) to greet him with a "Hi, sweetie! How was your day? I know it's really late, but if you wouldn't mind doing that big pile of dishes in the sink and then taking the trash out, while I finish this tv show, I'd really appreciate it."? I think that would be pretty ridiculous. So I really appreciate it when he picks up the slack at home when I'm pulling 18-hour-a-day study marathons, and I think it makes our relationship, and life in general, easier.
And it acknowledges that we both make in-home and out-of-home contributions to our life, and that both categories are important.

It's like a lot of financial planners advise about shared finances -- as long as you're both contributing more or less equally to your shared life (this can be outside-the-home work, chores, raising children, etc) then each partner should have an equal amount of "spending money" regardless of the size of each of their incomes. MM outearns me right now since I'm in school, and will continue to outearn me for another 4 years after school, but after that I'll probably bring in more income for the rest of our lives. I feel like it would be silly for me to claim that since my salary is twice the size of his, I should get twice as much spending money as he does. And he would never do that to me, either. Granted, if one salary were twice as big because the other only worked 30 hours a week and then spent the rest of their time on hobbies, then we might have to reconsider that. But assuming we both work hard, then we're both contributing similar amounts of time and effort to our lifestyle, and we should both benefit equally from our work.

So, since having an equal amount of spending money seems fair, doesn't having an equal amount of free time* also seem fair? I think both partners should contribute equally (when spread across all areas of life) to the relationship -- so if one partner works a lot more outside the home, isn't it reasonable for the other partner to do more of the work inside the home? If both people have equal household responsibilities regardless of how much they each work outside the home, that's essentially saying that their professional work isn't contributing to the relationship. Which, if they're making a salary (or going to school for a degree that will earn them a very good salary), it certainly is!

*Granted, we're probably never going to actually have equal amounts of free time -- there aren't enough chores in the world to make up an extra 30 hours a week of work for the lighter-workload partner. I'm just arguing that if one of us works many hours more a week than the other, that the former shouldn't have to spend the tiny amount of free time they do have on chores, while the latter has dozens of hours a week to sit back and relax.

Traffic sources

2010-05-10T20:57:00.002-04:00

I was looking at Google Analytics, curious about how visitors to this blog find it, and in addition to the usual "life in vet school", "what is vet school like", "vet school blog" etc, it showed me the following search terms:

"vetrinary schools give you a puppy" [hmm . . . you know how Davis and a few other schools make you buy a computer when you start first year? Well what if during orientation, every incoming student was presented with an adorable, fluffy little puppy?!?! Is that the best idea EVER, or what? If I ever start a vet school, maybe I'll implement this practice. That could even be our motto: "University of Blah Blah School of Veterinary Medicine -- We Give You a Puppy!"]

"veterinary school later in life" [I AM a nontrad, but this kind of sounds like I went to vet school as my last hurrah before I entered the nursing home!]

"vet school snow" [as far as I know, it doesn't snow any more or less AT the vet school than it does anywhere else nearby. But maybe this is code for something . . . hmm . . .]

"pass/fail veterinary school" [Yes, PLEASE!!!]

"can you watch vet school tv series" [Not as far as I know, but if the Scrubs creators wanted to make a veterinary show, I would be ALL for that!]

"hyoid alpaca" [???]

"giving up on vet school" [Don't give up! If I could get in, you could get in. If some of my classmates could get in {there are some scary peeps, yo} you could definitely get in. Don't give up!]

My #1 traffic source is "life in vert school" [Where you learn to go vertical? How is this my primary traffic source? How many people are interested in "vert school"? I'm confused.]

And then there are the one-offs:

"vet school is a nightmare" [Yeah, sometimes I have to agree]

"vet school finals funny" [Yeah, not so much. Would be nice, though! On one of our finals, the professor photocopied a fortune cookie saying that said something about how we would be successful. Clearly he didn't understand that you have to actually EAT part of the cookie in order for the fortune to come true. I mean, duh. But it was mildly funny. Mildly.]

"I wish I hadn't gone to vet school" [Aww . . . . I'm sorry, man. You don't have to STAY, you know. We've lost almost 10% of our class already -- to dental school, nursing school, non-health professions. If you don't want to be there, cut your losses!]

"Vet school motivation" [If you find out, please -- PLEASE -- tell me!]

I love it!

Epidemiology

2010-05-03T16:05:00.001-04:00

Yikes. The past couple of days have been really, really fun!!! (No, not really). I've been studying for the Epidemiology final, which is the only exam in the course so it's our entire grade. It's only a 2 credit class, so I won't jump off a bridge if I don't get an A, but I don't want to FAIL, either, you know? And the lecturer s.u.c.k.e.d. so I skipped . . . . . oh, somewhere around 14/20 lectures.

So for the past 2 days, I've been frantically playing catch-up, reading through all the notes, making equation sheets, deriving equations so I know where they came from, doing gazillions of practice problems. It reminded me of college!!! I went to a hardcore science/engineering college, and I had to take tons of relatively advanced math, physics, and engineering classes that just were NOT my cup of tea (being a molecular biology major, and all). The last two years, once I got into my major classes, were fine and good, I enjoyed them, did quite a bit of research, had a social life, etc. The FIRST two years, I thought (literally) that I was going to fail out of school! I was woefully unprepared for the level of rigor at which the math-based courses were taught (even though I thought I LOVED math all the way through AP Calculus -- turns out that's baby stuff!) and I vividly remember sitting at my desk at 2 AM the night before (well, morning of, really) an exam, with pages and pages of problem sets scattered all over my desk, panicking over the fact that I did not understand what was going on. It was a really awful feeling, and I lived for 2 whole years like that, more or less constantly. It makes me feel a little sick just thinking about it. Suffice it to say, it is a miracle (a choir-of-angels-singing-hallelujah miracle) that I got into vet school, with the grades I had in college (okay, it was the PhD. Miracle . . . PhD . . . whatever). I was really nervous about starting vet school because I thought it would be like that again, and it hasn't been AT ALL like that, which is great. It's a huge volume of information, but it's not difficult information. There's just a lot of it.

But guess what! Studying for Epidemiology was kind of like college again! I was sitting at my desk around 2 AM today, with 20 double-sided pages of problems sets scattered everywhere, notes, equation sheets, a half-eaten sleeve of Lorna Doones (those things should not be allowed in my house, ever), two empty soda cans, a bag of Sour Patch Kids, the spoon from the ice cream I was eating earlier, wrappers from assorted fun-size chocolate bars, an empty coffee cup, and my tea (you think I might be a stress eater?), thinking "I think I might fail this exam".

My lovely husband fed and walked all 4 dogs this morning so that I could finish the practice sets (I gave up and went to bed at 3:30), and I barely said 2 words to him because I was so engrossed in these problems. (Fortunately he's usually pretty understanding about that sort of thing).

It turned out the exam wasn't that bad. It was by no means great, but I'm pretty sure I didn't fail the class. I ended up being able to derive almost all of the (admittedly simple) equations so I didn't have to memorize many, and everything pretty much made sense. I'm sure there were some boneheaded mistakes that I won't find out about until I get the exam back (a month or two from now, I'm sure), and I could not for the LIFE of me remember any forms of bias besides the broad categories of selection and information (one question asked about spectrum bias, which I couldn't come up with) and I'm pretty sure I used the term "confounding" inappropriately on another question (don't even ask me how), but I think it was enough for a C. Which, for once in my life, is fine.

Quotes from vet school

2010-04-30T18:02:00.001-04:00

". . . and the metal tore this person all to pieces [slide of dismembered body] . . . . . So now we'll rest for a minute [slide of the ocean]"

"If we had an oxygen tank in this room, and the neck broke, the tank would go through several walls, and end up . . . [vaguely waving hand around] . . . somewhere. And we'll see one of those somewheres in a minute."

"You don't feed them grass, you feed them themselves!" (re: how to get more protein into cows)

"Being a Mac user, there were nice little bullets that changed to bombs on the PC. I didn't put a bomb in there."

"Horses have a much larger surface area than most people."

"Ultimately there's a huge battle that happens, and that battle is what allows for a clinical infection. So, yaaayyyy! Something we can see!"

"It's the reason why we don't necessarily befriend rats . . . "

"That's where we will go hunting for it, in the world of our great . . . confusion and diagnostics."

"Obviously there's so much yellow on this screen we need sunglasses, we feel like we're looking into the sun. And what else do we see? Red, so then we feel like we're looking into . . . Mercury. The planet. I don't know where that came from. Anyway."

"Bulldogs used to be used as hunting dogs, a couple hundred years ago. Now they could probably hunt . . . the couch."

"And does anybody know the third #1 killer of sheep?"

"But the most likely time you'll discuss Lepto in your circle of friends . . . is as recurrent uveitis."

"This is why we want to be animal doctors. Cause people get these icky, skeevy lesions that -- you don't want to be around feet like this. Like, ever."

"This one's intubated, so he's got a tube in."

"I don't know what cattle's thing is . . . they just get attracted to weird things in their pastures. With cattle, when in doubt -- lick it."

". . . this generally causes a lot of unhappy faces, at least five, on a scale of one to five."

"I wouldn't be rude and put this as an exam question, but just for . . . fun-filled cocktail conversation, mink are the most fluoride-resistant animals."

"But actually she's fine, she's just bebopping around having this really high iron because . . . she likes to."

"But luckily animals are okay, animals are not making hats, so that's not happening to them."

(Slide of [very brachycephalic] champion bulldog with his medals arrayed before him)
Prof: "What's wrong with this dog? . . . . (long silence) . . . . Look at the slide."
Student: "Did it eat coins?"
Prof [huffing exasperatedly] "NO, it didn't eat coins!"

Housekeeping

2010-04-24T13:11:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, it's not my thing. Even more unfortunately, it's not MM's thing, either. :)

I love to read blogs about design and decorating, and I love to look at pretty pictures of beautiful living spaces and daydream about living in a cheerful-but-serene, colorful, attractive home where every room is part of the same overall vision, instead of in a minuscule apartment that looks like it was decorated by a trio of visually impaired monkeys. Who gave up halfway through. Probably because they were bored.

Three times in my life, I've painted my living space. Once in college (very pretty, cheerful yellow walls with dark yellow sponged on top in my apartment living room), once in grad school (a spare room. I was recruited, unwilling, to the project.), and once right before vet school (our dining room/office in our last apartment (a cheerful, yellow-cream color with papaya windowsills and doorframes). Okay, retrospectively I guess those are only PARTS of my living space.

And that is about the extent of my decorating. Right now, we have apartment-standard off-white walls, apartment-standard blinds, and a couple of strings of colored christmas lights around the perimeter of the living room ceiling (we left them up after the holidays because they're pretty and make me happy). :) We recently started hanging a collection of random photos on the free living room wall, but ran out of frames halfway through and haven't gotten back to it yet (that was about a month ago). We have a modestly decorative curtain rod in the bedroom, from which I have yet to actually hang any curtains. And that is IT. We've lived in this apartment for a year!

We do have a small rug in the bedroom (tan with a red border, to match the red-striped curtains I haven't hung), but that's mostly to keep the puppies from slipping as they jump on and off the bed. We also have a small red rug in the living room, which is currently rolled up in a corner because it's covered in dog hair and needs to be washed. We have a great collection of dog hair dust bunnies scattered artistically along the baseboards in every room (it lends that whimsical touch). Our couch is currently covered in half of our bath towels and one set of sheets, which got dumped there when we came home from the laundromat, to be folded later (we're going on a week, now.). The dogs are using them as beds. They like them a lot better than the plain old couch, and they're great material for building little dog nests! The dogs jump up on the couch and then scratch/dig/push the sheets and towels into a little nest, and then lay down in the middle. It's really cute, but this makes me wonder whether they still qualify as clean, or whether they have to be washed again before I can legitimately fold them and put them away. (Anyone who's not a dog lover is probably about to vomit at the idea that I even consider that an option.).

That brings me to our bed. We own 4 sets of sheets (one is flannel, so not really an option when it's warm). We hate changing the sheets. You would literally think I was making it up if I told you how extreme the sheet conditions have to be before we change them. We rationalize it by saying that all we do (well, you know) in bed is sleep, so we're not really getting them dirty . . . . . . . except that the dogs also sleep in the bed all day, and they like to make nests out of the bed covers as well, so they're usually sleeping on the fitted sheet with the top sheet and blanket scrunched up around themselves. We rationalize THAT by saying that the dogs spend 95% of their lives in our apartment, so they're pretty clean. Anyway. In order for us to change the sheets, basically one of two things has to happen: 1) neither of us can remember, after wracking our brains, when we last changed the sheets (meaning it was weeks ago); or 2) one of the dogs urinates or vomits on the bed. The dogs, possibly appalled by our lack of sheet-changing, usually oblige us by either peeing or vomiting on the bed at least once every week or two, so in reality we change the sheets 2 or 3 times a month. In the rare stretches when the dogs aren't helping us out by eliminating on the bed, it is not uncommon for a month to go by before it occurs to us that we really ought to change the sheets.

I read an article on MSN yesterday (possibly not the highest pinnacle of investigative journalism, but entertains me when I log out of hotmail, and in this case gave me food for thought). It said that sheets can, after only one night of use, contain 10 billion microbes. After two weeks, they've probably built cities, parks, possibly even developed a rudimentary internet! That's not cool.

So, we have 2 problems here. One is that neither of us likes to clean. Or cares enough about it to do it even though we don't like it. And two is that neither of us cares enough about decorating to give up quality studying/running/playing with the dogs/reading time to actually DO anything about it. Oh, and three! Three is that we each have 30-odd years of accumulated stuff crammed into just about the tiniest one-bedroom apartment you'll ever see. So there's stuff eeeeeeevvvvvvvvverywhere, which I think starts the cascade of messiness. It's hard to be motivated to vacuum when, in order to vacuum, you have to first spend 15 minutes picking up all the luggage/test boxes/books/binders/rolled-up rugs/laundry baskets/rain and hiking boots/sports equipment that's on the floor in the room-to-be-vacuumed because there isn't anywhere else to put it. And it just gets worse from there.

Sigh.

I should probably just delete this post, since I don't want anyone calling the health department on me. Thank goodness I've kept this blog anonymous!