The chronicles of a veterinary student, foodie and self-proclaimed geek
DVM_Wannabee.blog
The chronicles of a veterinary student, foodie and self-proclaimed geek

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

 
Braaaaains. . .and hearts and nerves and more. . .

We have two exams this week, or of you want to be pessimistic, four (two in each class): tomorrow an Neurobiology practical exam and written exam together worth 25% of our final grade, and Friday a Gross Anatomy practical exam and written exam, together worth 30% of our grade. We're not feeling any pressure or anything. . ..

Last night I stayed late to study anatomy, and many of my classmates also came in later to study their braaaaains. . .



"Smells yummy. . ."
Kelli likes to listen to Mozart while she studies brains.



This is what her brain will look like after the exams. . .

Last Friday we got a fresh heart to dissect, and I tell you, after working on the embalmed specimens I think I prefer the smell of formalin to the smell of bloody, squishy heart. The thing is so squishy and floppy it's difficult to tell what structures I'm looking at. . .

Anyhow, after this week we have a renal physiology exam Tuesday, and then we're exam-free for a couple weeks. So a few of my classmates and I are going to form a little jam band and hit some local open mics; we'll thinking of calling ourselves Cingulate Gyrus in honor of this upcoming neuro exam.

Cyngulate Gyrus:

Dave M. : Bass
Molly C. : rhythm guitar and vocals
Luke : Lead guitar
Chad T.: Drums
Belle D. : Piano
Yours truly: Guitar, vocals (and occasionally drums if Chad lets me)

I'll definitely post any performance dates for our groupies-to-be.
I'm currently working on a song about Puddles and Pickles. . .




Dana Lee 11:41


Sunday, September 28, 2003

 
The Great Horned Owl was found dead in his cage yesterday morning. I spoke to Diana, one of my Wildlife teammates, and she said in hindisght, we should have put him down Friday night--he could barely hold himslef up.



Dana Lee 12:03


Thursday, September 25, 2003

 

Roomful of Slobbering Saps


Our wonderful Wednesday Clinical Orientation class turns out to be more orientation and less clinical than I initially expected. So far our lectures covered our future careers/goals, professional ethics, cat and dog breeds and this week a debate between the "warm fuzzy" and "cold prickly" camps.

Yesterday a social worker (who works full time for the UI Small Animal Clinic) spoke to us about pet loss and bereavement. She was a warm fuzzy, and also a self-proclaimed High-Maintenance Owner (HMO) who implied that her role as a counselor to shocked, anxious and/or grieving pet owners is quite indispensable. She warned us that she may have to leave the lecture if she was paged for a trauma. She talked about how important her job is, and how she gets paged in the middle of the night. She proceeded to talk about her dog with cancer for about an hour, and then spent another hour telling tear-jerker stories about people who lost their beloved pets. Then for another 30 minutes, we watched a poor production-quality video of some middle-aged guy, Art, talking about his serious bout with depression after the loss of his little terrier, "Dusty."

During this whole presentation, the class was splitting into two camps:

Warm Fuzzy, DVM:
- Cried through all the sad stories, some blew their noses (loudly) and some even said (repeatedly) "How sad. . .oh my God, that is SO sad!"

- Felt bad for Art and thought his veterinarian should have called to check that he was "okay" after losing Dusty

- Feel that people have trouble grieving pets because less support is offered by family, friends and the community than if grieving a human--and/or people don't allow themselves to grieve a pet

- Feel it is appropriate and good business to offer emotional/morale support to grieving clients


Cold Prickly, DVM:
- During the sad stories crossed their arms, leaned back in their chairs and either yawned or rolled their eyes

- Thought Art was a big whiner and had other issues that brought on the depression

- Don't think that consoling clients is part of the DVM's job

- Feel that if family members in people hospitals don't get personal counseling, neither should pet owners


. . .And then there were the in-betweeners, like me, who leaned back and crossed the arms during the sad stories, but sniffled a bit. . .

Art made a good point in his speech that men of his generation were taught to hold emotions in, that "Men Don't Cry" et cetera, and this is definitely an issue for men of his age that rears its ugly head beyond the scope of pet loss; it's a bigger issue that has roots deeper than the average veterinarian, or even social worker, can manage. These men need therapy.

So what is the vet's job when it comes to supporting distraught clients? It's up to each individual vet, I guess. I don't feel we are obliged professionally to offer morale support, yet as a person with a soul, I think it's only kind to offer a kind word or reference to "pet loss counseling" when a client is in obvious need. No, you don't want to offend a stone cold logical non-warm-fuzzy pet owner, but a vet with decent interpersonal skills can recognize the appropriate time to mention the availability of such services.

I've worked in a large practice with several vets under one roof and noticed that pet owners who need the warm fuzzy vet gravitate toward such vets and re-schedule with them. The stone cold logical pet owners gravitate toward the more straight laced logical vets. I guess things work themselves out that way--the right vet for the right person and vice versa. As with running any small business, it's good to keep an open and diverse mindset with your approach to dealing with clients. Likewise, it's important to keep a diverse staff, with varied personalities and communication styles. And don't forget the veterinary technicians who often take on the role (officially or unofficially) of the warm fuzzy, because, like nurses, they often have more contact time with patients and their "families."




West Nile Survivor?


Tuesday a Great Horned Owl came into the Wildlife Medical Clinic and was assigned to our team. It was very dehydrated, lethargic with weak legs, and its left eye was shut. We suspected trauma or nuero problems.



It was also leaning to its left side, and bearing its weight on its left wing since it couldn't hold itself up with the legs. But it was alert and pretty reponsive.

To treat a raptor with its wonderfully strong wings and sharp talons, we put it in a burrito wrap:


Undignified, I know, but we have good intentions. . .


We gave it fuids subcutaneously (under the skin) in the loose skin between its legs. We aslo gave it an injection of some anti-inflammatory and hand fed it some thawed mice. Since birds stress out so easily when handled, we couldn't keep him restrained for very long.

Wednesday


Looking better!




Melissa, one of my teammates, performed a West Nile test and got a "faint positive" result--which means that the owl may have had West Nile in the past, but got over it, or did not get sick from it.

Optholmic exam was normal, so his eyes are fine--the squint might be due to a nuero problem.

Thursday

Looking good, eating a mouse and drinking water:



You can barely see the mouse in its mouth--look for the long pink tail.


Taking a drink from a spray bottle

It's definitely more fiesty and responsive today, and he cast a pellet (normal regurgitation of undigested mice bones and fur) so hopefully that is a good sign.






Dana Lee 21:28


Tuesday, September 23, 2003

 

Meet the Faculty: Gross Anatomy



Dr. Antony Oluoch ("Ahl-watch")
You'll have to pardon the blurryness--this guy can't stand still for a photo. He actually did not approve of me taking a side view portrait of him ("I don't like the shape of my head"), so this was my second attempt at a candid shot.

Dr. O has been in the U.S. for 12 years now, and at UI since 1998. Before that he was at Saskatchewan (Canada) and before that he was in Nairobi. So he has a super cool accent.

His lectures are very thorough (i.e. exhausting) and he always relates information to clinical applications such as injuries, surgical techniques, etc. He's a ton of fun in lab--he loves teaching so much that he gets all excited when we come to the lab after hours. He'll stay in the lab with students until 9:30 at night. He has a habit of calling everything on a cadaver "beautiful": "That's such a beautiful example of the medial nerve running through the supratroclear foramen". . ."What a beautiful dissection. . ." complete with oohs and ahhs. He gets so enthused sometimes he jumps up and down a little and calls all the students to "come over and take a look at this beautiful specimen."




Dana Lee 18:07


 

Free at Last!



I cut my hair off--it was just too much maintenance. Much better now.


Before:


What a geek! Look at those cheeks! And that forehead--sheesh!
Can you tell it's an ID photo?




After:


Much better--but still a geek
Can you tell it's a self-portrait?
(Note the bags under the eyes--the hallmark of any hard-working vet student.
. . . who's not aging so gracefully. . .)



Dana Lee 17:57


Sunday, September 21, 2003

 
The Morning Ride

On weekdays:


The Vet Med Basic Sciences Building




On weekends, when I have a chance to be a "civilian":


The Quad





Can you see the Chicken and the pig in this sculpture?


"Growing in Illinois" by Richard Hunt




Balancing Academics and Whatever Else:
A Rebuttal (yes, a rant) to Crappy Advice


I've been getting advice, albeit not always good or sensible, from many of the second year students (recall they are always putting their two cents in for the benefit of us naive freshman--unfortunately the two cents are often tinged with bitterness or general negativity). They bitch repeatedly about professors and how impossible they'll be or "Yes, you feel okay now, but wait until after you take the exam." Isn't that a shi**y thing to say to someone an hour before they take a first exam?

Then there's the "practical experience" advice telling us that doing well in classes doesn't guarantee strong practical skills. Duh! Most of us have already spent time in the veterinary clinical setting--I think that was a prerequisite to get in--so we already know the importance of practical experience. Doing well in classes won't make you a crappy practitioner, either. In fact, GPA is quite important for those of us considering internships, fellowships, residencies and the like.

I've also heard "I'm not here for the classes, I'm here for the clubs. Join clubs, you'll learn more than you will in all of your classes." Well heck, what are you paying tuition for? Yes, you do learn and remember more practical techniques doing hands-on stuff and it is important, but to me, understanding what's going on in my classes is just as important. Just because someone says they forgot everything they learned in Physiology doesn't necessarily mean I will. I love physiology--I remember much of it from a class I took over two years ago. Seriously--physiology is HOW THE BODY FUNCTIONS. If you can't get interested in it and grasp the concepts, how can you practice medicine?

The reason this advice makes me so mad is because I assumed that these people were talking about balancing academics with extracurriculars, but as I kept listening to their griping, I found that these are people who missed about half their classes first year (due to involvement in clubs and organizations? don't know) and/or never put much time into studying and are now on the verge of academic probation. I'm not sure these are people I should be taking advice from . . .

Granted, there are a handful of folks who can skip every other class because they learn more studying on their own time. . .and then there are the folks who are just geniuses and don't have to study much to understand this stuff--but I need to physically be in class to hear professors talk AND read and re-read at home AND review and put extra time in lab and draw diagrams and make charts and make lists and solve practice problems and re-read and review and study more. I have to do all that just to maintain a "B" in some classes. That's me, and that's how I have to do things to keep my head above the academic waters, so that's what I'll do. I do make time to volunteer at the Wildlife Medical Clinic and be a tour guide over lunch hours and join other clubs/organizations with low-maintenance memberships, but to be honest, since I've already had a few years of small animal and wildlife practical experience, I'll budget less time for the extra curriculars if my grades start to slip.

I know that U of I is known amongst vet schools to be an "egghead" school, and I can see where people get that, but that doesn"t have to be a bad thing. The curriculum is traditional lab and lecture here, unlike the more experiential case-based curricula at more progressive schools like Cornell. Lab and lecture works well on several levels, though. Just like any other school experience, what you get out of vet school is up to you. Yes, practical experience is important, but so are classes and academics. Especially this first year--we are learning the basics, the foundations for much of the stuff we'll be learning later when our classes will seem more pertinent to medical clinical applications. I think it's just dandy if someone wants to put clubs at the top of their priority list, but I think it's very unwise to assume that's good for everyone, or to make colleagues feel bad for putting academics first.

No, I'm not going to beat myself up over a poor test score, or even a poor grade in one class. But I'm not going to settle for a 2.5 GPA either, especially after all I had to go through just to get here. If I'm an egghead because of this, so be it; I know in the end I will learn and keep learning what I need--academic, technical and practical. I don't think there's anything wrong with actually attending the classes I'm going into debt to pay for, or actually setting time aside to read my $400 worth of textbooks.

Oh--I must mention that not all the advice from sophomores and upperclassmen is negative or bitter; some colleagues have been more positive and supportive. I have heard that the first set of exams are the toughest and the following exams are more manageable, and I've also heard that if you can get through the first semester okay, the second semester is not so bad. Thanks, guys!




Dana Lee 10:42


Saturday, September 20, 2003

 

Orphan Feeding


Okay-- this is the deal on the Wildlife Clinic at UI Vet Med:

It is managed by students and staffed by a resident UI veterinarian and student volunteers. There are ten volunteer teams of about 8 students each, and each team is assigned case animals that they assess and treat daily. Team members take turns doing morning and evening treatments. I usually like to morning treaments, so I come in about three mornings a week.



The Wildlife Clinic is located on the lower level of the Small Animal Clinic

A few days of each month, each team has pager duty; there are two pagers, and two volunteers at a time carry a pager for a four hour shift (but the overnight shift is 12 hours--8:00p.m. to 8:00 a.m.). Technically, each volunteer only has to carry the pager for three or four shifts each month. When paged by the reception desk or by the ER after hours, the pager person returns the call to find out what new animal is being admitted. Then said volunteer rushes to the scene to admit, assess, and treat said animal. The volunteer then assigns the newly admitted critter to one of the volunteer teams and contacts that team leader. Diagnostics (such as radiographs or blood work) can be requested in writing.

Another few days each month, each team has orphan duty. Very young, orphaned animals need to be checked and fed every three to four hours, so team members sign up for feeding times throughout the three day tenure of orphan duty. Since orphans require so much attention and care, they don't usually stay long at the clinic; a wildlife rehabber comes to pick up orphans about once a week. (Click here to see what you should do if you find injured or orphaned wildlife. Click here to see a list of rehabbers in Illinois.) Just to clarify, the Wildlife Clinic is a medical facility, not a rehabilitation facility. You see a doctor when you initially get injured, but for long-term rehab you see a therapist--right? Veterinarians know medicine and will initially diagnose and prescribe treatment, but the rehabbers care for and treat the animals because they can better prepare them for release back to the wild.

We currently have only two orphans: a squirrel and a pigeon.



Kim, one of my teammates, is stimulating the squirrel with a cotton ball to make him poop.













(Remember, very young squirrels, racoons, kittens and puppies need mom to lick their groin area to help them eliminate because their little muscles aren't yet stong enough to do it alone.)















Now she checks his lungs for "crackling"--a sign of respiratory congestion.
















What a face!


I tube fed the pigeon by placing a small rubber tube down its throat into its crop and pushing warmed, liquefied baby bird food through with a syringe:







I know you're thinking this is a face only a mother could love--but I think she's adorable!

See the little yellowish "pins" all over her head? Those are new feathers. If you massage one between your fingers, the delicate white sheath flakes off and a fluffly feather emerges. Birds groom themselves by picking at these with their beaks, but they also like to be groomed by each other--it's a social thing and a bonding thing--just like when monkeys pick and eat bugs off each other. This little baby loved getting her feathers massaged. I let her walk around and flap her wings a little, since she spends most of her day in a plastic ice cream bucket inside an incubator. The exercise is good for her muscles.


Dana Lee 21:24


Thursday, September 18, 2003

 

Meet the Faculty: Histology



Dr. JoAnn Eurell and Dr. Tom Eurell

Drs. Eurell both teach Histology, and yes, they are married. JoAnn Eurell is the primary instructor, and is an Associate professor of Morphology in the Department of Veterinary Biosciences. She is pretty straight-laced, her lectures are very organized and straightforward, and her demeanor is formal. And after her husband subbed for her a few days in a row, I realized that opposites do attract.

Mr. Eurell is more informal, conversational and excitable when he lectures. He walks around the room, opens his eyes real wide when he thinks something is interesting, and he gets loud and "in your face" when he's driving home a point. (I suspect he may have been a class clown in grade school.) He also referred to the other Dr. Eurell as "JoAnn" several times when discussing the textbook or class notes she wrote. Some of us students speculated about the Eurell household--whether they always have intelligent conversation about stem cells, genes and skin grafting or if he gets on her nerves until she tells him to "Be quiet, Tom!"



Dana Lee 18:42


 
What Veterinary Students Eat for Lunch

Well, today I didn't bring a lunch because some Purina rep came to give a lunch lecture on canine obesity*, and lunch was supposed to be provided by the Purina company. Unfortunately, Jimmy John's didn't bring the food in time, and this poor Purina guy was facing a hunded or so hungry veterinary students who came more for the free food (and something other than pizza for once!) than for the lecture. You could hear stomachs rumbling throughout the auditorium like thunder.

So I bought my lunch at the "Vet Med Cafe": a styrofoam cup of salty broccoli cheese soup and five ounces of garbanzo beans, olives and pasta. The cafeteria has a pay-per-ounce salad bar, and if you guess the weight of your lunch within one ounce, you get it free. I was off by three ounces.

This guy Ryan, a second year student, broke his tuna streak today. I took this picture Tuesday, because the kid eats the same effing lunch every day: one little can of tuna and raw baby carrots:


"Yummmm. . ."

"Why?" I ask. He claims he needs to stay slim for the ladies. What ladies? Oh yes, the student body is 78% female. . . Anyway, he broke his streak today and bought lunch because he, too, thought he would be enjoying a nice fat Jimmy John's sub courtesy of Purina.

*Many food and drug companies like Hills, Purina, Eukanuba etc. offer free pet food or luches to veterinary students with hopes of gaining our endorsement in the long run, once we become practicioners. (I recall hearing a veterinarian at a pet show endorse "Friskies" as a nutritionally sound diet for cats, and I wanted to stand up and scream "Sell-out!!!")

Anyway, this practice is not unlike what many drug companies do to get medical students' attention, though their schmoozing is a bit more elaborate. The average pharmecutical sales rep makes more money than your average physician.



Dana Lee 16:44


 

Pickled Pets Incorporated


My Lab partners and I are having a pretty good time so far.

This is a blurry photo of Jason L., who likes to wear short-shorts to lab.
He looks like a flasher when he wear his lab coat.





Sexy legs!


And Rebecca L., Mathematics Queen (she aced the renal exam):


"Bend over. . ."


Aren't you glad her hand is covering the cadaver in the background?

And, of course, yours truly--looking stunnning as usual:


"Alas, poor Fido. . ."



Dana Lee 16:14


Monday, September 15, 2003

 
Finding time to Blah blah blog

Finding time to blog is more difficult than I though it would be. When I'm not in class or at a club meeting or in the lab or at the Wildlife Clinic I feel like I should be studying. If I didn’t make an effort to remember, I'd forget to eat.

Anyway, the whole point of keeping this weblog is to give my perspective on being a veterinary student for the edification of those who are considering veterinary school or for those who are just curious what vet school is like. I'll try to recap anything interesting that happens throughout my experiences, but even that is a daunting task. I could write a book about this week alone.

So what happened since last Tuesday? One of my lab partners left the program (I think that makes three in the class so far), I saw some more squirrels come into the wildlife clinic (one just died yesterday), palpated a dead deer's radial fracture, learned how to give a red-eared slider (turtle) a warm nolvasan bath (he's got an open shell wound with a fungus infection), realized the sad truth about Puddles' life before he passed, took the first anatomy exam, and watched my classmates snarf down deep-fried hog testicles. There's stuff I'm leaving out, only because it's escaped my mind for now.



"Pyxis," the red-eared slider, getting a Nolvasan bath
Note the wire on his shell keeping the cracked parts together--like stitches!


So tomorrow we have the first exam for renal (kidney) physiology, which is mostly formulas and math problems. These word problems bring me back to high school algebra:
"A dehydrated, anorexic* cat is presented to you for work-up. You decide to give fluid intravenously and choose 0.45% (wt/vol) saline (58g/mol) with glucose based on your examination and blood chemistry. If the infused solution is to have and osmolarity of 300 mOsm/L, what is the concentration of glucose (180g/mole) in the infused solution?"

*By the way, cat's don't choose to be anorexic. It's usually a sign of another problem.

Sounds like fun, huh? So that's tomorrow's exam. It's just a bunch of step-by-step math, lots of equations and "laws," understanding of the way things flow in and out of the kidney, and all the pressures and forces that affect that flow. My only anxiety is that I will make a bunch of little mistakes on the math-based problems that will throw my calculatons off.

As for the Anatomy practical we took Friday, if you asked anyone Friday afternoon, most of the class thought they failed it. However, we did okay as a class--a mean score of 40 out of 50, wtih most people falling in the range of 35-45 out of 50. Not too shabby for a first exam. I think most people freaked out because they've been used to getting straight A's all their lives. Then getting 5 wrong out of 50 is the end of the world--but it's still an "A." Anyway, a "B" never got anyone kicked out of school.

I do plan on posting all my pictures soon--apparently there's a snafu in the school computer system, so the account I supposed to have for web space is not activated yet. But the photos ARE coming soon!


Another one down?


Apparently, there were two students who showed up the first day of classes, then eventually. . .just stopped coming. Then this week, one of our lab teammates came into lab, took her things, and left. The other three of us wished her luck after she informed us she wasn't coming back.

Let's call her Darlene. She's extremely smart and organized, and she seemed to learn anatomy very quickly. A few things I noticed about her is that she often skipped morning classes, but I figured that was because she was trying to also hold down a job. In anatomy lab, she would sometimes throw down her scalpel and just leave to go out in the hallway. No big deal, I thought, she's just had enough of the smell and needs some fresh air. Otherwise, she didn't seem stressed, and she knew her stuff. The two of us met last Saturday (the 6th) and spent about three hours in the anatomy lab reviewing for the upcoming exam. Again, in the middle of working on "Puddles," she decides she needs a break and leaves, but she didn't come back for over 30 minutes. When she finally came back, she apologized and explained she had a telephone call.

I invited to take her out for a treat at the chocolate café afterwards, and she accepted, and we talked a little about how we got to vet school and what we planned on doing after graduation. Normal conversation overall, but in hindsight I notice that she expressed interest in different things besides veterinary medicine, she expressed some distress with living on her own and having to manage a budget for the first time (she had lived in boarding school or in her dorms up until now) and she felt a little overwhelmed being in a lab group with older people who had done things other than vet med. She commented that she felt she wasn't studying enough, but I took all this as normal for a 22 year-old making a huge life transition. But now that I think of it, living on your own for the first time and committing the next four years to a career you aren't sure you want is a pretty daunting situation.

She wasn't in class Monday, but another person in our lab group saw her in the building checking her e-mail. She wasn't in class Tuesday, but again, someone saw her walking in the hallway . She wasn't in class Wednesday, but at lunch time I saw her sitting in the student affairs office. I asked her what was going on--she shrugged. I asked if I would see her tomorrow--she shrugged. As I started to feel too nosy, I stopped asking questions and told her that I hoped things worked out for her. She responded with another shrug. Then I added, "I hope things work out the way they are supposed to work out. Darlene looked and me and said, "I really appreciate that last part. Thank you."

So there it was. At that point I knew her heart wasn't in it, and that's why she needed to leave. On Thursday she came to the lab and took her things quietly as the three of us wished her luck.

And that's that. Darlene's an intelligent girl, and I'm convinced she would have been a good student and veterinarian. But you shouldn't go into veterinary medicine just because you can, or because you're good at it. You heart has to be in it.




Dana Lee 15:17


Tuesday, September 09, 2003

 

Honey, how about relocating to Brazil?


As I was looking for veterinary journbal articles for a homework assignment, I came across "neotropical felids." Apparently veterinarians in Brazil have been studying these little guys for years--especially the diseases they may carry or may be immune from*.


Leopardus tigrinus: the Tiger Cat (a.k.a the Little Spotted Cat)
--Not much bigger than the typical house cat
--one of many species of neotropical felids


*According to immunologists, no one is "immune to" anything. The correct preposition is "from." I am immune from rabies. "immune" is derived from some Greek word meaning "free," so if we are immune from ailments, just as we are free from them.



Dana Lee 15:44


Monday, September 08, 2003

 
Wow--it's been a while since I posted something. That's because veterinary school (here, at least) is two parts boot camp ("you're in the Army now!"), one part high school (with all its cliques and peer pressure), and one part frat party. In a anatomy lab last Friday, a large group of second year students came through the lab yelling and clapping, telling all us first years to stop being nerds and come play football. Those of us who ignored them were further harassed as they came right up to our lab tables and yelled in our faces. I've never been a frat boy, so I'm not used to this. . .

We have a big fat practical exam Friday for Anatomy (all the bones, muscles, blood vessels and nerves of the thoracic limb)so I studied part of the weekend, and just putzed around the rest of the time. The nice weather asked for some "putzing." I'll socialize more this coming weekend--the veterinary fraternity is throwing a "Testicle Festival" Friday--$5 for all you can drink beer and hog testicles (recently removed from local hogs by the 4th year students). In addition, Urbana is having its 2nd annual Beer Tasting Festival right down the street from my house on Saturday, accompanied by a chili cookoff. Fun Fun Fun!

And I did find an open mic night already--I'm playing on Thursday night at the "Courtyard Cafe" in the student union (Which, by the way, is a much more formal building than the student centers I'm used to; it's furnished like a 19th century plantation mansion. I feel like I'm in "Gone With the Wind" when I walk through there). I know I have an exam the next day, but I have two-fold justification for going: a) I should know the anatomy material by then anyway and b)twelve minutes of my life won't kill me. Unlike many open mic nights I've played, there's no need to get there early. You sign up ahead of time, they assign you a time slot, and you show to do your bit, then you can leave. Since it's at the student union, I can actually study in one of the quiet rooms afterwards.

Right now I'm in the vet school library, heading back to study Puddles and Pickles soon, and debating weather I should have a pizza delivered here.



Dana Lee 16:28


Tuesday, September 02, 2003

 

What is "pager duty?" you ask. . .


Well, I had pager duty from 8 p.m. last night to 12 noon today. At 8 last night I went to the wildlife clinic (located in thew small animal clinic on the veterinary school campus) and met another person from my team who passed the pager on to me. I stayed until about 10:15 to hang out with "Puddles." I went home and watched some mindless television while I worked on lyrics to a song I'm writing about "Puddles." A bit after midnight I decided it was time to take a shower and do the weekly scrubs and lab coat laundering-and right before I headed for the bathroom, the pager rattled on the coffee table. I called the number, which connected me to the veterinary ER, and they said they had checking in some orphaned squirrels and a pigeon.

By the time I rode my bike over there, Amy, a second year veteran of the Wildlife Clinic, had put the pigeon in a cage and was working on a baby squirrel. It was very young, and in desperate want for a warm body and a full teat. She tube fed it some electrolytes and I put it in a incubator.





Orphan cases like this are very needy, requiring more attention than the clinic can handle, so they eventually get sent to a local wildlife rehabber. The nice thing about the clinic is that they send the "finder" (the person who brings the animals in) a postcard to tell them how the case ended up. For example, when I first got in, a dead sparrow was lying on the exam table. Amy filled out a card for the "finder" explaining that the bird died. This way finders can get some closure and if an animal does recover and get released, they can see that they have made a significant impact by bringing the animal in.

There was also a set of three squirrel siblings brought in, older than the lone one, and much friskier. Tube-feeding them required a bit of skill I didn't possess. The cute black one kept pulling the tube out with his forepaws and pulling his head back and off the tube.



Just like puppies and kittens, baby squirrels cannot urinate or defecate (poop) on their own. Mom usually licks around their groin area to stimulate excretion. When mom is not present, we can use a damp rag or cotton ball to simulate the licking--then like magic, baby pees and poops for you.



Dana Lee 15:15


 

My New Best Friends


I just met him last Wednesday, and I've already spent more time with him than anyone else these past six days. When I'm not with him, I'm thinking about him. I spend late nights with him, and when we're alone I can tell him anything. His name is "Puddles." He's a 25-pound Beagle with velvet floppy ears and a fuzzy muzzle. And he's been deceased for quite a while now, thought he is very well preserved.

Our Anatomy Lab team named him "Puddles" because the first time we took him out of his plastic bag he leaked formalin all over the floor. The name just kinda stuck. Anyway, I think he is one of the cutest dogs in the world, but I cannot forget to mention "Pickles" the cat. She, too, is well preserved ("pickled") with formalin, and she is actually a purebred Siamese. They are both very cute animals, and as we poke around under their skins with our probes and foreceps and scalpels, I think about the lives they may have had, the people whose lives they were a part of, and how they may have come to this end. One of my lab partners comments that all the animals in lab must have had rough lives. I concur.

This Little Piggie

The first time I dissected a mammal my freshman year of high school, they called it a "fetal pig," but it was misnamed because it was pretty much a full term piglet. It had whiskers, eyelashes, and when I looked closely, I could even see little pink eyebrows. When I first removed it from its bag, it was plump and pink with supple translucent skin. Its snout grinned. I had trouble that first time opening up the body cavity and looking at its guts, but as the days went by, the piglet became more wrinkled, squished, and less resembling a piglet than a rubber chicken. I didn't have a problem with the piggie anymore. BUT I did have a problem when I went home to the family pet Shi-tzu, "Oreo," whose size and body shape closely resembled that of my piggie; every time I looked at Oreo I saw my piggie, with its belly cut open and all. When I pet Oreo's belly, all I could think of was all the organs barely a few millimeters underneath my hand, beating, churning, full of blood. Suddenly my pet seemed more vulnerable, and of course that led me to thinking about people, and about our insides, protected merely by a few centimeter of muscle and fat (well, now it's more than a few centimeters. . . but that's a different matter altogether).

These days I guess I'm just used the to fact and that we all have organs and blood under our skin, that we all die eventually--yes, even the most innocent and sweetest of pets. Either that or the motivation to learn the insides of the canine and feline bodies outweigh whatever sympathy I may have for the creatures we are cutting open. It's strange to look adoringly at Puddles' face, pat him on the head and say "good dog," just as I prepare to cut the furry skin, pads and all, away from his forepaw.


Dana Lee 15:12



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