Thursday, September 29, 2005
Surgery went well. It was weird that I had no problem remembering the anatomy of the testicle, but couldn't remember the genus and species names for round worms and hookworms (our dog had them both!) As soon as someone said "
Toxocara canis" I said, "Yes! The one that looks like a chocolate pie!"
They probably thought I was on crack (thanks, PP, for explaining in class the reason for that price difference between crack and pure cocaine), but my outburst was a result of equating the appearance of the
Toxocara egg with that of a yummy chocolate pie. With me, it always comes down to food.
We showed up at 6 a.m. to examine our dog and set up, we had a last-minute orientation on anesthesiology (it was supposed to be the week before but there was a little SNAFU), and they let all fifty of us confused befuddled kids inject and hook up dogs with tubes and such, and let us cut them open.
It was fun.
I'd like to put up a picture of our first surgery dog, but we're not allowed. He's part Australian Shepherd, so this photo is close enough (except ours has more brown and less black, and has a bigger head):
Monday, September 26, 2005
Check out AMZ's
post on stallion semen collection.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Junior Surgery!
Well, I’m in the half of class that gets to do small animal surgery the same month we have tons of exams. Lucky us!
Tomorrow, dogs and cats from local animal shelters come to school and each three-person surgery team has to do a nose-to-tail exam before Tuesday morning castrations.
Then Tuesday’s the big day--the first junior surgeries of the year. Afterward, we care for them until Thursday, which is when the animals return to the shelter if no one from school has adopted them. To no surprise, this is the time of year many students (especially the juniors performing the surgeries) can’t resist the temptation to bring a new friend home.
Luckily, I’ve got some good teammates, and hopefully we'll work well together. First up, Kim is doing surgery, I'm assisting, and Johanna is the anesthesiologist, then we switch roles each week until we've each had a turn as surgeon. Then next semester we get to do it again.
A lot of people are freaking out about their first surgeries, but I’m hoping that if we show up prepared, we’ll all be fine.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
It'll be noon in 11 minutes
It's been a productive morning; although I never did get over to the vet med building to watch that video and hit the library (I'll go tomorrow), I
do have a week's worth of meals cooking in the kitchen. I've got a gallon of vegetable soup in one crock pot, three servings of potato/carrot/tofu curry going in the little crock pot, my signature roasted peppers and potatoes in the oven, and as I blog, i am enjoying some of the pesto I made with the huge-ass bunch of basil I got for $1.50 at the market. (I tried to get the guy to just give me one branch, but he insisted he only sold it by the bunch. So I made pesto.)
Wannabee's Recipe for Fresh Pesto:
a bunch of fresh basil (four handfuls?), washed and trimmed
one handful fresh parsley
four cloves fresh garlic
juice from half a lemon
a cup or a little less of olive oil
a cup or a little less of pine nuts
Saute the garlic cloves in a little olive oil until they are soft. Combine the garlic, the rest of the olive oil, pine nuts, and lemon juice in the blender at high speed until you get a creamy mix. Add the basil and parsley and blend (pulse and use a tamper if the leaves won't go down into the blades) at medium speed until you get the consistency you like.
If you want, add a little salt.
And, of course, I can't have a heavy, early lunch of pesto pasta without a glass of cheap red table wine (which I purchased at the
CARE Helpline fundraiser last weekend).
No, it's not noon yet, but it
will be 11 minutes.
Well, it’s kinda crappy out. It’s a good day to run over to the farmer’s market. Get some tomatoes and squash and basil, and make soup.
I’m glad it’s crappy out. No incentive to run and play outside--just incentive to stay in and study like a good little nerd. My only self-scheduled obligations today are
a) go over to the vet med building and re-watch the video on castration--here in vet school they are sticklers for doing it the
proper way, and I've only done it the quickie "free clinic" way. While I'm there I'll look at the toxicology textbook in the library and pick up my bike, which I left there last night due to a downpour and laziness.
And b) at 5:30, as a part of this week's
Wall to Wall Guitar Festival, there's a free
fingerstyle workshop at Corson’s Guitar Store, where I take lessons. I'll stop by to see if I can pick up any pointers.
Oh, and after a barbeque/pot luck at Susan and Steph's, tonight I plan on breaking my old fart ways to actually go out to Campus Town and socialize. I may actually stay out past ten.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Multilingualism:
Yet Another Character Flaw
Our self-appointed class clown stood between a classmate and me in lab the other day, and as she answered a question of his, he said
"I'm sorry--I can't understand that damned accent of yours."
Amused with his little witticism, he smiled and looked at me.
I didn't laugh.
But lo and behold, there to save the day was his class-clown-in-waiting, who laughed a fake boisterous laugh into my ear. "
I thought it was funny!" he approved.
"So did
I!" laughed Head Clown, satisfied that someone else found him funny.
They both just thought it was one big laugh riot.
Of course they would--because there's nothing funnier than deriding someone who can speak more languages than you,
especially if that someone is more articulate in English as a second language--albeit with an accent--than you are with English as your
only language.
Monday, September 19, 2005
After reading John Scalzi's ruminations on
Being Poor, I'm reminded that I've never known what it's like to be
truly poor. I'm not talking about the kind of poor that subjects you to living in a one-room apartment and buying clothes from the second-hand store--I mean the kind of poor that makes you feel
privileged to have a bed to sleep in and a private place to pee, the kind of poor that subjects you to getting shoes and clothes out of a dumpster, the kind of poor that you don't choose, the kind you can't easily escape.
I know quite a few people who think being poor is some type of character flaw, that poor people are ignorant and uneducated (or vice versa), that poor people are poor because they gamble and drink (and
not vice versa), and that being underemployed or undereducated is a choice. They believe that in this "land of opportunity," poor people could stop being poor if they only got off their lazy asses, that they could find better jobs if they would only try harder. . .
Granted, I don't personally know many poor people, but I know a few who
were desperately poor and overcame their situation with hard work, talent, and the right opportunities at the right times. Unfortunately, this is uncommon, and not all hardworking folks get that perfectly-timed opportunity (a.k.a. "luck"). Not all spouses can afford life-insurance policies, not all job losses come with severance packages.
And sometimes working a minimum-wage job to help your parent(s) put food on the family dinner table is
much more important than passing your high-school algebra class.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Third Year, Fall Semester UI DVM Curriculum
Companion Animal Medicine III and IVThis semster I think we're doing oncology, infectious diseases, respiratory disease, renal disease, and others. . .seeing that we no longer have any cardiologists on the faculty, I'm not sure we'll get to that. That's okay, because cardiology is not
that important, anyway.
Ruminant HealthIn one word:
diarrhea. Ruminants are freaks of nature; they are 55-gallon fermentation tanks on four legs. They live to eat and poo and experince over 50 types of diarrhea.
Introduction to SurgeryHow to cut, how to tie, how to sew, and how to stay sterile while doing all of the above. (I could easily make vasectomy joke here, but I won't.)
Small Animal SurgeryBasically spays and neuters.
Large Animal Surgery Not sure what we'll be doing--probably displaced abomasums, in which one of the stomachs gets twisted about and ends up somewhere where it's not supposed to be.
AnesthesiologyLosta machines with lotsa dials, lotsa tubing, lotsa pharmacology, and some equations.
ToxicologyBasically it's pharmacology kicked up a notch.
Ecotoxicology of the Northern HemisphereAn elective all about toxicants in the environment, mostly unnatural ones, and the impact on wild and domestic animals.
I've found that you can't talk about ecotoxicology without talking economics and politics. . .many underdeveloped countries with great natural resources are losing them to "western" companies who set up camp in countries with permissive or nonexistent environmental (and minimum wage) laws. This means unregulated pollution and low wages in underdeveloped communities.
T
heriogenology (animal reproduction/obstetrics)
All I have to say is that I'm super-fond of neither peninses nor rectums that are bigger than my arm. But you do what you gotta do. . .
Study BreakAhh, amidst the first round of exams, the stress level of the class seems to have mellowed since this same time last year. I'm hearing more people say they don't give a crap about their GPA, and that may be due to that fact that this far into the program our GPAs are pretty solid, or because they've used up all their fretting last semester, or because some of them are lying and are actually closet Gunners like a certain former lab parnter of mine, who says she doesn't study that much but then gets upset when she gets a 92% on an exam. . .
Our first exam was oncology, which was very straightforward, and this week we have surgery (both written and practical exams) and anesthesiology.
I hope my musical and artistic technical skills will come into play--all the fine motor skills and spatial perception.
As far as anesthesiology. . .well, I'm very good at anesthetizing
myself--how hard can it be with animals?
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Veterinary Factoids
We've got two for you this week!
1) Veterinarians use their non-dominant arm to perform rectal exams on cows and horses. Why? So if the animal, especially a horse, decides to quickly sit down, rear up or back up on you, the arm that gets broken is not your dominant arm.
(Dr. Brendemuehl said that removing a broken arm from a horse rectum hurts more than childbirth. How he knows what childbirth feels like, I'm not quite sure. . .)
2) Second-hand tobacco smoke is associated more with mouth cancer (specifically squamous cell carcinoma) in cats than with lung cancer in cats or dogs. Why? The most likely reason is because cats groom themselves obsessively, licking up all the carcinogens deposited on their fur from envrironmental smoke.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Here's the
Chicago Tribune article on pets left stranded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
My two cents on Katrina. . .
are going to the Red Cross and the Louisiana/Mississippi VMATsAlong with all the people left displaced, injured and sick, there are also pets that were lost, left behind and not allowed onto buses out of the flood zones.
Unfortunately, some people put their pets before themselves and stayed behind because they did not want to leave their pets.
Along with the rescue and medical efforts for people, many veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and other animal-lovers are leaving their businesses and families to volunteer their time and skills to work the overcrowded animal shelters, providing medical care and trying to locate owners of pets that may have survived the disaster. (Fortunately, many pets have
microchip implants that can help identify them.) Here at school we've been getting e-mails asking for veterinarians and technicians to volunteer their time, skills and equipment down south.
Just wanted to let y’all know--there are
folks out there watching out for the pets, too--
We’re back online. . .
New and improved formula--now stalker-free!Okay, for those of you who thought I crawled back under my bed: I didn't. I just got a little lazy. I kept on blogging through the summer, but I didn't post and republish the blog because a) I was waiting for some photos to get e-mailed to me and b) since my blog is image-intense, I hated blogging from D. Blue's slow-ass cellular connection. Also, I was having trouble figuring out where to store my photos (I won't have this school account forever, and I'd hate to have to replace all the photos I post), and now that Blogger brought back ther photo posting option, it's much easier.
Now I've finally got my photos somewhat organized and I'm back on a high-speed connection.
The complicate things further, I found out that Mr. Stalker from 6 years ago is still googling my name on a regular basis (he e-mailed me recently about some stuff of mine he read online), so I thought it was time I finally removed any trace of my name from the blog and its address. An inconvenience for some who will have to find my blog all over again, but well worth getting that creep off my e-back for a little while.
Not that this will keep Mr. Creepy Stalker from eventually getting wind of the ruse and re-discovering a way to check in on my doings, but this way at least it'll take him a little more effort, and I think I'd rather just keep my name off for numerous other reasons, too.
So sorry to all three of my loyal readers. . . but I’m back now!
Finger-Pickin' Good
I had my first lesson with
Lou today--and exactly what I was expecting: we're going to clean up some sloppy technique and re-learn some basics, and move on to blues scales and fingerboard theory.
Lou had a very simple piece of advice that can probably apply to many things:
"If you have the basic techniques down well, anything you play, no matter how simple, will sound good."
Reminds me of an open mic I went to in DeKalb years ago: there was a guy there who strummed some covers that may have seemed like cheezy, simplistic song choices (James Taylor and Elton John) and some basic 3-chord ditties he wrote himself, but his strumming was so clean and his voice was so clear--he just sounded great. Sometimes simplicity really works. In fact, I think sometimes it's harder to make simplicity work.
