Spelling bee--finally, my chance to shine!

Yep, it was a tough contest today. It was between the first years, the second years, and the third years. The words flew through the air with all the speed and agility of parrots (i.e. not all that speedy or agile), but gaffes were few and far  between.  There was one notable exception--"g-h-a-r-i-f-e"? I suspect she might just not have wanted to spell giraffe. 

The third years, whose brains have been subject to three years of vet school and thus are understandably a bit shaky when it comes to something as pedestrian as spelling, fell out first. The first years were definitely in the lead. We still had three out of four from our group, whereas the other two classes had only one student hanging on. There was a tricky moment with 'metzenbaum', which I can spell but not identify (some sort of scissor?). A few more times back and forth (dachshund would have stumped me, but fortunately it went to someone else) and then the last second year mistook a letter. I can't actually remember what the word was, but something like pterygoid or metacarpophalangeal. 

Er. 

Um. 

This is awkward.

But anyway,  I spelled it! And then 'erythropoiesis' was the challenge word, which went fine. Hurrah. 

So now that I've proved I can be my own spell checker, I can go back to studying for exams where everything is multiple choice. 

Repro and biochem, here I come!

Parrots and Ferrets

Monday was random animals day! Also known as physical exam of exotics...they presented us with tortoises (tortoise restraint: hold the shell). 
Snakes: one student got hold of the python and wouldn't let it go...or maybe vice versa.
Rabbits: if it grinds its teeth that means it likes you? 
Ferrets: What a charming carnivore. I'm glad I don't have one. 
Parrots: cra!-cra!-cra!-cra! for FORTY minutes. My new least favorite animal in the world. 

Then we have Wednesday, formaldehyde day. Our pony cadaver has dwindled to a single leg dangling from the ceiling, though it took a lot of work to get there. Dissection is the art of finding the really delicate bundle of nerves before you cut it...and then cutting it and moving on. 

time out

Possibly I spent too much time last night studying in compensation for not studying earlier, and got five hours of sleep. So that may explain the feeling sucky all afternoon today. I can force myself through lecture, but the thought of spending hours floundering about as the untrained surgery tech (getting progressively colder in the well-chilled surgery ward) was too much. I went home and slept on and off. When I couldn't sleep anymore, I got up. I've had some lamb thawed out for a couple of days, so I put it in a stew pot with the usual compliment of vegetables, then sauteed the leftovers. There was probably a half pound of lamb there...after I finished off most of it, it occurred to me that my blood iron is probably low again. I tend to crave tomatoes, meat, and liver (in that order) as I become more anemic. I'm not feeling a particular craving for liver, true; but then, I just ate a lot of red meat.  

So it's been a non-starter of a day. I tried to go in to school early, and ended up spacing out for most of the "extra time" I had gained.

But there's sunlight, and I'm doing a lot of watering of plants. I put five little strawberry plants in pots and they're putting out leaves on super-fuzzy stalks. I can't say the same for the ones I ripped out of the garden a few weeks ago. Most exciting are the thin cylinders of leaf coming from my Hawaiian stick. It will be a plumeria, some day, or so the label said. It's always nice when the things I plant manage to stay alive. It's not that I dramatically murder green leafy organisms, they just...pine for water and light.

Return of the Biting Horse

To be honest, Zippo has not actually bit anyone (that I know of). But she started to get a bit tired of me poking around on her face today during the midterm exam of our physical exam skills, and started putting her ears back and gnashing at the air.

The real moment of crisis came when the doctor told me to palpate her mammary glands. 

There was a sudden movement of hindquarters...the tectonic upheaval of a horse readying herself to kick...but I made it out of the way in time. She was peeved. She took this great huge kick she'd been getting ready for and turned it into a tiny little tap on the stall wall behind her. 

"I guess we won't be checking the mammary glands today," the doctor said.

Bad exams

Two exams gone badly, three to go...gosh, I may end up retaking every exam if I keep up like this. Pharmacology was bad, since I knew only half the drugs, and you can't predict their effects if you don't know what part of the nervous system they affect. I think I completely mucked up my essay on how beta receptors work too. It's sad, because I actually LIKE pharmacology. But I said that about neurology too. And anatomy. Apparently my study techniques are way sub-par this semester. I obviously have to stop having dinner when I get home, since that seems to suck two hours away from the evening.

That said, I'm going to go study now.

Horses

For large animal, they send us to the university's teaching facility and we spend a couple of hours every week learning how to love the smell of cows and horses. The logistics of getting there are never fun, since there's not much public transportation in the middle of the day. But it's surprisingly enjoyable to spend time leaning on dusty cow flanks listening to rumen sounds.

As is typical, the hang-ups come not from the animals but from the people in charge of them.

One of the faculty sent us a furious e-mail about how us stupid vet students were tracking mud into their pristine research facility and some very important people had noticed. One of the faculty stationed herself at the door and glared at everyone who came through the door with any footgear on. If they were wearing shoes, "You better have boots to change into!" And if they already had on boots, "You aren't supposed to wear boots in the entrance!" I was a bit irked because they never bothered to tell us before last week, aside from some mythical announcement that no one heard because we would have had to arrive early on the first day, and everyone was still scrambling to find transportation that week. The horses seemed no less annoyed with us, though I think most of them were pretty well sedated. I got to make the acquaintance of Zippo, a mare who adores the doctor in charge of the barn but tries to bite everyone else. My group decided we would skip taking her temperature. I haven't dealt with horses that are serious about biting before. I don't know how to react to an angry horse--although having three students all trying to pet it fails to impress me as a good idea. She must have been at least somewhat sedated, though, because we got out of there with our fingers intact. Oddly enough she seemed to like having her upper lip rubbed. The rest of the time she put her ears back and made startingly fast attempts to get her teeth on whoever stood too near her head.

Joys of vodka

Things to do with vodka:

Make vanilla extract
Make amaretto
Use as a fluidizer for hydrophobic pharmacological drugs
Rescue cats from antifreeze poisoning

I've only done the first two, myself, but according to one of the doctors at the school the bit about cats is true. See, anti-freeze does terrible things to an animal (or small child) that consumes it. It gets into the gears of metabolism and gums them up, by latching onto a particular enzyme that deals with alcohol (which does show up as a by product of a working organism). Puppies like anti-freeze because it tastes sweet, so they show up in emergency rooms not infrequently. For them the antidote works fine. It was developed for people, of course, but you just dose the dog on the same basic parameters.

In cats, however, the antidote doesn't work, at least not nearly so easily. By sextupling the dose, it turns out it works just fine, but it took a few years to figure that out. In the meantime, vets found they could treat cats by dosing them with ethanol--i.e. alcohol--which kept enough alcohol-metabolizing enzymes busy that they didn't get dead-ended by the antifreeze. Bodies are pretty good at getting rid of toxins eventually. The cat would get over the poisoning, albeit with a nasty hangover.

Long live novel uses for liquor.