You know you're a vet student when...

I had a dentist appointment today. I was having a titanium implant put in my lower jaw to replace a missing molar. It's a relatively minor procedure, just done with an injected local anesthetic, then a hole is drilled in the bone and the implant is put in place. Over the course of a couple months, the bone bonds to the implant, and it's used as an anchor for a prosthetic tooth.

So there I am in the chair, having my gums cut open and a hole drilled into my mandible, and these are a few of my thoughts...
1) What size scalpel is that? Eleven? Looks like an eleven...
2) I wonder what they're using for anesthetic. There's a couple of syringes, I wonder what's in all of them...
3) Is it pure titanium or an alloy?

So after the implant was in place and the sutures were done, they did took rads to check the placement in the jaw. The practice has a panoramic x-ray machine, like this:

Your head goes in the middle and the white arms rotate around to give a full mouth radiograph. All I could think was, "When will someone invent these for animals!?" Our radiology professor has always stressed how difficult it can be to get good dental radiographs of animals. It requires some interesting positioning and maneuvering to get the teeth lined up in a way that lets you see everything clearly. One of these things would be awesome in vet med.

Post-Exam Period Decompression

It's like deep water diving. You need some time to depressurize and come back to the world of the normal, land-dwelling people. After Histology on Friday, there wasn't much to report. Other than a "WTF??" moment while looking at a slide of an anal gland (only found that out later...), it was pretty uneventful. Since I was confident I hadn't failed anything, I basically entirely stopped thinking about school once I left that exam room. Some friends and I had dinner that night and went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (because nothing eases the mind more than looking at Robert Downey Jr...). On Saturday, there was something of a mass exodus of my classmates off PEI, though some of the Americans left on Friday night to get a head start.

I'd almost been too busy over the past few days to even think about marks. I was pleasantly surprised when they came in. One or two were a bit lower, but only by a few points. Notable surprises were Physiology and Histology. I managed to drag Phys kicking and screaming up from a B to an A-, which means I must have aced the final. Woo! And Histology bumped up a couple of points too. The overall breakdown was: 1 A-, 4 As, and 2 A+s. Merry Christmas to me!

So that's that. I have another 12 days of rest, before jumping into Semester 2. Bring it on!

Running on empty

If motivation was gas, I'd be running on fumes and about to call CAA. Unfortunately, there is no CAA for motivation. I have a reasonably good mark in histology already, so even if I just pass the final, I still end up with a 70% or something. On top of that, it seems like a lot of the material has been covered in other classes, so I already know it. So I'm mostly reviewing images to see if I can tell stuff apart. And listening to a lot of J-Core. For non-lyrical interesting music, nothing beats J-Core.

Animal production systems went fine. It was...short, if nothing else. I was done in 15 minutes, and I wasn't the first person by a long shot.

I made chocolate peanut butter truffles. Or I'm in the process of making them. The ganache is cooling in the fridge now. It has to set for a few hours, then I need to roll it into balls and dip them in chocolate and add sprinkles. Yum! They'll be tasty. I just don't know how esthetically pleasing they'll be.

It's snowing like the dickens out right now. It's supposed to warm up and rain tomorrow though, and then be clear on Saturday for my drive home. Ooh, so close but so far away!

And a classmate has just informed me that they've posted all our winter semester courses to our online course content site. Just so we don't totally forget about school!

Countdown - 24 hours, 39 minutes to the end of Semester 1.

And here they come down the homestretch!

Yes, AVC 2015 turned the bend toward the finish line today when we finished Physiology. We aren't all that pleased with it, I might add. It was a seriously rough test. I passed, no question about that. I probably pulled a 70%, and I'd be happy with that. I think neurophysiology saved my butt. The neurophys professor chose short answer/explanation type questions instead of multiple choice, so I could actually thoroughly show what I know. Some of my classmates aren't so sure about it. It's really hard to see your friends struggle. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them.

So just three more exams to go. Anatomy, Animal Production Systems and Histology. I feel okay about all three. Anatomy is probably my best subject. I've put in a ton of time recently, and I think it shows. I know my stuff. So I just need to review the lecture material a bit this weekend and re-watch some lab videos my friends and I made.

Animal Production Systems will probably take up most of Tuesday studying for me. It's going to be just about all pigs and chickens. Yawn! Oh well. It's not hard material, and a lot of it is pretty common sensical.

Histology and I... I don't actually hate it as much this term. I have some solid study guides, and I feel like the lab material for this test is actually easier than it was for the first one. There's more identifying features this time, it isn't just all pink squiggles and purple blobs. I do need to review for the written part, but luckily, that's not until Friday, so I've got some time.

Onward and upward!

The state of my "Give-A-Damn"

It's busted. Totally broken beyond all recognition. I'm seriously hating on immunology right now. I've been working on it off and on for about 3 hours now (really? it seems so much longer...). The final is tomorrow. I think I'm ready, but I'm never really sure until I get in there and see the questions and I see exactly what I can pull out of the recesses of my brain. Immunology isn't a hugely important class and I've already got good marks in it, so this shouldn't be stressing me out this badly, but it is. It doesn't help that there's a $2500 prize riding on the highest mark in the class.

In any case, I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I want to go home. Not like, leave the library and go back to my current residence home. I mean HOME-home. Home to NS. To my parents. To my dog and my cat and my horse. I want to be done now.

"Reach down your hand in your pocket,
Pull out some hope for me.
It's been a long day, always,
Ain't that right?"
-Long Day, Matchbox 20

Well, that's (almost) all she wrote

Two projects done this week. One more assignment to pass in tomorrow morning. And that's it for Semester 1. On Saturday, we start final exams.

We're all really tired. Most of us are severely lacking in motivation (myself included). We're still mostly having a good time. Tomorrow is Ugly Christmas Sweater day. I couldn't find an ugly Christmas sweater. So mine is going to be Slight Unattractive Sweater with Ugly Christmas Tie. Close enough!

There's some movement of groups. People are scoping out new groups for anatomy next semester. Next semester we do ponies and goats. If you're doing a goat, it's three people to one cadaver. If you're doing a pony, it's six people. My group is one of the few that still really likes each other and still works really well together, so we're sticking with each other. (People formed groups before they knew each other, so now some people hate each other. Or some people are still friends, but can't work well together.) We're opting for a goat. I know horse anatomy reasonably well as it is, and J and A didn't care either way.

Speaking of J, A and I... None of us will be brain surgeons. Who would have thought the brain is so damn complex? I can just about manage "cerebrum", "cerebellum" and "brain stem". But there's so much more than that... We have to know what every single part of it is called, and what they all control. And everything seems to have three names. And do eight functions. And it all looks the same. Except the cerebellum. It looks like cauliflower.

The 12 Vet School Days of Christmas

12 hour days
11 extra hours in anatomy lab
10 cups of coffee
9 different answers to "Which is the auriculopalpberal and which is the auriculotemporal?"
8 kilograms of textbooks
7 final exams
6 hours a day of studying
5 more days of classes
4 nervous breakdowns
3 sets of rads missing (really, we can't find the abdominal, the skull or the spine, which are the ones we're going to be tested on).
2 more projects
And a dog cadaver on a stainless steel table!

One month until Christmas Eve!

And three weeks until my final exam is over and I'm free for Christmas break. Crunch time! I can't believe I write my first exam in a week. Ack. I am so not prepared. Need to do some serious cramming. I've been studying 4 hours or so every night since the weekend. J and I will be in anatomy lab to review tomorrow night, and probably on Sunday too. Anatomy project is almost ready to be put to bed. APS project is...coming. Hoping to finish on the weekend.

Everyone has their hated subjects. For me, it's physiology. It's my weakest subject. Previously it was histology, but I like the material better this time around, and the final isn't really cumulative. But physiology IS cumulative. I really hate cumulative finals, because inevitably, they're weighted more on the stuff you haven't already been tested on, and I never know how much time I should be devoting to the old stuff. I like physiology, it's all very neat and elegant, I just get lost in it. Like a hedgemaze. You can admire the hedgemaze but still be flabbergasted as to how to get out of it. I have an appointment to go over my midterm with the prof tomorrow.

Most first year vet students loathe anatomy. Really, I don't hear anyone complain more about a given subject than anatomy. I don't mind it, actually. I love the anatomy profs at AVC. My two partners are AWESOME, especially J. Some schools do anatomy lab every. Single. Day. That would be grating, I agree. AVC doesn't. We have a 3 hour Monday lab and a 2 hour Thursday lab. It's not bad. The 3 hour lab can be a bit exhausting, but there's nothing stopping us from stepping out for a 15 minute break or something. Maybe I'm weird.

In fact, I'm almost positive I'm weird.

It's the little things

Sometimes, you're tired. You don't want to study. You've got two long weeks of classes ahead of you, followed by two even longer weeks of exams. You're homesick. The cranial nerves terrify you. You have two projects and an assignment to do in the next two weeks. It's getting colder and darker each day.

And then in a lab animal wetlab, you get to hold the world's cuddliest python for 10 minutes. He nestles down in your arms and pokes his tongue out at you. And everything is better.

At least until you have to go study histology.

Sorry!

Okay, I've been AWOL for over a week with no updates. Last week was more or less uneventful.

Tuesday was a feline necropsy wetlab with the pathologists. I do love the pathologists at AVC. All very cool people, very knowledgeable and they really love their job. My necropsy was something of a bloody mess, and I didn't find anything really interesting, but I learned a lot about simply the method of a post mortem.

We had a short week, only four days, and then a much needed three day weekend which I spent at Dad's house in Nova Scotia (being totally unproductive, I might add). The push is on now starting this week. Just three more weeks of classes left! Well, two and a half now. I'm trying to get caught up on reviewing my notes, but I feel like all the motivation has been zapped out of me. Hope it comes back soon, exams start in 16 days! ACK!

A Giggly Day

Yeah, sometimes, vet students are just kids. We get giggly. We're really grateful our professors are patient with us.

Example: Today in anatomy, we were going over radiography of the spine. The intervertebral foramen apparently looks like a horse head in the dog. So out of interest, our instructor asked us if we knew what it looked like in the human. With an absolutely straight face, a classmate responded: "Monkey."

(Apparently, it looks like a scottie dog in people. Go figure. It looks like a horse in dogs, like a dog in humans...)

And then a group of us was put into laughter again during a bovine palpation lab where we were told to "shake hands with the cervix". Yes, the doctor teaching us actually said the words, "Why hello cervix, how are you?"

We got our final midterm marks back today. In all, I've done very well. There were a few failures on our histology midterm, unfortunately. I did... very well on it. I don't know how. I don't know if I knew more than I thought or if I had a slew of lucky guesses, but in any case, it's done!

Rest In Peace

Eric Lamaze's stallion Hickstead collapsed today after the fourth round of the World Cup in Verona. He was a fantastic horse with tons of talent and should have had years left in his career. He was a multiple medal winner and a national hero to Canada. He will be deeply missed. My thoughts go out to Lamaze.

I love it when I know things

Ah, pathology rounds. Sometimes, you are a little ray of smelly dead body part sunshine.

One of the cases shown today was a necropsy on a blocked cat. The clinician asked the presenting student what causes death in blocked cats. Apparently, it's hyperkalemia, or excess potassium. He then asked how that caused death. OOH OOH! I know this one! Excess potassium changes the resting membrane potential and makes cardiac pacemaker cells less likely to fire, so the animal essentially dies of poor circulation due to severe bradycardia. YAY PHYSIOLOGY! My fellow first year classmate and I had a little wink and a nudge when that came up because we actually knew what was going on for once.

Just found out I got chosen to do the bovine palpation wetlab on Monday. Super excited! I've seen it done, it's common in cattle and horses for pregnancy checks, but this will be my first chance to get my hands (and most of my arm...) dirty.

Kidding: we wear plastic sleeves.

So, just four more weeks of classes left in first semester. Hard to believe! I really can't believe how fast it's going. And a little scared, because that means finals are just around the corner, and then second semester - where we lose a handful of easy courses and get more hard courses. ACK!

Dear Midterms: Bite Me

Mwahaha! They're finished!

Yes, the class of 2015 was more or less in tears as of 10:30 am on Friday. Histology really really sucked, and we just all hoped we passed.

Other midterms have been substantially better! So far my lowest mark was a 74%, and that was still above the class average. And the two heaviest weighted classes are actually my highest marks! I'm still waiting for animal behaviour and histology, but aside from histology, I think I've come through relatively unscathed. I was very very surprised about anatomy. I think they counted wrong. It doesn't seem plausible that I scored that high.

Oh well, happy halloween to me!

Really, I'm not dead

That is actually my standard greeting when calling people back home now. "I'm still not dead."

Forgive the almost a week without anything, but truth be told, it's been pretty uneventful lately. We're all writing midterms, so that's all we're doing. I haven't been to rounds for...well, anything. Rounds are usually just after class or during lunch time and I'm cramming so much these days that during my lunch hours, I really don't want to even acknowledge that vet med exists. So far I don't feel too bad about midterms. Anatomy didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I think I did okay. I rocked immunology and physiology and animal production.

It's a good news/bad news situation right now. Good news? Only two more midterms left. Bad news? One of those is histology. I can't even put into words how much I hate histology. There's no word for it. Physiology and I are actually sort of friends, immunology and I get along fine (even if I do struggle to stay awake through the lectures, I get the material), anatomy and I are... acquaintances. If anatomy was a person, I'd nod and wave to it in the hallway, but wouldn't necessarily stop to chat.

Histology and me though? Well, if histology was a person, we would have had a full on, screaming-biting-scratching-hair-pulling bitch fight by now. Everything is pink squiggly lines with dark dots. Dense regular connective tissue? Pink squiggly lines with dark dots. Smooth muscle? Pink squiggly lines with dark dots. Fibrocartilage? Pink squiggly- Well, you get the idea.

Suffice to say, I'm NOT looking forward to Friday morning from 8:30-10:30. I just really want to pass it. Anything above a pass will be icing on the cake. I'm hoping to do well on the theory/written (which I seem to get and know) and to make up for the identification part.

We'll see. Almost done. This weekend is going to be bomb, as soon as it starts on 1:30 on Friday.

Today, I almost puked

So far in vet school, I've encoutered lots of gross stuff. Udders loaded with cheese-like mastitis. Partially degraded bird guts. A heart full of clotted old blood. For the most part, I've treated it all with enthusiastic fascination, with maybe a brief, "Ew."

But today in anatomy lab, I just about lost it. We went into the abdominal cavity today to examine the GI tract. After spending 10 minutes looking for a uterus that wasn't there (turns out our dog was spayed, which isn't common in these dissection dogs, they're usually intact), we went into the stomach. Which was full of partially digested dog food. My partially digested food was very close to coming back up my GI tract. Luckily, I wasn't a alone - one of my partners was looking just as green as I was. To the guy in our group - I owe you a beer. You're a champ. He cleaned out the whole thing without batting an eye, and without laughing at us for being nauseated.

(And, no, I didn't puke. Neither did she.)

Midway through Midterms

Well, almost. The joke now is that halfway through our Animal Production Systems midterm, we're all going to give a little cheer for being officially halfway done this horrible stretch of seven midterms.

Anatomy was a bit annoying. I feel like I didn't get a chance to show what I really knew. I missed a few dumb multiple choice on the written. The practical was definitely better than the written, surprisingly. The annoying part was that I know the nerves. I'm good at nerves. But the dogs they chose... I couldn't seem to make heads or tails of where those nerves were going or what they were doing. As ridiculous as it sounds, I think I got my 65%, that's all I care about. I knew anatomy wouldn't be my best subject in vet school, and it's not worth freaking out about. Vet school is weird, in that it takes a bunch of type-A overacheivers and makes them perfectly happy to just pass.

Immunology was much better, surprisingly! I feel like I have the potential to actually do well in immunology. The questions were more general then I was expecting. There were a few times that I probably gave too much information. Mostly out of a sense of "I bothered to remember this, so YOU'RE GOING TO READ IT, DAMNIT!"

CSI: Avian

This morning was an avian necropsy and bandaging wetlab (bandaging was done on the dead birds we were using for necropsy). I did (apparently) a great job wrapping the wing, but broke the ulna trying to place an interosseus catheter. :oops:  In my defence though, the doctor in charge said that the ulna was very tiny in the bird I had and I probably wouldn't be able to place it, even with a 25 gauge needle (the smallest size they had on hand). My bird wasn't in particularly good condition - they were all donations, and they're usually frozen prior to use, so sometimes the tissues aren't in great shape. Mine was pretty bad. But! I did find something interesting. There was quite a large divet in the heart and bruising on the pectoral muscles in the same location which the pathologist on hand indicated might be evidence of a shooting injury.  (Those are my CSI Horatio sunglasses.)

Now my hair smells like cow

My hair, and my clothes, and most of me, actually. Today was more or less Cow Day for me. It started with a tour of an excellent dairy farm full of happy cows. Happy, friendly cows. It was a free-stall barn, and we were smack in the middle of it. One very large cow was especially friendly and did a fantastic job of upstaging the professor. As they say: Never work with children or animals! Or to be really upstaged, work with young animals. There were calves. They were adorable. One in particular adopted my friend as it's mother and spent the entire time trying to get milk out of her elbow. I give him full points for effort!

It finished with a wetlab on physical exams on cows using the teaching cows at the college. I'm a horse person, so large animals don't frighten me, but cows are not horses. They share some behavioural traits, but not enough that I felt comfortable around them. I'm much better now though! We did rectal temperatures, heart/lung auscultation, general health check (noting skin lesions, udder health, CRT, mucus membranes, etc), rumen/intestinal sounds. Finally a chance to use my stethoscope. I love cows.

In between the cows, I wrote my first vet school exam. Structure and Function was today. Two hours to diagnose a case (well, they more or less gave us the diagnosis) and trace all the clinical signs and symptoms back to the cause. I think I did pretty well. I'm not sure if I took some mechanisms down to enough detail, but I think I'll come out with a decent mark.

One down, six to go! Anatomy on Monday. Surprisingly feeling okay about that. Terrified of histology though!

Thanksgiving weekend!

Hurrah, I'm back in Nova Scotia at my dad's house for two and a half days. It's going to go entirely too fast. I should probably be studying while I'm home, but not sure I can bring myself to do it.

Midterms sort of start this coming week, but not really. Our first midterm is Structure and Function, but the way it's set up, we can't really study for it. After that, we start with anatomy on Oct 17 and basically have one midterm every second day after that until the 28. Eek!!

Rounds are still awesome. I'm a big picture learner, and it's really great for pulling information together. Thanks to cardiology rounds with Dr Cote, I correctly identified premature ventricular contraction on an ECG in physiology. By the way, I love physiology for the time being. The heart is just amazing. Anatomically, too. It's just such an elegant, perfect design for what it does. And in pathology, we saw lungs from a lamb with pulmonary edema - the trachea was all filled with foam!

"Does my hair smell like cows??"

You learn to not be surprised by anything that happens in vet school. Half the class toured a dairy farm this morning. I wasn't on it, I missed the sign-up sheet, so I'll go next week. Just as well, since I'm in a group that has a presentation to give on Friday that's 30% of our grade for that class and it was nice to have the morning to work on it. Never mind the fact that PEI has apparently decided to have a monsoon season. Yikes! Torrential rain and horrific north wind at 100kph. I got more or less soaked in the 10 minutes it took for me to walk from my house to the UPEI library.

As I sat doing research reading an article from 1969 on aging in adult dog bones, a classmate scurries over, sticks her head immediately in front of my face and asks, "Does my hair smell like cows??" Not: "Hi, how are you? I think my hair smells like cow..." Just flat out: "Does my hair smell like cows??" And that was more or less the end of that conversation too.

Luckily, said classmate is a very good friend and has a very distinct voice. Otherwise I think my reaction to a girl sticking her head in my face would have been to slap her. Instead, it was the funniest thing I've seen all week. I'm still laughing about it.

Maybe you had to be there though.

(And yes, her hair did smell like cows. Not that it bothered me."

This afternoon

I spent way too much time cleaning dried blood and neon-pink latex out of the heart of our cadaver.

I feel like that should be all I need to write for this post. Somehow, once you bring up the words "dried blood" and "neon-pink latex" (especially when brought up consecutively), nothing else seems to matter.

Midterms on the horizon now! Bugger bugger bugger. This is one of those things I don't like about AVC. A lot of vet schools have numerous tests and quizzes throughout the semester. At AVC, our marks are almost entirely test based. And we have two sets of tests - midterms in mid- to late-October, and finals in early- to mid-December. I vastly prefer more frequent but smaller tests to infrequent large ones. So I'm sitting here in the cafeteria, rewriting my notes on sheep and cow-calf operations. I dislike studying for Animal Production Systems. I love the material, don't get me wrong! But whenever I study for it, I feel like I'm wasting my time because so much of it is common sense for someone who grew up rural surrounded by 4H and farms. But I have no idea what we'll be asked on the midterm, so here I sit.

Pig roast was Saturday night. Fantastic food! There's nothing quite like pig cooked slow on a spit. It's why I can't be a vegetarian. Meat just tastes too good! Vet school has actually reaffrimed my omnivorous ways though. We go to farms. The animals are, by and large, happy. Ideal? No. But they're happy. They're clean. They're well looked after. So I make an effort to buy local so I know I'm getting the ones that were happy, and maybe one day I'll end up as a production/food animal vet making sure that all of them are happy.

Vet Med: The Academic Buffet

I have classmates who are dead set on one field or another, to the point that they don't investigate other fields.

Me? I like to sample from the buffet of veterinary medicine. This weekend I'm attending the Dairy Cattle Lameness conference at the Animal Welfare Centre. On Thursday, it was cardiology rounds at lunch and gross pathology rounds in the afternoon (mouldy bird air sacs!). Wednesday, it was clinical pathology rounds.

I'm reasonably certain I want to do something with infectious diseases, or public health, or epidemiology. I love microbiology. And I won't lie: it doesn't hurt that it tends to be one of the more lucrative careers in vet med. I thought I'd be in a lab somewhere working for the CFIA, maybe. Or maybe zoonotic diseases. Who knows?

Today, I stuck my name in for a possible summer position in aquaculture. Aquaculture! Admittedly, I'm still not the biggest fan of fish (except for pretty koi in decorative ponds, or a greasy plate of fish and chips) but most of aquaculture is dealing with infection control and epidemiology. Right up my alley!

The conference is very promising so far. Dr Weary from UBC is speaking. He gave a lecture today on scientific analysis of pain control for us first years, as well as a dairy cattle specific lecture this evening to kick off the conference. Fantastic speaker! Very articulate and entertaining. If you ever get a chance to see him speak, I encourage you to cease it.

Muscle of Inspiration

Sounds weird, right?

Yes, it did to me too, when I read it in anatomy lab. The scalenus is a muscle of inspiration. Er, well, it's a very nice muscle, but I'm not sure I really feel particularly inspired by it. My lab partners and I had a little laugh over it and then went on. The next muscle on the list was the serratus dorsalis cranialis. But this time, the wording was different. Something to the effect of "this muscle aids in inspiration".

Lightbulb turned on.

Ohhhh. Inspiration as in inhalation.


Bugger. That was dumb of me.

AVC Open House!

Yes, once a year the vet college throws open its doors to let the public see the parts of the hospital beyond the exam rooms. This is a massive undertaking. I think just about every single student and staff member helps out in some capacity. I was in radiology, explaining (to the best of my feeble first year abilities) radiographs to parents, kids and prospective students. I had a lovely chat (in between rushes of people) with a girl who wanted to know more about getting in to vet school.

I think the most common question I got was: "Are these pictures of dinosaurs?" Admittedly, having been a dinosaur-crazy kid at one point, it was actually a little heartbreaking to tell them no, they weren't. I wanted to point out that birds are sort of dinosaurs, but didn't think launching into the evolutionary history of avians was a good idea with a bunch of 7 year olds. Besides, after the eighth time a kid calls a radiograph of a crow a pterodactyl...

The parents had more trouble with the rads of the birds then the kids did though. At least the kids got it in the realm of "has two wings and flies". I had multiple parents though proudly point to the birds and proclaim, "Look sweetheart, it's a frog!" Yes, ma'am. That's the elusive Amazonian Long-Necked Beaked Frog. With Wings. 

Finally! Gross pathology rounds!

(And that isn't "gross" as in yucky, it's "gross" as in macroscopic or visible to the naked eye. Although some people would tell you that the first definition is just as appropriate.)

They're supposed to be every Thursday at 4:30, but sometimes, they just don't happen. I finally got to attend a session today though. The fourth years and the doctors present interesting cases that have come in for pathological analysis. To the unitiated, this is basically just looking at bloody bits of dead animal. And since I'm still woefully undereducated, that's what it seems like to me too. But I'm learning! Some cases are more interesting than others. Rabbit with a uterus full of cancer? Eh, pass. Goat brain with polioencephalomalacia that causes the brain to fluoresce under UV light?? Yes please! No one knows why it causes the brain to do this - there's theories that it might be related to break down of lipids, but nothing has been proven. You can see an example here: Polioencephalomalacia of ruminants

A day in the life

So, exactly what does a day in the life of a first year vet student look like?

This is a typical weekday for me:
7:00 - Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, collect various food for the day to take to school.
8:00 - Start job. Sort laundry, drop off for the service to pick up.
8:30 - Classes start. Class schedule varies by day.
12:30 - Lunch time. Depending on the day, I'm either working in the laundry room again (as I am now) or I'm attending club meetings.
1:30 - Classes (again).
4:30 - Classes end for the day. Find somewhere quiet to study or run errands or sometimes, there's extracurriculars (like Thursday is gross pathology rounds abd Fridays are physiology tutorials.
6:30 - Head to the gym.
7:30 - Leave the gym, come home, shower, eat supper.
8:30 - Study.
10:30 - Quit studying for the night, watch Doctor Who/Torchwood/anime/Daily Show/Colbert Report/Conan - depending on what strikes my fancy. Call parents/people back home.
12:30 - Bed.

Get up the next morning and do it all again! Weekends are usually tutorials, social events, extra curriculars (and sleep). And inevitiably, I end up spending almost as much time on weekends at school as I do on weekdays.

And now, a musical interlude

From our fellow prisoners (I mean, colleagues) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. I give you... DYNAVET! Huge applause to these guys, this is just freaking awesome.

I had good intentions

So we didn't have class this morning. I was all prepared to pop into the anatomy lab and review some muscles and tendons and insertions. My body had distinct other ideas. Yeah, I gave in and rolled over and went back to sleep. I was dead tired. In my defense, I'm going on Saturday after the Histology tutorial. And next Tuesday is Anatomy jeopardy and I will be going to that!

Unfortunately, I missed clinical pathology rounds today. I had a doctor's appointment that ran long, so my options were eat lunch or go to rounds and well... Pizza won. What can I say? I'm weak. I will be hitting up gross pathology rounds after Anatomy lab tomorrow though! I like the clinical aspect, even though I don't want to be a clinician. But I'm a problem solver by nature, so seeing Antomy, Physiology, Histology, Immunology, etc integrated into real world cases is really helpful.

It's probably why I like Integration of Structure and Function (or Struck and Fuck, as my buddy called it in her notes...). That class is both exhilirating and mentally exhausting. It's okay, up until you get to the flow chart. We have to take each sign/symptom and draw them back through the anatomical and physiological mechanisms that caused them, tracing them back to the ultimate diagnosis. Unfortunately, we don't always know what we're doing. We're learning, but it's a lot to take in. A lot of consultation with Drs Google and Wikipedia (though I do not condone using them to diagnose in every day life, especially when used by people with no medical background at all). For example, we'll know that the spleen is involved in red blood cell recycling, but not quite HOW (because we haven't learned yet!). Our professors rightfully say we look panic stricken. Of course, panic stricken is how I'm approaching most of vet school. Most days I'm reminded of the saying, "If you can remain calm while everyone around you is losing their head, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation."

In other news, I have a job! The Society for Atlantic Veterinary Students runs a laundry service. Students drop off dirty/smelly scrubs, coveralls and lab coats and they get sent out and washed and returned. They hire two students to staff the office for 5-6 hours a week and handle intake and handing out of clean clothes. I applied and got it! Not much, but it's easy to work around my schedule (mostly just means giving up part of lunch time and getting to school a half hour earlier or something) and it'll cover my grocery bills and then some. Plus it looks good on resumes and scholarship applications!

There's an old joke

It's a one-liner stating: The number one cause of death is living.

Sometimes, vet med feels that way. Especially as a new student without a lot of working knowledge. As vet students, we come in with some basic science and whatever practical knowledge we scraped up in our work experience and volunteering. So especially during this first year, sometimes, it feels like we're fumbling around in the dark.

The course that's supposed to teach us to think like clinicians is Structure and Function. We're given hypothetical cases (based on real cases) and slowly given the information needed to work through them. The format is thus:
1) Basic pieces of data.
2) Record data.
3) Record known problems - what body systems are involved and what might be affecting them (infection, trauma, degeneration, etc)?
4) What further testing and information is needed?
We get more information, add the new data in with the old, and then we can start eliminating things off our initial list of hypothesis. Now, this is problem solving, and I love it. What I don't love is when your initial list of problems consists of nothing but "lethargy" and "inappetance", as it did with this week's case. Do you have ANY idea how frigging long the list of possible causes for "lethargy" and "inappetance" is?? It goes on forever! It more or less includes everything that could ever possibly go wrong.

Eventually, it was immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. We think. No one's confirmed it for us, but after getting CBC values and a decent physical exam, that's what we came up with. My point, dear reader, is that your vet is not magical. When they say they need to run Test X, they mean it. There's a lot of symptoms that present with a lot of diseases. It's really hard to tell them apart with vague symptoms though.

The Buddy System

Remember when you were in second grade and you'd go on field trips? The teacher would put everyone in buddies, to make sure no one got lost.

I'm now 24 and in vet school, and the buddy system still applies. At least at AVC it does. Each incoming first year is assigned a 2nd, 3rd, 4th year student, a faculty member and maybe a staff member. It's fantastic! You essentially have a built in support system of people who have been there and done that. It's also tradition to pass on your notes to your buddy. Today, I got my "buddy binder" from my 2nd year buddy (who is a sweetheart, and left me chocolate and Sharpie highlighters during my first week; I will be returning the favour soon!). Except it's not a binder. It's a box. A box containing three massive binders full of everything she did last year, and helpful notes about how certain professors test, where pictures are helpful, etc.

I went to a histology tutorial this morning. Dr Singh (who must really love to teach) was offering it. I've been having little coniption fits in histology lab, because I know exactly what I should be looking for, I just can't ever seem to find them. Example: Intercalated discs. I know what they are, what they look like and where they're found. But I couldn't find one on the slide. So today, I asked Dr Singh if he could point one out to me. He couldn't find any either. The slides are all of the same tissue, all taken at the same time, but all are slightly different sections. Think of a slice of raisin bread. It was baked at the same time with the same ingredients as the rest of the loaf, but might have more or less raisins then other pieces. Likewise, not all features are evident on all slides of the same tissue. But I can breathe easy, because I do know what this stuff looks like, and Dr Singh said that for the exam, we'll all have the exact same image on a powerpoint slide on the board, and the features will be hugely evident. One tiny thing for me to stop worrying about!

The Elusive 77% Candidate

If you are a potential vet student, one of the first things you want to know is "How high do my marks have to be to get in?" There is no answer to that. Your grades are only one part of your application. Depending on the school you're applying to, and the rest of your application, they can be more or less important. We were told yesterday that our class average coming in was about an 87%. But remember - that's an average of 63 students, all with different backgrounds.

At all the information sessions I attended when I applied, the above question came up. All the admissions coordinator would say was "It's usually around an 85% for the class average." But he did often say that the lowest average they ever accepted was a 77% from a student who had the rest of her application be more or less perfect.

Yes, we got to meet the elusive 77%. She's just come back to teach large animal surgery at AVC. She graduated 10 years ago, and is now a diplomate of the ACVS. How cool is that? Being a waitlister, I've felt a bit like I was a second string pick, and I'm not good enough to be there. She gives me hope.

A Curriculum Run-down

So they went over with us in a little more detail about exactly what the next four years will look like for us at AVC. Each vet school in North America produces competent grads, but the individual paths vary a little. I'm here to elucidate what an education at AVC is like.

The first two years are what they call "foundation years". A lot of Semester 1 is spent getting everyone on the same page. We all have the same 20 pre-requisites, but those can vary within them. Plus most of us are coming in with more than those 20 courses, so we have extra background knowledge. So some of us are breezing through Physiology, while others are falling asleep in Immunology. Some people have zero experience with farm animals, while others come from a farming and 4-H background (the question "What's a feedlot?" came up at one point; I will emphatically state that it wasn't me who asked it!). We're all trying to fill in the gaps in our own knowledge. I have more of a cell biology/microbiology background, so Immunology and Histology are no big deal. I am pouring a lot of time into Physiology and Anatomy though. My housemate has more of a background in Physiology though, but less knowledge on Immunology. To future first year vet students: Don't panic. We all struggle with something, we're all strong in somethings.

Semester 2 continues more normal Physiology, Anatomy and Histology, while starting to introduce some diseases - Parasitology and General Pathology. We also get into some hands-on stuff in Semester 2 with Clinical Orientation I where we learn restraint and physical exams. In other words, Semester 1 and 2 are mostly about learning what's normal. Semesters 3 and 4 get into more diseases - in other words, learning what's not normal and what causes it. These are also the two semesters of "ologies" - Virology, Bacteriology, Systemic Pathology, Pharmacology. Semesters 5 and 6 are in year three. I'm told this is a seriously intense year. You start surgeries, you're finally learning the medicine, and you're *gulp* planning your fourth year rotations. Rotations are very important. There's a core of certain rotations you have to take, but the majority are up to you. Obviously it's very important to your future career which ones you pick. We were told today that most third years freak out about picking their rotations. We were also told that they worry needlessly and most people get what they want.

So you jump right from third year into fourth year rotations - no summer off that year! In November/December of your fourth year, you take the North American Veterinary Licensing Exam. You have 2 tries to pass and get your license (the Americans get 5 tries - unfair!). If you fail both, you have to take the Part C which is a hands on practical, but there's a huge waiting list to take it, and it costs upwards of $6000. The good news is that AVC has a 2 time pass rate of 98% on the NAVLE.

I plan on passing it the first time around.

In lighter news, tomorrow is our first field trip. Yay! We're going to a combined sheep/cow/poultry farm. And there's a conference on welfare in dairy cattle coming up at the end of the month (free for students). Dr Singh, the Super Smart Former Histology Professor (and current admissions committee guy) is doing tutorials in Histology on Saturday mornings. I will say this for AVC - the opportunities to learn are there if you want them! Histology is a funny subject for me. I get the theory, I've done it a few times before now. I second guess myself a lot when I'm actually at the microscope though. So guess where I'll be Saturday morning?? Definitely at the tutorial. I just need someone with me at the scope for awhile to point everything out ("That's a Perkinje fibre, that's a nerve bundle, that's a blood vessel, that's an intercalated disc") and I'll be fine after that. A lot of my classmates feel the same way though. A typical conversation in Histology lab goes like this:

Classmate A: Are you guys looking at the guinea pig skeletal sample?
Me: Yep.
Classmate A: What's the blue stuff?
Me: Which blue stuff? The blue stuff next to the blotchy red and purple stuff?
Classmate A: No, the other blue stuff.
Classmate B: I think it's.. collagen? Didn't he say collagen stains blue?
Me: Yeah, but only with certain stains, right? What's the blotchy stuff?
Classmate C: Muscle fibres... in cross section?

That's about it. We speak in vague colour and texture descriptions. We're really happy when we figure it out. Today, there were three "quiz" slides set up at the front. Not really quizzes, just for fun - fake case descriptions alongside the slides and we got to "diagnose" them. Which led to this scenario:
Me: The second one about the cow... We're just supposed to notice the huge increase in white cells, right?
Prof: Exactly.
Me: *feeling a tad smug* And they're monocytes, right?
Prof: No, lymphocytes, actually.
Me: *no longer feeling smug* Oh. So, is it an infection of some sort? The description said swollen lymph nodes, tired, inappetance...
Prof: They're lymphocytes. Bessie has leukemia.
Me:...

"Aw, it's like a Christmas present!"

Well a very odd Christmas present. This was the exclamation of my classmate as we put away our cadavers this morning. At AVC, every second Wednesday morning, we have field trips to farms in Semester 1. We didn't have one today, so five of us diligently headed into the formalin den (I mean, anatomy lab) to go over anatomy. We spent about an hour and a half, going over muscles and insertions and trying to figure our way through the extrinsic muscles of the thoracic limb. Then we put them away - the cadaver bags are bright red, and we tie them off with green twine. So in a way, she was right. They do look like Christmas presents. Odd colour combination if you ask me.

As we were putting them back in the cold room, I did a double take. To my right, a dead goat. To my left, a dead goat in a tub of formalin. In front of me, a single horse leg wrapped in plastic, and a dead pony hanging upside down from the ceiling. In short, the cold rooms of vet schools vaguely resemble a scene from a horror movie. You get used to it. (For the record, the goats and pony are probably specimens to be used for next semester - I fully expect to see them in January when we start large animal dissection.)

We're almost done Week 1 here. I'm still in the stupidly giddy phase - I'm sure that will wear off soon. I'm weird excitedly for a class called Integration of Structure and Function. It's the first chance that we really get to apply the new knowledge we have to actual cases, even if they're hypothetical. We did a little of this at Dalhousie when I took Medical Bacteriology (by the way, if you're a Dal student right now, take this course - it's awesome, and Dr Davidson is awesome). I learn really well this way, and I'm a bit jealous of some American friends I know who are at schools with a more problem-based curriculum. I won't get to see what it's really like until the middle of next week though.

"Hey! I think that's the clavicular intersection!"

Yes, the cries of the first year vet student when she finally finds something on her dog cadaver. It's a bit like a baby when they learn to balance on two feet. Oh, they're so proud of themselves! (Whether the baby in it's stinky diaper or the vet student smelling of formalin smells worse is still up for debate...)

Classes officially started today. The first two hours were a bit dull - hospital safety stuff. Important, but dry and I was thankful to finally get to physiology. Loved physiology! The professor is quick and funny and so far, the material is fairly basic (don't worry, I expect that to change...).


Then came anatomy. Every vet student DREADS anatomy. It's a ton of information in not a lot of time. On went the scrubs and the boots and gloves and into the lab we went. All the dogs seemed to be freaking huge - I think my group ended up with some sort of German Shepherd mix type dog. Over the course of the three hour lab I learned:
Various muscles of the thoracic limb (which I'm now going over, and over, and over some more)
Dog preserved in formaldehyde has the same consistency as well done steak
Fingers are often a far better dissection tool then scalpels
Dead dogs aren't very cooperative

But every now and then you'd manage to match up what you saw on the dog to the perfect illustration in the textbook and get a little tiny shining moment of "Hey, maybe I can do this!"

Note: The author would like to remind everyone to keep their dogs lean and healthy. Because one day, a vet student may have to dissect it, and extra fat is a real pain in the ass to clean off the muscle.

Vet school photo dump!

Finally getting a chance to decompress (if briefly) today. My bedroom is organized, the rest of the house is almost organized. So I'm taking some time to upload some photos!

Blue Coat Ceremony

It was really beautiful. My riding instructor came up to be my presenter for it. It was a very emotional night, lots of people in tears of joy and pride. S, my instructor, held herself together until just as she was leaving and I saw her eyes get quite red and puffy and starting to tear up. (Admittedly, I think I look dumb in my blue coat. I got a 34, and should have gotten a 32, and the sleeves are a bit too long, so I look like a kid playing dress up. *sigh*)

Housemates and I had a few moments of "Wow, we're really doing this" after the ceremony as we stood around in the kitchen chatting. I'm sure it will sink it on Monday. Still need to buy my dissection kit, now that I think abot it.

Does anything need to be 2166 pages long??

Apparently, it does. "It" in this case in Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary. Comprehensive in this case might be the understatement of the century. It's 2166 pages long, and 2.5 inches thick. What have I got myself into?? Though  I suppose if the vet thing doesn't pan out, I can always use it as a step stool for getting things off high shelves.

Meanwhile, Guide to the Dissection of the Dog is deceptively small. I don't trust it. I keep waiting for it to spontaneously get six inches bigger. Of course, I think it might be the academic equivalent of a neutron star - a huge amount of material packed into a ridiculously tiny space. Still has that new textbook smell too! Soon to be replaced by the smell of formaldehyde. Hurrah!

T-minus 19 days

I most likely won't update daily, hopefully weekly. Photos, funny stories, frustrations - this will be a no holds barred look at my years in vet school.

I'm a 24 year old Nova Scotian. I have a BSc in Biology from Dalhousie University. I'm moving to Charlottetown on August 25, where I'll be staying with two other first year vet studets. Orientation for the Atlantic Veterinary College is August 26 (yes, cutting it close, I know!).

Last night, my riding club threw me a wonderful surprise party. Most of the members turned out, and even those that didn't, sent cards and well wishes. My wonderful riding instructor, who has been like a mother to me for 7+ years, gave me a personalized Littmann Classic II S.E. stethoscope. If I would have been the crying kind, I would have been. I will miss them all terribly!