Blog Every Day April

I heard about this idea on a message board. It's mostly aimed to help those of us who tend to think "I just blogged!" only to realize it's been 2 weeks.

So, I'm going to try to BEDA this blog! Wish me luck!

Oops.

Sorry for the long absence. Vet school has been... time consuming.

And given that I try to keep the tone here relatively upbeat, there's been very little of interest to say about school, lately. It's been a rough semester. The best thing about it is that the end is quickly approaching.

Guts are gross (and other sundry Anatomy talk)

I know it sounds rather self explanatory, but really, I didn't have a good concept of how gross guts are before we opened the abdominal cavity of our anatomy horses last Tuesday and the cut them out and dug around in them on Wednesday.

The smell was overwhelming. Usually in lab, we get used to the smell by the end of lab. Not that time. Not even a little. It didn't help that some of the horses weren't as well preserved as others, so there were some rotting abdominal contents discovered. (At least ours were well preserved. Actually, they were quite nice.)

Overall, ours wasn't terrible. But all of the steps involving draining intestinal contents were not fun. Not fun at all. Someone had the bright idea to drain our horse's left ventral colon (a relatively early part of the large intestines) by cutting a slit in it, shooting water up it, and then upending it over the floor. It was... nasty... to say the least. It also managed to clog the drain twice, so he had to pull out the drain and dump the catch into the tissue collection bucket.




Then, today, we cut the horse in half. Literally. We took a hack saw to the back, right at the end of the rib cage. We're doing all the pelvic cavity dissection sort of head on. I am forced to wonder, however, how useful a view this is. There will never be any time in anybody's future career in which they will hack a horse in half to go about their procedure.

Foal Team

My friend Caroline convinced me to sign up for Foal Team. It's essentially a class that counts towards credit 3rd year, but mostly it's for experience dealing with horses. We're on call at certain times to go in and help monitor baby foals that need ICU kind of supportive care. It sounds pretty interesting.

However, the coordinators randomly assigned groups and group leaders... and I'm stuck being one. It's a little bit of a raw deal, especially given that I don't really know anyone in my group. However, I now have it divided up so that out of each 8 hour shift we're assigned, each group member is only on call for 4 of those hours (however, the ICU people will only ever call me, and I have to call the rest of the people. Boo!)


So, I'm hoping it will be an interesting experience, but I'm a little worried! My first on call shift is this Friday, from 4-8PM. (The whole shift is 4PM-midnight.)

Vet School Jokes #4

To the tune of "It's a Small World"


It’s a life of classes; A life of fear.
It’s a life of textbooks, A life of beer.
Eight to five every day,
And for this we must pay.
It’s a vet school after all.


It’s a vet school after all,
It’s a vet school after all.
It’s a vet school after all.
It is our vet school.


There are just four years but it seems a ton,
And there’s lots of pets, some for everyone.
And although we may fret,
We will conquer this yet!

It’s a vet school after all.
It’s a vet school after all,
It’s a vet school after all.
It’s a vet school after all.
It is our vet school.

Horses

I think this may become a common complaint over the course of this semester, but...

Horses are SO WEIRD.

There are so many things about their anatomy that seem like design flaws. And then, the horse people had to go and give everything weird names.

For an example of a design flaw, their eustacian tube (between the middle ear and the mouth... so, like if a kid has tubes in their ears, it's keeping this open) dilates out and makes this huge pouch along the back of their head. If they get an ear infection, this pouch tends to get infected and fill with pus... and can lead to significant nerve damage, because there are lots of important nerves there. And, nobody has any good reason for this pouch to exist.

As to weird names... They call what amounts to our wrist the knee. And they have fetlocks and pasterns and coffin joints.

Also, they basically walk on the tip of their middle finger.

Crazy beasts!

First Day of Second Semester!

This semester should be quite an experience. We spend a lot more time in class, therefore we have a lot less time during the day at school to study and a lot sadder schedule (we have physiology at 8AM every day... instead of having it every day but at different times so we had 9AM Monday starts and 10AM Friday starts.)

Overall, the classes seem like they won't be so bad. There's a lot of reproduction, which is not my favorite, but it should be ok. It's just 1 unit of physiology and 6 weeks of embryology.

Schedule:
Monday
8 - 8:50 AM -- VTPP 912 Physiology II
9 - 9:50 AM -- VIBS 913 Microscopic Anatomy II
10 - 10:50 AM – VIBS 912 Gross Anatomy II
11 - 11:50 AM – VTPB 911 Veterinary Microbiology
1 - 2:50 PM – VIBS 913L Microscopic Anatomy II Lab
3 – 4:50 PM – VIBS 912L Gross Anatomy II Lab

Tuesday
8 - 8:50 AM -- VTPP 912 Physiology II
9 - 9:50 AM -- VIBS 912 Gross Anatomy II
12 - 2:50 PM -- VIBS 912L Gross Anatomy II Lab
3 - 4:50 PM – VMID 913 Clinical Correlates II

Wednesday
8 - 8:50 AM -- VTPP 912 Physiology II
11 - 11:50 AM -- VTPB 911 Veterinary Microbiology
1 - 2:50 PM – VTPB 911L Veterinary Microbiology Lab
3 – 4:50 PM – VIBS 913L Microscopic Anatomy II Lab

Thursday
8 - 8:50 AM -- VTPP 912 Physiology II
9 - 9:50 AM -- VIBS 913 Microscopic Anatomy II
10 - 11:50 AM – VTPP 912L Physiology Lab
1 - 2:50 PM – VIBS 913L Microscopic Anatomy II Lab
3 – 4:50 PM – VIBS 912L Gross Anatomy II Lab

Friday
8 - 8:50 AM -- VTPP 912 Physiology II
9 - 9:50 AM – VIBS 926 Public Health
11 - 11:50 AM -- VTPB 911 Veterinary Microbiology