Yup, worst blogger ever.

So I guess not having the time to post anything at all this year just goes to show you all that final year is busy busy busy!
This year we have no classes and only rotations throughout the different departments within the small animal and large animal hospital (meaning we learn EVERYTHING within one week and switch!).
I have bonded so much with my small final year group it's amazing. They are the best girls that I've had the pleasure to work with, and with what I've heard about some of the other groups in our year, it could have gone completely differently. Witty banter and all, I will miss them!

I guess currently, we (and the final year med students) are the only ones left to study for exams as everyone else is gleefully frolicking in the meadows, taunting us as we stare at them from the library. Sometimes I feel like we're the cave trolls or something else sinister like that staring at all the happy people from the shadows. And every time the sunshine hits us we burn (oh wait, that's Scottish people, zing!).
Officially in 2 weeks time our class will be done with vet school forever. According to our dean, he has no worries that he will see us all at graduation in July and he believes that we are a very strong year. I'm going to take that little confidence boost and just try to get through these last 2 weeks.
Since I wrote my NAVLE (North American Licensing Exam), I haven't felt the motivation (aka the kick up the ass) to continue to study for finals. I think the NAVLE was SO stressful to study for (our knowledge plus all the specific regional US diseases as well) that when it was over I was in a state of shell shock. And when I finally got the results 5 weeks later (I passed yay!!) I was so happy that I didn't want to do ANYTHING. I mean, I always thought I was lazy in that respects. I'm not one of those people that have the need to be doing something all the time, I am actually the exact opposite. So instead of wanting to study for finals, I went through my elective (small animal soft tissue surgery - amazing!), attempted to study cattle along the way and now with one week left before my 8 oral exams, I still have all of dog and cat, exotics and two thirds of horses to go through.
I feel like my notes are like the broomsticks in Fantasia, every time I finish one, two more pop up for me to read! I think the main thought right now to motivate me to study is that I do NOT want to be the first GEP for the last two years (at least) to fail final year. I cannot let that happen, it would totally devastate me!

Well, I guess I'll be updating later on next week due to the procrastination (consciously being lazy).

Wish me luck! 

Start of Final Year

So I just realized again that this vetstories blog barely has any vet stories in it! I will definitely try to make a change this year and add some more relevant details! Obviously from my posting history, vet school is not very exciting and worth writing about.
However, I do have to say that final year is quite different! There are no classes, and every 4 weeks you have a new topic, and each week you rotate through different areas within that big topic. The only exception is Farm Animal which is only 3 weeks.
For me, the first rotation is farm (yay!) and I get to ride out into the countryside and visit farms. My first weekly topic was Herd and Flock Health which basically dealt with management of a farm, nutrition/metabolic profiles and how to improve the overall health and sustainability of the farm. I know I know, that sounds really boring and parts of it were kindof difficult to wrap my head around, but I think by the end of it I wish we were able to do more. You get involved with a farm and part of you just wants to see it succeed. Also, I got to take a blood sample from a cow for the first time (need them to perform a metabolic blood profile to monitor for nutritional status of the cows) and let me tell know....you get covered in cow shit. We take bloods from the ventral tail vein which is literally right above the anus; and the way you stand is right behind the cow (less chance of being kicked) and lift up the tail with one hand (very heavy by the way!) and poke right in the middle of the tail with the other and draw blood with a vacutainer. So if the cow gets spooked then you are covered in shit. If the cow just needs to shit, you are covered in shit. If you cow needs to pee.....yea you get the drill. Anyways, it was a fun but very messy experience!

This week, I am on Farm Animal Hospital rotation. Our group basically stays at the farm animal hospital (helpfully located where the school is!) and we work on cases that have been brought in for us to treat. Most of the cases are animals that the farmer has "donated" because they don't want to treat, and the university takes them to help with education. If the animal recovers then we send it back to the farmer. I think the system is something along those lines but it sounds a little iffy to me.
Anyways, majority of the cases that come in are cows that have some sort of lung issue or foot/lameness issue. Today we saw both. Also, we believed one cow had something similar to septic pedal arthritis on its medial claw of the right hind that we decided to amputate the claw. (Claw = one of its toes...out of 2). Cows actually do very well after this procedure is completed and with observation and bandage changing the prognosis is usually good. The medieval procedure though is actually very cool to witness. You basically take an embryotomy wire and as quick as you can saw through the second phalanx at an angle. At our school, we perform an intravenous regional anaestheisa (IVRA) which numbs the whole foot and the cow doesnt feel anything. Also, we inject flunixin (an NSAID) which is a pain reliever as well as an anti-inflammatory, same class of drug as aspirin or paracetamol/acetominophen.

Here is a photograph taken from the book Cattle Medicine by Phillip R. Scott, Colin D. Penny and Alastair Macrae (all of which are my teachers and clinicians! I feel like I'm getting world class education here!)

Anyways, other than that life has been great! The flat is clean when I want it and dirty every other time haha. Also, I feel like things are finally sticking to my brain but it's only week 2 so we'll see by Christ how things go!

Peace and love,
Barb 

Time for Change

Hey everyone! Or..the one person that may possibly read this.
I'm back in Edinburgh! The summer went by way too quickly and I already miss all my friends dearly!
I had such an amazing time at home, especially with my family and with my friends and just trying to de-stress from school. It didn't help though that I had a report due end of August and sending e-mails through time zones just makes communication that much more difficult.
Also, our EMS over the summer was fantastic! I learnt so much this summer (more than my other summers I think) just because emergency and shelter medicine is so busy and unique. I finally saw a GDV and also quills up a dog's nose (poor guy! lesson to all dogs: don't sniff a porcupine! it won't end well). Also was able to scrub in on a couple of surgeries (surprisingly all enterotomies?). And lastly, I am honoured to say that I helped in saving a puppy's life. That memory will go with me to my grave! It's kind of funny how so many clinics don't want students because of liability reasons, but honestly, if you give us the chance, vet students can surprise you! I'm not saying I single handedly saved her , but if I wasn't there, it would have been minutes before they realized the puppy was not breathing/heart NOT beating! :O It just so happened that the surgery was completely successful and there was nothing of concern pre-operatively or during that would have made anyone think twice that something could go wrong. I just wanted to listen to more puppy hearts! And...unfortunately couldn't find one on this little girl right after surgery --> started CPR --> put on 100% O2 (vet took over CPR) and BAM! Puppy came back to life, wagging and whining. Did I also mention that she was adopted the next day?! (By the way, we had epinephrine and atropine on hand, I hope my vet/med friends know why!)
Man, I still get a little rush when I think back to it!
Anyways....
Being back in Edinburgh...it's been different to say the least. All of my classmates (pretty much all of them) have started on their rotations and are totally in to your heads with school. Me on the other hand, I'm still technically on externship so I've been doing absolutely nothing! Although I do have to say that I have been trying to keep busy with flat cleaning and redecorating. Can I say that it is a pain in the ass to be the person to keep a flat after someone else moves out? I have to deal with all the junk that gets left behind! The only advantage is that I get an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction when I throw it all out in the garbage.

So currently, the flat is no longer a mess but I think I need to start redecorating with some things...not sure what. I really wish I had some interior decorator friends who could help me out right now! I was just thinking of going to the dollar store and splurging on...stuff? Yea I have no idea but as Tim Gunn says, I'll make it work!

Summer days

So I'm back in Canada for the summer! Yay! It's been about 3 weeks now since I flew back and it's been quite hectic.
First off, I booked myself 6 weeks of EMS to do (4 of those are night shifts at emerg clinics) so I haven't really seen friends or family from Monday to Friday at all which sucks. I do take advantage of the weekends though and haven't really had a day in so I can fit my Canadian social life in.
Secondly, I think I mentioned before how I had to resit Equine and Exotics this summer. It was super stressful and not only that, but Kyle and I broke up the day before the exam which completely screwed me over. I thought the universe was spiting me for something I did before...
Anyways, it was really stressful and to top it off I thought I failed that exam. It was a lot of scrambling that day to e-mail the necessary teachers to tell them of my situation and see if there was any chance of academic consideration. Not only that but I also had to make the very depressing/miserable phone call home to tell my parents about what happened. Let's just say that a week later when marks posted I found out that I....

PASSED!!
TAKE THAT UNIVERSE!!

And actually I feel free. I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me and that this trainwreck of the beginning of the summer was actually good for me. I guess I have to thank Kyle for taking the initiative to break up with me for me to realize that I didn't want to be with him either.  Now I feel like my life has this sense of adventure and excitement that I've never had before as an adult and I'm really looking forward to my last year of vet school, to graduation, to being single and having a good time.

I even joined a dating website which was kindof fun for me to do! It's even MORE fun when you find friends on there and see what type of persona they put themselves out there as. Plus there is the occasion weird dude who tries to use a pickup line with "YOLO" in it...BAHHAHAHAHA.

Anyways, this post pretty much has nothing to do with school but I thought I would share with you all my life so far. I hope now I'll have more time to update this blog with more vet related stories! 

*Shakes fist to sky*

I'm not a religious person. I sometimes wish I believed in God or heaven and hell because I think it will give me some perspective in my life. I want to believe that there is a balance to the universe and that karma really exists - if you do good, good will come to you, and all that other stuff.

But right now, it's hard to believe that's true. What type of God would let a man go so crazy batshit that he shoots down people in a movie theatre? What type of karma is it for a woman who survived/witnessed the Toronto Eaton Centre shootings to just be shot and killed a few months later? (The latter sounding very Final Destination-like by the way).

I guess I'm just in a little bit of a shock since I'm in this little bubble in my flat studying and stressing out about an exam and I hear this horrible news. I know there are other horrible events going on right now in the rest of the world, Libya, Greece, etc., but it just seems so foreign to me that it's difficult for me to think that that is actually happening in the same world that I live in. A shooting in a theatre though, just seems so much more ...close to home. I've gone to the movies a bunch of times and now, this guy, James Holmes, has scared everyone shitless from doing one of my favourite past times. So fuck you James, fuck you and your craziness and mental instability. It's people like you that make people like me wonder why I should even worry about writing an exam that could determine my future career when  I could just one night walk into a movie theatre and never come out of it alive again - and it would have been all for nothing.

I'm not a religious person, but my thoughts and whatever prayers I make are with the victims and families of the Aurora Colorado shootings tonight. 

Another year has passed

Hi everyone!

So it's been a long time again since I last posted, I just don't have that much stuff to post about! Even though I actually do but I don't realize I want to post it until a year later. oops!

Anyways, so I'm done fourth year of vet school (technically my 3rd year) and will be moving on to final year in September. However, I have to resit one of my exams next week so if I pass that THEN I'm on to final year! One more week of non-stop cramming and reading and studying, and then I get to fly home to Canada for a whole month (and a half). It won't be just a vacation though, I'll be completing some work experience at 2 emergency referral hospitals (one for York Region and one for Toronto) and then 2 weeks at the Toronto SPCA. I just can't wait to get some hands-on experience this year; usually by now I would have completed a month of EMS and gotten my fill of dogs and cats (never!) but this summer is a little different.

As part of our course, we have to complete a 6 week research project before the start of final year, it can either be a lab project, a clinical project or a literature review. I opted for the lab project as I hoped it would give me a better structure for my report as well as getting me some hands-on lab experience (which I haven't had in about 5 years). I ended up at the Roslin Institute which is across the road from the new vet school. Most of you will know it as the place they cloned Dolly, and that's all I knew it for as well before I started. Genetic research like cloning for Dolly is no longer being researched at Roslin although they did name their cafeteria "Dolly's" to remember that time in history. My project looked at transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (brain disease that's transmissible) although I can't really delve more into that project here.

So now another year has passed, a lot of drunken shenanigans and wedding proposals and weddings have happened around me (congratulations Nicole and Mike! And that was one amazing hen night...back in November 2011 haha) and hopefully one more year to go! 

Taking it down a notch

Need to calm myself!

It's a lot of information to learn (again) but I know I can do it! I need to know this stuff forever anyways for my career so why not start now right?

Ok, back to work.