Smorgasbord

Ready for a GIANT update? I recommend preparing yourself, this is going to be intense.

There is a hurricane coming soon. Probably tomorrow. We're ready though.

(got the picture from a nifty iPad app my dad got me. Pretty awesome, right?)

Our old landlord gave us a giant bag of fresh fruit from our old yard a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious. We made lots of guacamole and mango salsa. This is a definite pro of living in the Caribbean!

Om  nom nom

What am I going to do with such a GIANT avocado??

Make a new nose for myself.

My donkey is true to his name. He is an A**. Seriously. I thought that maybe we had become friends a while back, and maybe we had, until I lost his trust. The only procedure he was scheduled for this term was a casting lab where I learned how to apply fiberglass casts to a limb. It was a lot of fun for me, but not so much fun for Bullwinkle because he had an adverse reaction to his sedative medication and became very angry and aggressive. All the hard work we had put in before that was lost and it was back to square one. The upside is, my donkey now has minty fresh breath at the end of each exam. Why? How? Dinner mints. Those red and white hard candy mints you get at restaurants? Donkeys loooooooooove them. Yes, I use bribery to examine my donkey, and I have to admit it works great. Yes he still kicks and bites but in a more manageable way where I don't end up with giant bruises. Moral of the story is, carry a pocketful of mints anytime you need to get a donkey to do something, and both of you will be much happier. Bullwinkle also knows his name now too, or at least the sound of my voice when I call his name. Either way, it makes finding my donkey in a group of 60 others much easier. Now, this isn't what my donkey looks like (and unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him) but this is just so hilarious... so enjoy. :)

What are gas prices like at home right now? They seem absurd here currently. I finally did the math (had to convert EC to USD and liters to gallons) to find out that gas prices are currently around $5.60/gallon. Ooooof. It hurts. Good thing the island is so small and the furthest I ever drive is about 5 or 7 miles. Electricity is also getting absurd. You don't want to know how much I paid for electricity last month. Let it be suffice to say it was nearly double this month last year. Oooooof.

I've been dreading talking about this, and now I'm even so sure I want to get into the details anymore. Long story short, I experienced my first patient death. I was in charge of the anesthesia on someone else's sheep. I chose very safe drugs that normally have zero adverse reactions, and they have reversals in case of reactions. Well, our sheep was special, and he had an instant allergic reaction to the drugs which caused him to get fluid in his lungs and his brain almost immediately after the drug was given. We reversed then drugs  and did everything we could to get rid of the fluid in his lungs and brain. He did recover that day and after 2 days of close monitoring and nursing care he was ready to re-enter the herd. He did great for almost a full day but was found dead the next morning. It was quite sad at the time as us students who were in charge of his care were shocked by his sudden death. The professors working with us were shocked too. We did a necropsy (which is an autopsy, but on animals) and found changes in his lungs and brain as expected for what we saw during the anesthesia. Poor guy. Anyway, out of this I learned more about what it takes to be a doctor and the responsibility that is on your hands. It is tough and stressful but I can't wait to get better at it and really know how to take charge. I'm glad that I was able to experience an event like this, but it is never fun to see your patient pass away. It also taught me to never get too comfortable with the drugs we use, you can never predict how a patient will react and it is very important to understand that. Thank you Latte, for being an awesome sheep and a great learning experience for a future veterinarian.

On another note, Rocky's "mohawk dreds" along his spine came out. Now he just looks like all the other sheep. So much so that I even started examining the wrong sheep a couple weeks ago! Oops.

Over August break I want to do a little sewing project for the fun of it. I want to make these adorable little lamb pillows...

Adorable, right??

Yesterday Matt and I went on a cat trip with some friends. It was a gorgeous day, probably the last gorgeous day until this storm blows over. I'm hoping that it will just be a storm, not a hurricane.

Here are the boys enjoying some drinks on Nevis where the boat stopped for a couple of hours:

Lastly (for today) I have my mock spay procedure this week. I have to pass it to pass the semester. I'm not too worried but I'm still practicing a lot. The other day I looked at one of the suture packages I have more closely than usual only to find out that it was made in Portland, Oregon! Crazy how things from Oregon find me on the island once in a while.

I realize I still have to finish talking about the europe trip... a few months late. I'll get there, eventually.

Forbs are making a comeback

Does anyone remember the story about forbs when I was in my first semester??

You know, the bushy-plants that goats eat, not the company.

Well, I have that same teacher again this semester. It is much better now, I think he likes the material better and he teaches it with much more enthusiasm. For some reason, I thought maybe his test questions had changed along with his spirit. Silly me. If you don't remember about forbs, there was a question on my nutrition exam asking which species ate "forbs". I had no idea what forbs were. They're bushes. Yup. Bushes. Goats eat bushes. I think I picked penguins or something else absurd.

Getting back to the main point, here, in 6th semester during my large animal medicine midterm, his silly test questions surfaced again. This time, it was in the form of "what shape of pupil does a horse have?". Simple question, one might think. See, the problem is, vet students don't think about these obvious anatomy features of the species we're studying. I'd say our class was more worried about the deleterious effects of endotoxin on the horse, not the shape of their pupils. We still aren't sure exactly which was the correct answer due to the way the options were written. I even consulted two anatomy textbooks, my class notes, AND the internets. In case you weren't aware, the internets are a vast sea of information, some of which is accurate. Even with all of that information I still can't figure out which is the correct answer. Only time will tell (when we get the exam results back).

For those who were wondering what the options were (Alanna), here they are to the best of my memory:
A. Round pupil with round borders
B. Horizontally elongated with straight borders ventrally and dorsally
C. Horizontally elongated with dorsal projections from the pupil
D. Vertically elongated with projections dorsally from the iris

Yeah..... I chose B because I felt like the "sun shades" horse have on their eyes could only come from the iris since the pupil is more of an anatomical area than a structure. The pupil just describes the window you see from the cornea, through the opening in the iris, through the lens and into the back of the eye. The iridic granules/corpora nigra ("sun shades") horses develop can't just grow out of thin air, they need some sort of cellular base. Sadly, none of the textbooks I own say more than the name of the "sun shades" and don't describe specifically where they arise from. The exam key will be posted later this week, so I'll update this again after checking it.

If anyone is curious what a horse pupil looks like, here is a picture I stole (err... borrowed?) from the internets:

So there's that. Seems like a simple question... but alas... Forbs. Sigh.

In other vet school news, I performed my first surgery! It was amazing. I had a blast. It was simple; an incision through the skin, subcutaneous tissue and a thin muscle that overlays the ribs. I closed it in two layers. The first was a simple continuous pattern with knots buried at both ends to close the subcutaneous tissue. The second closure was for the skin, and I used a ford interlocking pattern for half the incision and closed the rest with mattress sutures. We were asked to show a variety of patterns, normally you would choose only one to close a skin incision, unless you felt like being fancy of course. They look a little bit like this:

Ford Interlocking pattern

Cruciate mattress pattern

Rocky, my sheep who I did this to, is doing great. I'm amazed at how quickly and how well his incisions are healing. It makes me proud! I don't think he'll even have much of a scar.

Bullwinkle (my donkey) and I may just get along after all. We had a rough start... he may have tried to bite and kick me several times during our first encounter, and second. Apples seem to be the key to our new friendship. As long as I don't run out of apples anytime soon this may just work out.

Less that 50 days and I'll be in Oregon.... yay!!!

Paris is coming soon... promise.