At first glance

If I had to describe my first impression of New Zealand, it would be that to me it feels like a mash up of Hawaii and England, with a touch of St. Kitts in there.

My trip over was mostly uneventful with a couple of moments of terror in between when I thought I was going to miss my connections at both transfer points. The 14 hours between Vancouver and Auckland was actually quite pleasant and I think I slept at least 8 hours during that trip. My feet did swell up awfully though. I think the salty airplane food, not drinking enough water, and not moving around much is the cause. It did not last long thankfully.

I arrived at the house I am staying at no problem. The flat mate who was supposed to meet me thought I was getting in much later, so that meant I got to meet the lovely neighbors in the area. They were very kind and let me use their phone to call him, and he came right over.

The house is nice, lots of sky lights and a very fancy kitchen. There is a huge garden with veg we are welcome to eat, which I plan to take full advantage of.

I explored a bit yesterday and today. It was a gorgeous sunny day around 70 degrees yesterday, today was not so nice and I have been mostly restricted to being indoors. After my adventures around town I realized that there is not much in this little town, and I may have seen all there is to see already. I still need to get out to the peninsula though, but I am waiting for a better day for that.

Subarus are super popular here. I can count 4 from my bedroom window!

That is all for now. Tomorrow is my first day at the vet clinic, I sure hope I like it!

Vet School no more

Warning, this is a post of rambling thoughts, it may not make the most sense. Just go with it...

This blog has been about my experiences as a veterinary student. It started to chronicle my adventures in a new country with new people starting the process to become a veterinarian. Soon, the end of this adventure will be here. Very soon.

Today I finished my last day of vet school at OSU. Now, I don't graduate until the end of January, but I am done with structured, graded, planned education. My last few weeks of "school" will be spent in another country, with new people who have a culture different than my own. Pretty much, I'm going back to where this adventure all started. But it will be a slightly larger island this time. Although this past year at OSU flew by, I can't help but think about how many wonderful people I was able to meet and become friends with, and how even in such a short time, I know I will greatly miss these people and really look forward to seeing them again. People are amazing when you stop and take a moment to get to know them and listen to their stories.

So, nearly three and a half years later and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, you may have a few questions. I do too. Was it worth it? Did I learn anything? Did it change me? Would I do it again?

Yes.

When it comes down to it, the experiences I have in life are way more important and matter more to me than any thing in particular. I am who I am today because of my life experiences.

Traveling to New Zealand in less than 2 weeks will be terrifying and exciting all at the same moment, but that is what I live for. That is what I've chosen. It's what makes me, me.

Tune in next time for the story of my twenty some hour journey across a giant ocean to the island of New Zealand. Surely there is a good story to be told somewhere in there.

Vet school Friday nights...

6:22pm on a Friday night, what on earth does the wild veterinary student do??

1. Eat what is left in the cupboards and fridge. Check. (Hummus and cracker bits and pieces)

2. Work on your CV. Check. Gotta get those jobs lined up...

3. Study for boards. Check. Zuku review tells me that I'm waaaaay behind. Plus my countdown says I have 39 days. Eeek.

4. Schedule shift changes with fellow students. Check.

5. Wash all those nasty scrubs from the week. Although, at times it seems pointless since they are just going to get dirty again in T-12 hours...

6. Cuddle with the puppy. Check. Because she feels neglected every other day of the week.

7. Plan to watch a movie and be in bed by 9:30 pm.

Yep, we certainly are a wild bunch.

It's official, Fall is here.

When I left school today, it was sunny and gorgeous out, but I needed a jacket. That my friends, is how I know fall has finally started. Soon, it will start raining for days on end, and that means we live in Oregon.

It has been a long couple of weeks. My externship in Portland went great, I really enjoyed working the veterinarian I was assigned, and look forward to hopefully working for that company after graduation. 

Then my grandfather passed away. I think I've thought about him every day since then. Little things remind me of him. Like seeing a clip about NASCAR on the internet. Or overhearing the word "ornery" being used. Or talking about the sound of the electric peppermill which he used at every dinner ever since I can remember. I'm so glad I was able to leave my externship early to see him. It meant the world to me to speak with him one last time, and hear how proud of me (and all of us grand kids) he was. 

Remember the signature book I was going to start? Well, I wanted to start with family, but never quite got my act together about it. Now I've decided to finally give it a go, and here is how it starts:

I came home in time to finish my senior paper and prepare for my presentation. It went pretty well, I think.  I love the topic and am very glad I had the opportunity to learn more about a new area of veterinary medicine. 

Now I'm onto anesthesia. It has been an awesome rotation thus far. I like the technical side of anesthesia and knowing how to gauge your patient's anesthetic level by deciphering the million wires leading to a monitor and the dozens of numbers it produces. Also, I get to watch some pretty awesome procedures while doing it! Today I saw a new method of a "tie-back" surgery in a horse (to help it breathe better), and last week I got to see a splenectomy on a cat. Tomorrow I'll get to watch several skin masses be removed, an adrenal gland removed, and a liver lobe removed! Yes, all in the same patient.

Now, some pictures to make you smile.

A rat on a cat. Found on Tumblr. Awesome timing of the photo!

Found on tumblr. Just adorable, right??

Found on my camera, this was Christmas 2011. She is a bit more gray these days.

I'm happy

I love my chosen profession.

There are endless possibilities for the next 40 years of my career. I could spay and neuter puppies on a daily basis, or palpate cows for pregnancy, or diagnose heart problems, or treat cancer, or extract teeth, give a pet a new joint, become a radiologist, or do research, or even teach. What ever it is that I end up doing, I'm excited, and happy, and am forever thankful that I chose a profession that I am passionate about.

Thanks Mom, for gently guiding me in the right direction, all those years ago. I've been told that when I was a kid, I told my mom that I wanted to work at a pet store when I grew up. Instead, she told me that I would be a doctor to those animals one day. I never looked back, and now here I am 3 months from my DVM. My parents are the best. 

In the mean time, here is an adorable dog, looking for a forever home, which might just end of with Wojtek, Tanzi, and I. Pending quite a few things, and several months. But he sure is adorable, and awfully sweet.

23 needles, 1 dog

Tanzi received her first acupuncture treatment!

One of my clinicians is getting certified and needed to practice, so I offered up my pup. She is getting older and has some arthritis, plus a history of anxiety, so I figured she could benefit from it.

She was a champ and did great. I think she even started to like it towards the end!

Almost done, I believe the 23rd needle was being placed just as I took the photo

Quite a few in her legs...

Can you see the one on top of her head? It was a calming point.

She started to fall asleep towards the end of the session!

In a couple of weeks she will have a second session. Hopefully it helps!

Also, I ran some blood work on her today too. Not quite as pretty as I was hoping for, but nothing specific yet. Mostly just old dog changes. Sigh... I'm not ready to accept that my pup is getting to be an old lady!

Opportunity lost

A smart traveler shops around for flights.

A smart traveler wait to see if prices are dropping or rising.

A silly traveler waits too long and ticket prices jump $500+. Oof.

Smart traveler finds acceptable airfare, for slightly less ideal itinerary, waits no longer, and books it. Specifically, from Dec. 27th until Feb. 25th.



Moral of the story? Don't wait too long when you find the *perfect* flight, but just aren't quite ready to commit. Who wanted such an easy itinerary, anyway??

So what did $2207.40 get me?

Approximately 15,000 miles traveled.

Approximately 40 hours of travel.

A tiny seat in a metal tube full of strangers.

The start of an amazing 2-month long adventure.

:)

June 10th, 2013

Mark your calendars, I'm graduating!!

Well, my graduation date is January 2013, but the ceremony is in June.

The big hoopla will occur at the Lincoln Center in NY, NY. (http://lc.lincolncenter.org/)

So excited. This is going to be awesome. :)

In the mean time... I've been busy.


Palpating cows. Castrating lambs. Dehorning calves. Draining abscesses. Tattooing ears. Studying for boards. Researching for a paper. Loving life.

Having a blast palpating cows (checking for pregnancy)

Hiking on Mt. Hood. Yes, that is Robbie on the left.

Wojtek and I

Jayme and I during her engagement photo shoot. Wojtek was the photographer. He did such an excellent job on her and her fiance's photos!

More to come later...

Four Days. Fourty Eight Hours.

Externship, week 1, completed.

It was a great week, and it helped remind me where I came from and where I am going. The clinic I spent a week at is the same one that I worked as a tech at for a year prior to starting vet school. I will forever be thankful to the clinic, its patients,  and its staff for all that they have taught me.

As I tell this story, please keep in mind that all medical decisions were discussed with and approved by a veterinarian. I was allowed to come up with differentials and diagnostics to run, and then recommend treatments based on our findings. Also, it is a story with a sad ending, I warn you here.

A very special patient in particular was able to remind me why I love what I have chosen to do so much, and that yes, I did learn something and school, and yes I have learned how to use that knowledge. This kitty, a very dearly loved kitty, came in three days in a row because she just wasn't doing well. We performed bloodwork the first day, which came back with very non-specific findings. No help. The second day we took radiographs. From those, we were able to tell that something was not right in her abdomen, but it could be a number of things with very different treatments. The last day she came in very weak and unable to hold herself up, she was struggling to get by. This was a much more sudden change from the evening before, when I had seen her last. We knew if we had any chance at helping her, we needed to move quickly. The goal was to stabilize her, then go to surgery  to explore her abdomen, and hopefully find the source of her disease. Unfortunately, it was a very busy day at the clinic, and the doctor was still in surgery with another patient. I became this kitty's primary care giver, as best as I can describe. At this point, I felt responsible for this kitty's life, and I needed to find out more about her health status. Currently, all she had was an IV catheter. A fellow vet student was working on getting her IV fluids. She was gasping for breaths, she needed more. I started to give her oxygen, took her vitals, and determined that something else in her body was causing her to feel very ill. Her heart and lungs were still trucking along, but her body was not responding. I took her blood pressure, it was acceptable. What else could it be? I took her blood glucose. It was almost nonexistent.

Low blood glucose is much more worrisome than high blood glucose. She had not been eating for a few days, but normally your body can compensate and provide an adequate level in your blood. Plus, we had syringe fed her a decent amount of calories the night before. At that point I thought back to my classes and what I knew about hypoglycemia and determined that she could be septic (infection in her abdomen), have liver failure, or have a tumor secreting insulin causing her blood sugar to constantly be low. Her blood work didn't show overt signs of liver failure. Insulinomas aren't terribly common in cats, and they tend to not cause such an acute drop in health, like this kitty was experiencing. She must be septic. But from where? How? That we still didn't know. Maybe if we could just get her to surgery and explore her abdomen, we could fix her. We were able to keep her stable for a few hours of providing supportive care. Unfortunately, after hours of monitoring her vitals and treatment with antibiotics, glucose, dextrose, and IV fluids, her body was not able to continue fighting. With many caring technicians at her side and the doctor on the phone with her loving owner, she passed. We were given permission to necropsy her (like an autopsy, but on animals) to find the source of her demise. She had cancer, a very angry cancer, that ate away at her intestines and allowed contents from her GI tract to spill out into her abdomen. This was what made her very sick, very quickly. Her cancer had progressed quite a bit, and had spread to other organs in her body. Even if she had made it to surgery, the cancer would not have allowed her to live much longer.

A sad story indeed, but an all too common one in medicine. This kitty taught me a lot, and I will forever be thankful to her for that. I love my chosen profession, even in moments like these, because at least we were able to provide compassionate care to her, and provide an answer and closure to her owner, who loved her dearly.

On a much happier note, here are some more fun things I got to do this week:
- Surgically remove a (suspected) lipoma (fatty benign tumor) from a dog's chest.
- Remove a bone piece lodged in the cheek and soft palate of a dog's mouth. (Ouch!!)
- Observe an FHO/try not to pass out. Orthopedic procedures are not my forte.
- Help close a dog spay, and learn some new techniques for ligating pedicles.
- Diagnose lymphoma from a lymph node fine needle aspirate. (Okay, sad, but still exciting in my book)
- Treat a kitty abscess, complete with a drain placement
- Learn how to extract teeth, and read dental radiographs
- See a wonderful client and kitty from when I was a tech. So happy to hear that this little white kitty with chronic renal failure is doing so well!
- Follow up with a patient of mine from a rotation at OSU, who is continuing treatment at this clinic.

I love vet med. I think I will be a vet when I grow up.

Oh, and I got a pretty new stethoscope. It is pretty much the coolest thing ever. I can hear ALL the things with it! :)

Weekends

I enjoy having them once in a while.

Mt. Hood from the site of Wojtek's sister's wedding

Portland Rose Garden 

So pretty!

Wojtek and I

Planning

I do love making charts, tables, and graphs.

Laura's Kiwi Adventure (planning stage: alpha)

Flight. Depart around Dec. 27th, Arrive in NZ around Dec. 30th.

Two. Full. Days. That is a long time. Really, the flight hours will be less than my usual travel time to St. Kitts, but its still a long ways.

Dunedin. South Island, south eastern coast line. Dec. 31st - Jan 18th. 3 weeks. Multi-doctor small animal practice. Check them out here: http://www.dunedinsouthvet.co.nz/

Gorgeous, isn't it?

Travel by bus to Christchurch. There was a train system, but it wasn't popular enough to continue in that area of NZ. Also, I'm not sure how much the earthquake last year affected the railways.

Sources have told me that the town was devastated by the earthquake. I'm eager to visit and see how the community has embraced the change to their city. The clinic I will be at in Christchurch is a bit smaller, but appears to be just as well equipped. Hopefully I'm able to help them out a bit for the two weeks I will be there. Check them out here: http://www.avonheadvets.co.nz/

Super cool rock/volcano formation sticking right off the coast. The town itself is on the north border of this formation. I wonder if the presence of this volcanic area is part of why the earthquake happened. I see more research in my near future...


The next steps in my planning include:
- Buying a plane ticket (currently it will run me about $2200)
- Reading the guide book that has been loaned to me
- Deciding where to backpack to after my externship time, and for how long
- Focus on passing boards and writing my senior research paper FIRST. Ugh.

Wish me luck!

Cheesing it up at the Oregon Coast Aquarium... like a boss.

Have passport, will travel.

Next stop: New Zealand!

In January I will spend 4-6 weeks in New Zealand for a small animal externship followed by a bit of traveling. 

More details to come as things become finalized.

:)

Lists

They're my life, as if they weren't before.

You'll get a list today. I make one every day so I don't forget what I need to do with  my patients.

Things I plan on doing in the near (and not so near) future:
- Spend 6-8 weeks in Australia this January. Yep.
- Become a pro at ultrasound. Both abdominal and echo.
- Adopt a senior Labrador. As long as Tanzi approves.
- Play volleyball doubles this summer with a friend. Like a boss.
- Write a research paper on alternative methods of rendering dogs/cats infertile. For example, an ovariectomy instead of an ovariohysterectomy.
- Grow lots of fun plants in my backyard. Then eat some of them.
- Start a collection of signatures from family, friends, and people I meet who are interesting. Yours could be the first.
- Take more pictures.
- Possibly, if you're lucky, write blog posts on a more frequent basis.

Now, pictures!

Roses from our front yard

If only we could hear her thoughts

We enjoy gorgeous afternoons on the deck

How do you get Tanzi to lift up her ears? Just whisper "dinner".

Diversity is the spice of life?

I'm always getting my sayings mixed up.

Anyway, here is a quick run down of the surgeries I've helped with recently...

TPLO: Cut the tibia into to pieces, move them, drill a plate into the bone pieces to stabilize them.

Hemilaminectomy: Remove part of the spine to access the spinal canal and scoop out herniated disc material.

Arthrocentesis: less exciting. Put needles into a joint, then lavage.

Tumor removal with axial pattern skin flap (skin graft): Short story, the dog now has nipples on his leg. Seriously.

And on tomorrow's schedule... a thoracotomy to explore and treat a pyothorax. Basically, we're cutting open the chest to remove pus from between the lung lobes and going searching for a foreign body. Yippee!

I'm also going to leave you with the most awesome "pick-up" line from my friend Megan.

Person 1: "How much a polar bear weighs?"
Person 2: "Uhhh... how much?"
Person 1: "Enough to break the ice..."

Yep. Enjoy.

Clients

They have the ability to make or break our day. Today, this client made my day by showing her appreciation for our work on her adorable lab yesterday by bringing these into us this morning!

Cute things make 3 am a lot more manageable

Another cute one. The heat lamp made everything orange though.

This is a Nigerian Dwarf goat doe and her first kid. We did a c-section to get the second kid out, but sadly he didn't make it. She is a great mom and did very well caring for her itty bitty kid.

A lost gem...

This was from the skin grafting surgery I helped with last month. I have a huge smile underneath that mask, you just can't tell!

I'm on overnights right now. This week has been a breeze, there haven't been any patients in the hospital since Thursday! Next week will be a bit more brutal though. At least I had a week to prepare...

The cute things in my life

Tomorrow is the last day of large animal surgery!! Except for my weekend shifts and Monday morning treatments of course...

Please excuse the poor quality of my iphone pictures...

Tanzi, the suffering dog who doesn't get enough attention after my 14 hours days

The 7 month old filly, my first equine patient, with a laceration under that bandage

My favorite equine patient, who I got to place 4 sutures in after the surgery had been completed. Isn't she gorgeous?

Skin graft donor site. My first skin staple line. Clearly I'm not a pro at this yet.

The famous pygmy goat, he should be the mascot of the large animal hospital. Check out that adorable underbite he sports!

Just chewing his cud like a boss. (Orange-y due to the heat lamp he lies under)

I have "tails" to tell. They will come, in time.

In short, I've learned a lot in the last month. I even learned that it is okay to not know it all, as long as you still have the desire to continue learning every day. I hope I can remember that 20 years from now.

Long silence

I have not forgotten, you've always been on my mind.



Mostly I haven't been able to get my thoughts together well enough to talk about moving back home and starting clinics.

I suppose the best way to describe the transition is "the grass is always greener on the other side".  While living in St. Kitts I missed Oregon horribly, and now that I'm home and back where I've been wanting to be I find myself missing the island more than I had anticipated. Maybe its the winter dreariness of Oregon currently, maybe its missing my friends from the island, maybe its the stress of clinics.

Speaking of clinics... its a roller coaster. When I stop and think about what I'm getting to do and learn about, its truly amazing. In the moment its less clear. I wonder all the time if people can see on my face how scared shitless this all makes me. Can they tell that I'm winging it? Do they know how nervous I am every moment? Somehow I'm making it through, and coming up with good answers here and there. I've got nothing but good feedback from my first month of rotations, but I have a feeling that this month on large animal surgery will not result in kind words from my clinicians. I'm thankful that my first patient in "large animal" was a pygmy goat. Now that is something that I am comfortable working with. He weighs thirty pounds. And he is a trained house pet. Piece of cake. Angry stallion? No thank you.

Some days, before heading to school, I think to myself, I could just quit, go run away and teach swim lessons in the Caribbean. But then I remember that I'm $250,000 in debt, and I do actually love what I'm doing, even if it brings out my biggest insecurities on a daily basis. I'll be better for it in the long run, right?