A New Year, A New Semester, A New Beginning

 

Well I know you haven't heard from me in a while, but most of you know by now that I successfully completed my first semester of vet school and am about to embark on a new semester. I just arrived back to the island on Friday after a three week break in the cold and snow which was actually very welcome. While this is a new beginning, the beginning of a new semester it feels like everything is exactly the same as before I left. I start classes tomorrow and I'm a little nervous about the intensity of this semester, but we'll see. It was a good weekend back hanging out with my pup and getting to see everyone. We went out to dinner last night and took the dogs to the beach today which was a lot of fun. Tucker was afraid of the water, but it was his first time so maybe he'll start to like it more. Not sure how much you'll hear from me this semester, but I'll try to keep you all posted!

Everybody Hurts...

So you all know that Ru's head was broken a few weeks ago and now she's finally back to normal. I figured I would update you all about with some pictures that she sent me.

Speaking of injuries everybody in our class is getting hurt lately. So first it was vines trying to kill Ru, then Belinda tripped up the stairs at school and tore her knee open to the point where you could see her patellar ligament which was so cool and everything, then Alex got sick and has had a fever for weeks, etc, etc. So of course I had to be the next one to injure myself, it was only a matter of time. I guess the universe decided it had to be now rather than later. So Thursday, yes it was Thanksgiving Day, but considering I'm no longer in the United States that doesn't mean anything and we still had classes. I was minding my own business walking between the two gravel parking lots at school when I tripped and fell on the gravel. Well everything was fine until I was hit with an intense pain in my right knee and I looked down and saw a rock lodged in my knee and blood gushing everywhere. Did I mention I was in the middle of the road? Well I was. Without really thinking I grabbed the rock out of my knee and threw it down as even more blood gushed out of the wound. Thank God Nicole was with me as I had no motivation to move ever again. Like I said I was in the middle of the road...I kind of felt like a poor helpless animal about to become road kill, hit once and ready to take on death. Haha, I told Nicole that I couldn't get up, but she convinced me to make it to the car so at least I could sit down while she got the nurse. My neighbor Tracey was close by so she stayed with me and made sure I didn't pass out from the pain while Nicole ran to get the nurse. Unfortunately the nurse said I would need stitches even though I begged her not to make me get them and even asked if one of the vets at the teaching hospital could do it. Of course she responded with a no, but she called a local doctor instead of making me go to the hospital. So I received my first stitches in St. Kitt's. This whole vet school thing really is full of new experiences, although most of them have nothing to do with school. The past couple of days I haven't been able to move and it is the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced. Even more frustrating than packing to get to this island, which those of you who remember what I went through should realize just how frustrating it's been for me. I don't have any pictures of my injury for you b/c it's really not that cool looking and I refuse to have my picture taken when I look so bad, lol. Let's just say I can't wait for this semester to be over. Oh and did I mention that last night I got a call from another classmate, my friend Liz saying, "Hey do you still have those crutches and do you really need them? I blew out my knee and I can't really move!". Just another injury...my class seems cursed!

It’s been a long week.

I'm sorry I've been neglecting you all again, but if you haven't heard about my horrible week I'll share with you some highlights. Mind you it wasn't incredibly terrible, just a wee bit stressful and frustrating. So let's start back to last Sunday. Emily and a bunch of other people went on a hike and I had the morning to myself with a still recovering Tucker. Well everything was fine until my friend Kat calls me and says that Emily fell on the hike and cut her head open. So I find out later that Emily was trying to avoid the water on the trail and grabbed a vine that snapped leaving her to fall roughly 5 ft on her face. Owwww! So she was in no shape to do anything and while I worried about her I tried to study for my Nutrition exam. By the way I ended doing fine on the exam, but still between Sunday and my exam on Wednesday it didn't seem like that would be the case. My Sunday night Tucker was all better and Emily was trying to sleep off her injury. By Tuesday both Tucker and Emily weren't feeling so hot again which was great news for me. Kat and I forced Emily to see the nurse because her swelling was bad and of course the nurse sent her to the doctor who gave her meds that her a little loopy. (This part of the week was very amusing). So anyway on Tuesday night Tucker decided it was time to get sick again and he started throwing up. Emily stayed home from school and so she was able to keep an eye on him Wednesday, but by Wednesday night he was coughing and wheezing so I decided that I would contact PAWS to take him into the clinic. On top of all of this on my way home on Wednesday I got a flat tire! Emily and I got our neighbors Josh, Kevin, and Sean to help us change the tire, but unfortunately the spare was also flat. So then I had to call Ross Security (apparently they help with tire situations) to have them come and take me and the tire to get repaired. After about an hour outside of this pretty sketchy shack called Tony's Tires the tire was patched and seemed good as new. Our game plan for the next morning was to go to anatomy, take the anatomy quiz that was scheduled for 9, and then go get two new tires put on the car. That didn't exactly go as planned because I finally heard back from the PAWS medical coordinator and she said to bring Tucker into the clinic. After the anatomy quiz I drove home, picked up the puppy, drove back to campus (mind you the tire is already low on air at this point), and run into the clinic. I planned to just drop him off but I had to be there because they thought he could have parvovirus. Good thing he didn't and upon a physical exam no one could find anything wrong with him, but the vet wanted to do an ultrasound, blood work, and x-rays. Since we had to wait for PAWS to approve any medical treatment I left the puppy there with plans to pick him up after classes for the day. Finally I was free to get those tires so Emily and I drove into town to a place our friend used recently to get tires. We were pretty much lost, but luckily a nice worker helped us determine what size tire we needed and they put them on. That took about 45 minutes so we moved on to the next task which was picking up Emily's package from the post office. After trying all three doors that led into (what appeared on the outside) as the same building we found the area where we were supposed to go to pick up packages. They have to open all of the packages in front of you to determine how much you owe in customs fees so something that should take 5 minutes ended up taking a while. In all fairness we made it back to campus with two new tires, Emily's packages, and the two of us in time for us to grab food before our next class, so that mission was a success. After classes I went back to the clinic to get Tucker and of course they weren't ready. They were finishing up the ultrasound when I got there and I waited for them to tell me they found nothing and decided they didn't have to do the blood work or the x-rays. It was a little crazy because three people were telling me different things, but eventually they gave Tucker antibiotics and deworming medicine. He's all better now so hopefully that is helping some. Unfortunately the day after Tucker started feeling better I got sick. What started on Thursday night as a sore throat has turned into a full blown head cold/sinus infection type thing. I'm feeling slightly better today which is why I can actually put glasses on my face and write this blog, but all and all I'm still feeling crappy. My excitement for the day was obedience training class with the kennel dogs and oh yeah bringing my trash to the dumpster and finding a random guy just sitting inside. Let me just say it was extremely creepy!!! Along with this post I'll uploading some awesome pictures of yesterday's weather. Who else can say they saw a funnel cloud and a rainbow in the same day? (Well except those that saw it with me!).

Ride, Sally, Ride!

Ok so I know I haven't posted in a really long time and I apologize for that, but you see this whole vet school + exam week + puppy really isn't leaving me with much time. Anyway it's Saturday and I'm 75% done with Exam Round II so I'll take the time to catch you up a little about what's been happening in my very "interesting" life. So as many of you know I still have my foster puppy and I renamed him Tucker. He's very cute but unfortunately eats not only my socks, but also my time. I have a ton of stuff to catch you up on since it is November 6^th and my last post was something like 15 days ago! Wow have I been slacking…ok so the same weekend I got the puppy Emily and I finally got our car! She is a lovely "green" '96 Nissan Sentra and we decided that her name is Sally. Sally has been treating us very well for thus far so fingers crossed that they'll be no major problems. Of course no car on this island is perfect and Sally has her little quirks for instance she doesn't understand the concept of headlights, they are bright or they are not on...those are the only two options. Sally doesn't really like to tell us what speed we're going so we like to pretend we are going the speed limit as Reich would say, "all of the time". Haha she also isn't fond of having her back end (trunk) opened with a key, but can you really blame her? I don't think so. Luckily the trunk lever inside the car works just fine. Driving on the island has been somewhat of an adventure, but I think we are doing a pretty good job. Note to self: you need to look to the right before you look to the left before pulling onto a road! Both Emily and I will be driving on the wrong side of the road when we get home so be careful! Transferring the car into our names and getting insurance was quite the adventure. We had to go the police station to transfer the ownership over to us which was a huge hassle because the police women want to be completely unhelpful. Apparently we had the engine number wrong and the only help they would give us was to say to go to a mechanic and have him read it for us. So of course the person selling the car to us went to her mechanic and he wrote down a number and of course when we brought it into the station it was wrong, however only two numbers were reversed so the police woman finally helped us out and just did it. So after that we went into town to get insurance which was a very long and drawn out process but the lady was very nice and she assured us that the best way to live life is to "just hold fast" so from now on Emily and I are holding fast.

Anyway this round of exams was a hell of a lot harder than the first round but luckily I passed everything so as of now I'm still on my way to becoming a veterinarian! As our anatomy professors pointed out we are now just about 75% done with our first semester; however, the piece representing how much we've completed of our vet school career was minuscule. One step at a time I suppose. I've been a little home sick lately and just a little burnt out, but I'm trying to work through it. I think the most depressing thing is the lack of seasons. I cannot believe its November, I mean seriously! Halloween came and went and I would have been none the wiser if it weren't for a certain anatomy professor painting half her body as a skeleton and half as muscle and the little kids who came around trick-or-treating in the classrooms. The weekend before Halloween Emily and I carved a pumpkin which was cool, but that was the extent of our celebration. It's weird to think that most of you back home are wearing winter coats and walking around with long sleeves and pants right about now.


I have had a lot to deal with lately and on top of everything the puppy is sick today with a fever so of course my mind is not in study mode. I'll try to keep you updated more frequently, but these days life is keeping me extremely busy!

Puppy Breath!

So I've been really down lately and just a little lonely so I decided that I really, really needed to make a friend of the canine variety! Yesterday I contacted the Foster Coordinator of PAWS (People for Animal Welfare on St.Kitts) to see if I could foster a dog or puppy (if that's all they had). If you remember be mentioning the pregnant dog, Princess Buttercup, well she had her puppies on my first day of vet school (which for some reason I find significant). Her puppies are now almost 8 weeks old, but 2 of them still don't have permanent homes. My friend Kendra is fostering one of them and I'm fostering the other. The third one that's left is being adopted this weekend. So anyway he is very cute and yay I have a puppy! Here are some cute pics of him. They named him Eric, but I refuse to call a dog Eric so yeah he doesn't really have a name right now!

The Bad Thing About Rape Is…

Today (Thursday) was a rather uneventful day being the day after our last exam of round 1 everyone was just waiting for the weekend. As I mentioned the other day I baked a cake to celebrate the ending our exam round 1 and of course I brought it into school to share with everyone! I was trying to play "catch-up" all day with the classes that I moved to the side to study for my exams and that sort of worked. I studied anatomy for a while so at least I know what's going on in the pelvic limb now. Histology is still a mystery to me, but I'll figure it out and I finally understand what afterload is so physiology is coming slowly (Don't you dare make a "that's what she said…" joke!) The most eventful class today would hands-down go to Nutrition. As you recall I dedicated a post a few days ago to my hilarious Nutrition professors, well here's another one for you. As we are discussing different feed stuffs we get to canola or also known as the rape plant. In the words of Dr. Naylor, "I assure you rape is not a sexually deviant little plant, but the problem with rape is it…". Of course he was drowned out by laughter, but if you are actually interested in the scientific reason why the rape PLANT is bad it's because it contains an acid which can be toxic to the animals that eat it. If you are really interested the difference between canola and rape isn't just a name difference to make canola seem more appealing, it's the fact that the canola plant has been modified to not contain this toxin. Yep this is the stuff I learn in nutrition! Also in case you were wondering, "the problem with Canada is that they can't grow soybeans, but they can produce a TON of rape". Haha, ok on a more serious note (not really), did you know that hay bales can spontaneously combust? I guess if you've worked on a farm you would, but I had no idea. Pretty cool! Anyway a good life lesson, don't let a wet hay bale play with the other hay bales in the barn unless you could be without a barn!

Another Sunset And On To A New Day

Today marks a very special day because it was the last day in my first round of examinations. I can now proudly say that I've conquered the beginnings of each class in my first semester of vet school without dying (although I came close a few times, LOL). With that said, I have a very long road ahead of me involving a TON of work on my part. I'm confident in that I deserve to be here now as I am extremely confident that I deserved an A in Biochem with ATW (just saying). With all of that in the past I now need to convince myself to keep up the momentum and continue to do well. My goal for the next round of exams is to NOT stress out so much before and mainly AFTER the exam. Note: this is a lot harder to accomplish (as I'm sure many of you already know) than it seems. Thank you to all of you for your continued support and a special thanks to all of those who "believe in me" you know who you are! Today was all in all a good day! I did well on Nutrition (well the exam…I can't say my food intake was spectacular today), my refrigerator was fixed (yay!), and I baked a cake which I am more than happy to share with anyone who comes to find me in school tomorrow! Anyway on that note I have a TON to catch up on tomorrow but hopefully I'll find something hilarious to post about soon!