Almost three months since my last post....

HELLO 7TH!

Hello everyone! Didja miss me? Have you been wondering what has been going on lately? Are you stressed out wondering when Sam will ever get anything done? Me too.

This is the schedule for my past week. Except the little "free" blocks are actually filled in with more studying or working out or sleeping. I only realized now the calendar can only show from 6 am to 6 pm and there's so much more that's not shown.

So in a nutshell I've made it through the quarter finals (1st-6th semester) and made it to the finals (7th and clinicals). I'm currently sitting in the library at 9 in the morning, drenched in sweat and smelling like a combination of Biolage shampoo and sheep manure, enjoying my now-greatly-needed cup of coffee, and taking a break during the "hurry up and wait" mentality that is 7th semester and really veterinary life in general. Basically, let's recap:

Toothless takes America

Toothless made it to America on April 19th. I've seen her go through almost every emotion a dog can go through-

• Sadness when I was packing my bags and she thought she would be left here like all other breaks
• Excitement when she realized she was coming with me (short term)
• Confusion when we walked INTO the airport and then had to sit and then walked OUTSIDE to get to the plane which was another inside.
• Excitement when she realized planes are like cars and she can look out the wind-
• HOLY SHIT THE OCEAN IS DOWN THERE AND WE'RE UP HERE OMG OMG OMG PANIC
• "Oh, these nice strangers beside Mom pet me, so I'm gonna snuggle up between them because Mom got me into this mess and I hate her."
• Also, "I'm not going to bark or whine, but I am going to pant heavily and shake enough that Mom thinks I'm seizing."
• Relaxed when the terrifying shaking/turbulence stopped and we actually made it to Miami Airport.
• Slight panic when we left for Charlotte
• Utter exhaustion when we made it to the hotel room for the night
• Exhaustion continued as she finally realized that planes aren't so bad and all the extra seat space between us meant she got a seat of her own.
• Excitement to meet my dad when he picked us up at the airport
• Excitement and sheer bliss when she got to the farm and realized she has SO MUCH ROOM and doesn't have to be on a leash and alpacas are basically like big dogs that chase me and I like to chase and chickens are not delicious meat things on sticks but animals to be respected because mom and her parents will yell at me and ponds are basically oceans with big waves and kayaking is fun cause I'm on the water without being in the water.

Toothless likes my bed more than I do.

Muddy and dirty, my best friend Coach and I greet my aunt
the best way we know how.

So basically, Toothless is having the time of her life. Asides for attacking one chicken (which lived) and then realizing that she shouldn't do that, she hasn't had any problems adjusting from island life to mainland life. She now spends her time traveling between my house and the farm, hanging out with the horses, chasing and being chased by the alpacas, and generally loving being a farm dog. I miss her so incredibly much, but I only have 76 days left here in St Kitts, and I'm happy to finally be doing what I love, even if I'm exhausted and stressed out.

7th Semester is oh so hard but oh so satisfying

Kay is "fixing" a prolapsed uterus on this model during our
Clinical Theriogenology rotation. Most of our labs utilize
water filled models to simulate specific medical conditions
without traumatizing an actual patient.

Starting the Tuesday of Week 2, my days have begun at 5:00 AM every day (including weekends). We were assigned our two partners-in-crime/surgical patients named Augusto and Gaylor, the cutest donkey at Ross and an adorable sheep, respectively. Part of the reason our days start so early is that we have to check our animals at least once a day if they haven't had any recent problems, or twice a day if they do. For example- a simple cut would not need a full SOAP (basically physical exam with notes, assessments, and a plan of how we want to proceed), but a joint injection requires a full SOAP twice per day until that problem has closed. So far, I have been a surgeon for Augusto's joint injection (arthrocentesis) and castration, and an anethetist for Gaylor's epididymectomy last night. Everything with both surgeries has gone as close to perfect as possible both for the actual procedure, monitoring, and post-op recovery and healing process. I was completely freaking out yesterday morning, as I had a Theriogenology exam (which did not go well) and was more afraid about killing my sheep because Anesthesiology still terrifies me. Once the procedure started and the chaos subsided I realized that I actually CAN be an anesthetist, and to rely more on my own hands and my diagnoses rather than the machine that likes to make a lot of angry beeping noises and is a little too sensitive for its own good. It was ironic that the group next to me had a sheep that did basically the opposite of how ours went- I controlled my CO2 levels really well which led to a very mild metabolic alkalosis, but the other group could not control theirs and their sheep compensated for that imbalance on its own. It was an invaluable teaching moment and proved to me that animals are quite resilient and that things that go wrong in my eyes actually have no negative impact on my patient's health in this case.

Also Augusto and Gaylor still come running up to us when we show up in the morning, so they still love us in spite of our surgeries and our post-op meds and our hydrotherapy. Maybe that's just the carrots and sugar cubes and other treats we give them, but we'll take that.

Clinical Placement

 LOOK WHO IS MOVING TO ITHACA, NY! Officially got my Cornell email as of like 12 minutes ago and I am so excited to continue on through my veterinary training as a member of an Ivy League school. Plus it's only 6 hours from the farm, so I'm able to come home on occasion :) Unfortunately I have to put this blog aside for the moment so I can recheck our potential neuter patient in a half hour, but I will provide more details about life in 7th semester at a later date.

Happy day!

6th semester is terrible but fun.

Hello everybody!

Just when I feel like I'm actually caught up on my work and my to-do list, in comes a wave of panic like a jumbo jet. Does that analogy even really make sense?

Small Animal Surgery got me feelin' like....

Anyway, I managed to scrape by 5th semester with decent grades and only 4 episodes of crying during finals. At the time, I had a few foster dogs living at my house and so you guys remember, finals for us are much like other schools: 7 AM or 10:30 AM finals Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I had just finished my first final (Toxicology) after staying up all night panicking. To be fair, we did have 2 weeks to learn about 120 plants including identification, mechanism of action of their toxins, and relative geographic location, and the professors were going to pull 4 plants from the Toxic Garden for us to be tested on. But I digress. That final actually went......terrible, but there was a huge curve so it worked out okay. I went home to sleep since by the time finals rolls around I become nocturnal.  I went back to campus around 4:30 and I had given all the dogs Kong toys- the big rubbery cone looking things that have a space for treats/peanut butter, etc- to eat in their crates- with the intention of coming back at midnight to let them outside again, and then go back to campus to finish studying for Small Animal Medicine 1. I get back at 12..........only to find my one foster dog had literally had the kong stuck on her jaw. Like, she shoved her face into the hole. I tried to remove it through various means; pulling, cutting it, crying, praying, prying, etc- to no avail. In fact, the dog was *screaming*. She woke up my landlord who lived upstairs. So I start thinking, "Oh my god. You broke your jaw. You freaked out when it got stuck and you broke your jaw and how long have you had this thing on you oh my god my exam is at 7 what am I going to do how can I take you into the Emergency Room of the VTH PANIC PANIC PANIC." 

So I called Katherine. Katherine is one of my best friends down here, and she's one of the only people I would call at 1:00 AM during finals week to help. I drove back to campus, picked her up from where we were studying, drove back home, and literally within 2 minutes she had the Kong off the dog's face and she was jumping around like literally nothing had happened. Apparently I hadn't been pulling hard enough and I did need help to hold her down. Crisis averted.

By the end of finals, I was exhausted, frustrated, doubting all of my intelligence and study habits, and generally feeling low. The last exam, Anesthesiology, was set at 10:30, and I had gone to bed at 2 AM with the intention of waking up at 5 to go over a few more powerpoints that I still had issues understanding. I woke up to 15 missed calls, and realized that I had slept through all 7 alarms. And it was 10:10. 

I still don't know how I passed that final. I just remember sobbing on the frantic drive to campus, and I am not the type of person to cry during exams. The point is, I made it to 6th. With my GPA taking a little hit, but I still passed. And that is all that matters in the end.

Oh, and I went to Ireland over Christmas. Matt and I had found an amazing deal online, and we knew we wouldn't be able to go during my clinical year and I would be so concerned with paying back loans that I would be less willing to go in a few years. It was an amazing experience and I urge everyone I meet to go just once in their life to experience Dublin. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to visit the countryside or any other country besides the London Heathrow Airport, so I guess we'll just have to plan for another trip somehow!

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The famous almost-Doctor Justin and his heifer.

We had brunch at Kittitian Hill over Midsemester Break-
AMAZING FOOD with even better views!

BUT I MADE IT TO SIXTH SEMESTER!!!

So now, I'm taking Large Animal (Equine) Medicine, Small Animal Surgery, Small Animal Medicine II, and Special Species (Exotics).  I had my first round of exams about 3 weeks ago now and while they certainly were challenging going through them, looking back, they really weren't that bad. I really need to get over this whole "I know nothing" phase that I've been going through lately because I actually have been getting A's and B's on these past few exams. Regardless, I do still need to manage my time better. I definitely have reduced the amount of time I spent going out to dinner or out to the Strip, but I feel like I'm becoming a homebody at this point.

Island horses roam free without fences here.

Now for the classes themselves:

LAM- FINALLY. AMAZING.  This is the class that I'm finally extremely interested and attentive in, because it's finally horsesssssss!!! I finally understand that the limiting factor for performance horses is the respiratory system. I finally know most of the in's and out's of colic. I feel like every single class is a paradigm shift in my understanding of the horse. And I literally cannot WAIT to get out in practice and help to improve their welfare. The first half of the class so far has been focused more on performance issues regarding the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, and emergency treatment such as fluid rates, etc. We are now getting further into respiratory and gastrointestinal issues.

SAM II- Compared to LAM, it's not as fun, but obviously I'm a bit biased. It is really nice and very integrative with LAM and SAx (Surgery)- aka we're discussing gastrointestinal disease at the same time in three different classes. We had a locum professor come in for our ophthamology unit (which we learned in a week :| ) and that was the most interesting aspect for me. Dermatology is tough, but at least the top three diagnoses to an itchy pet are 1.) Fleas, 2.) Fleas, and 3.) Fleas, 4.) Anything else.

Preparing for my aseptic exam the first few weeks of school.

SAx- Surgery is arguably the most demanding and challenging class of this semester. For one, it is many of our first experiences regarding aseptic technique and understanding surgical diagrams. Additionally, a lot of this class (lecture wise) is rare surgical procedures that even the board-certified surgeons say they've only done 10 times in their career. I feel like this class is more, this is an easy surgery for you to perform, this is one case you should refer, this is one you shouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, and here's one for a cat where you literally suture its leg to its ribs (perform this if the cat has a leg wound that will not heal or is a type of degloving injury where skin is missing from over 1/2 the circumference of the limb.) The other issue with surgery is there is a laboratory component including the infamous ROSSie surgery, where we practice our aseptic technique and spay a sweater. The model is fabric, cotton batting, rubber bands, and foam loops representing different aspects of an animal's abdominal anatomy, and we are required to perform several different techniques to represent different issues that might come up. This mock spay is worth 35% of our grade and must be 40 minutes max from start to finish. And there are many people from Pink Semester who have failed 6th semester and had to repeat because of this exam. We must demonstrate proficiency of a number of different suture patterns, and the time it takes just to practice has literally taken hours of our available spare time. I am fairly confident in my suture patterns, but am more concerned about the time it takes me to finish.

Special Species- a fun, fast-paced class covering (so far) birds and reptiles, and will eventually cover small rodents and other exotic species. It's amazing how many veterinary issues ultimately stem from husbandry or nutritional issues, so most of them are easy fixes.

Overall though, I only have 5 months, 8 days, 11 hours, 04 minutes, and 15 seconds at the time of this writing left on island. And only 43 days left until Toothless and I journey our way back to America for friends, family, and plenty of horses since this girl got an externship in Lexington, KY just in time for ROLEX!

Hasta la vista, baby.