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.