And When Vet School Isn't So Fun (i.e. Totally Sucks)

The peripheral nervous system of the thorax can bite me. That is how much I care.
I noticed in my bleakness that although the student who owned my color anatomy book prior to me had highlighted every structure of the heart, she had left the pages corresponding to the PNS of the thorax completely untouched. I'm guessing that, like me, she took one look at them and ran screaming.

It's not just that I'm feeling completely overwhelmed academically (everyone is, even those people who didn't spend all of last week moving, sigh), I haven't gotten in a good run or swim in weeks, I haven't found time to prepare meals in advance so my meals are a hodge podge of frozen dinners and raw vegetables from the farmers markets in no particular ratio.

On the up side, I slept in a bed last night for the first time in a week.

On the down side, it is typical Ithaca weather this afternoon: grey and rainy.

If I could have one magical wish, I would like to be temporarily teletransported back to the heavenly outdoor saltwater pool that I swam in in California. Or warm ocean with no undertow. Or the lovely lake in the Sierras. I want to submerge in water, to forget about everything on land for a little while.

Maybe tomorrow. I have to check out where the nearest pool is to my new abode. Or maybe go swimming in a finger lake? It's getting to be chilly, brisk, almost autumn, but cold water can be invigorating...

Support Harvey Milk Day In California

At heart, I am still a California girl.

And I am sick and tired of seeing conservatives' homophobic attitudes prevail in my state.

So, support Harvey Milk Day. With all the problems in CA, this is something small that you can actually do something about. Those of you who saw the movie MILK (or who are otherwise informed about history) know that Harvey Milk was the an openly gay San Francisco city supervisor who was assasinated in 1978.

Call the governor's hotline at 916-445-2841 (option 1 for English then option 2 for bills).

Thanks in advance Coyote, DashingBoiSuperTech and all my friends.

Alpaca And Llama Handling 101

Above: Me learning to trim alpaca nails. Below: Waiting for class to begin (my other classmates are scrubbing their overboots so as not to bring any diseases into the farm).


Below: Making friends with the farm cat, who looks a lot like Lindy (it isn't Lindy, I promise Coyote!) My friend in these pictures with me is the wonderful woman who kept Lindy well hydrated and alive while I was back in California two weeks ago.


Below: Alpacas and crias. I didn't get any llama photos.

Take One, Take Two AND Finally, Take Three

I've moved three times in less than three months.

Yup, that might yet be a personal record. It's a whole new level of being a transient.

Due to some rather unfortunate miscommunication, I left my current housing practically overnight. (Trust me, it was not my idea of fun to move during my first full week of vet school. Life was not exactly boring to begin with...)

I have landed with a truly magnamious fourth year vet student. It's a bit more of a drive, but just as lovely and wooded and peaceful (only the crows aren't tagged with identifying numbers on their wings, like Condors are tagged in California).

My favorite line of the evening:

My new landlord, helping me move out of my current room, surveying the situation,

"So what of this furniture is yours?"

Me: "None. I don't have any furniture. The bed, the mattress, the pillow, the pillowcase, the sheets, the blanket, the dresser, the desk, the bed stand-- none of it is mine. The place came fully furnished."

I think he was, perhaps, a bit surprised. But he replied, "Well, that makes things easier."

Unfortunately, as his place is not fully furnished and Simon peed on my air mattress (one of my most treasured possessions), thereby ruining it, this summer, I am now sleeping on my landlord's air mattress. I am debating buying another air mattress, buying a real mattress, or just sleeping on the floor.

At least for now I have a place to sleep.

More updates in awhile.

First Week Of Vet School

One week ago, Friday night, I was saying goodbye to Dr. Pull-My-Leg over tea in Millbrae, minutes from the airport. When my plane took off from San Francisco I cried inconsolably.

One week later, it's Friday night. I'm sitting at my computer in Ithaca, the window's open, it's warm, the house is perfectly quiet and I am tired but happy.

The first week of vet school was a whirlwind of orientation activities and classes. I think that next week, when we have five full days of classes instead of two, it will be even more of a whirlwind!

It's a bit intimidating, a bit overwhelming, but more than anything else it is truly exciting and wonderful.

The part I was most worried about was gross anatomy laboratory. I like dissection, but I am painfully slow at it. I'm a perfectionist by nature, and I am always afraid to cut the wrong thing. When I was on the necropsy floor this summer, the clinicians would yell at me, 'This isn't surgery, just start cutting!'

Well, I absolutely love gross lab. It is so much fun to have everything literally at your fingertips. It is way easier to understand the body when you can touch it. It's one thing to read about a body part. It is another thing completely to feel it and peel back the layers one by one.

Everthing we are learning is super fascinating and directly applicable to medicine.

This is what I have been waiting for. This is my dream.

And my goal is to enjoy every minute of it, to realize every day how lucky I am to be getting the chance to do this, even when I do get stressed and tired and overwhelmed.

It's hard to believe last week I was sitting on a plane in San Francisco crying. One week in my life has started to feel like one year lately. Things are happening so fast. But in a good way finally.

Some Photos Of The Vet School

This is what the spiffiest veterinary hospital in the country looks like on a sparkling day. Because the weather is so bad here for most of the year, all of the buildings are connected (yay). On the far right of the picture is the entrance to the large animal hospital. And towards the middle is the entrance to the companion animal hospital.

Below: View from the veterinary research tower on a typical day this summer:


View of the courtyard of the entrance to the veterinary learning center on a stormy day this summer:


View of the East Campus Research Facility that abuts the vet school on another typical summer's day (also known as the 'Mouse House'):


If you're lucky sometimes there will be a rainbow after a storm. This is the B parking lot where I will park my car if I choose not to walk or take the bus:

Save The Boreal Forest-- Stop Your Bulk Mail And Unwanted Catalogs

One of the great pleasures of having mountains of schoolwork looming before me is...

the joys of procrastination!

Now procrastination has never been a major problem for me, but I do indulge in it from time to time.

This week I have decided to take on many projects that I have long put off. One of them is stopping junk mail.

One of my favorite bloggers, Nuthatch at Bootstrap Analysis, wrote a post called 'Kick the Catalog Habit' detailing both how to do this and the importance of doing so. Let me just recapitulate: Boreal forest is being destroyed to produce catalogs that most of us never read. It's not enough to recycle, people. It's better yet to stop the generation of junk mail in the first place.

So how do you do that?

First, go to the Direct Marketing Association and print out a DMAchoice registration form for mailing preference. The easiset thing to do is to download the registration form, print it out, fill it in and mail it in with a $1 check to the DMA.

Then, contact any catalogs you no longer want to receive. When you call you will want to ask them to not add you back to their mailing list in the event that you place future orders. Or you can go to a website called Catalog Choice, which was featured in this New York Times' article called 'Deforest Your Mailbox.'

Thanks folks!

With Friends Dr. Cool, Dr. Pull-My-Leg and LaMexicana Back In CA

This is me back at the emergency clinic with Dr. Cool (now The New Dr. Chief-of-Staff) and Dr. Pull-My-Leg. I'm in the middle of saying something, not sure what!

And below, I am pictured with LaMexicana and one of the kittens from a litter of five that she rescued recently (she's an exceptionally kind person with a soft spot for small dogs but she found these kittens cold and sick in a ravine and being kind, she rescued them and nursed them back to health).

Day 1 of Vet School: Orientation

I learned while on the bus back to school today after our ropes/challenge course that apparently no one slept well last night. Needless to say, as a class, we were all a bit nervous and apprehensive about what lies ahead.

The dean of the vet school spoke first, and he was very clear that lots of hard work lies ahead of us. He reiterated what we have all already heard-- that we will all feel under pressure. That the curriculum is 'rigorous.' However, he did assure us that there is plenty of support and encouraged us to seek help as soon as we need it.

I think it is safe to say that most of us feel like we are about to start veterinary boot camp. The next 10 weeks are considered among the hardest, if not the hardest, of the entire program. At least 10 weeks is not a long time. I think I can get through just about anything for 10 weeks (as I proved to myself this summer). But my goal is not just to get through it but to enjoy it as much as possible.

The most interesting part of the message from the dean and other professors was their attempt to impart to us some idea of the awesome amount of responsibility that we will all take on in two and half years when we enter clinics and then again on an even greater level when we graduate.

The head emergency and critical care veterinarian admitted that he often sees cases that he isn't sure how to handle. That making decisions based on limited knowledge, impressions and best guesses goes with the territory of being a doctor.

They really emphasized that as veterinarians we will have to make decisions even when we don't have complete information or sufficient knowledge, and that there won't be anyone coming behind us to check on how we did.

I think this is the biggest leap in mentality for me. As a technician I occasionally diagnosed cases (especially anything that required bloodwork, from parasites to IMHA-- immune mediated hemolytic anemia via cold agglutination with saline) but in general I just followed orders. I had to be able to perform a decent physical exam, detect relatively high grade heart murmurs (3/6 and higher reliably) and auscult lungs, but all the real responsibility and decsion making rested with the doctor on duty. I might have been the proverbial 'doctor's eyes and ears' when it came to assessing changes in patient condition, but I didn't have to identify the problem or decide on a course of treatment.

The piece of advice that we got from the emergency and critical care chief was to not let our anxiety show (Dr. Pull-My-Leg/Dr. Joker gave me similar advice on starting vet school-- she said it is important to learn to hide one's anxiety as that is part of being a good doctor because it isn't appropriate to show anxiety or panic in front of clients). The emergency veterinarian at school said that since everyone looks to the veterinarian for guidance-- from the technicians to the clients (and in his case the veterinary students that he is supervising too!), that it is important to realize that your conduct sets the tone for others' interactions. Appearing confident is important because it keeps everyone calm. Panicking will cause everyone else to panic.

So one of my tasks over the next several years is to learn to hide my panic, to fake confidence without being arrogant, or at least to appear calm in the face of utter chaos or crisis. Especially since someday, potentially, others will be looking to me for the answers.

Back In New York

This is me this morning at the Syracuse airport waiting for SurrogateSyracuseDad to pick me up (thanks!). I'm holding a very sweet, well socialized six month old Shih Tzu puppy. (Yes, I ask to hold strangers' puppies. I loved holding this dog, it helped reconfirm for an instant how much I actually do want to go to vet school).

And below, me with all my baggage. I didn't travel light. You try bringing back a lamp with you (but in all seriousness thanks!). If you are wondering the butterfly tattoos are not real. They are glow in the dark fake ones-- but isn't that still pretty cool? (And if you are cold on the plane you can always slip on jeans under your dress, why not?)


And for all of you who watched me struggle this summer and felt pained on my behalf-- here are some photos from my trip of me swimming in a lake in the Sierras. See-- I was happy. Just click on the photos and check out the grins on my face.

Back Home In California

I've spent the past five days in California. I feel rejuvenated, rested and loved.

I've been kissed by the sun, caressed by the wind, and enveloped in the silky, warm waters of a lake in the Sierras. I've heard the calls of scrub jays, Stellar's jays and yellow-billed magpies and my heart has sung right along with them. I've feasted my eyes on the rolling, golden hills of the South bay that bookend the flat fields of crops. I've traveled up and down the peninsula from San Martin to San Francisco, by Caltrain (my favorite) and car.

I've eaten fresh fruit and caught, killed and ate my first fish.

I've seen my dear ones-- Coyote, Self-Sufficient Nurse and husband, Precocious Kid, Dr. Perceptive, my friend T, Dr. E, Dr. Cool, LaMexicana and Dr. Pull-My-Leg. There are others I didn't get to see, unfortunately, because of my short stay (Sunshine, Slow Feet, MonkeyButt, J&M) but there will be next time. (And to everyone who rearranged their schedules last minute and helped shuttle me around making so many visits possible in just two days, thank you!)

In short, it's been heaven. I'm more than sad to leave. This is home. My deep love for the land, plants and animals of California has been the most enduring love affair of my adult life. But I know this, and carry it with me everywhere: I have a home and I will be back to visit again.

In NC with EB, D and Ianite:)

Here I am with D and Ianite. He was pretty tired so to get him to smile D had to lift him in the air.



This is from July 4th. Zrrbrt is giving me a very sloppy kiss (as usual) while Ian looks a bit taken aback. He looks quite intrigued with me in the photo below though!

Moving, moving, moving and more moving

I'm in the process of moving across town. I don't know if my internet is working at my new place (supposedly it is but I haven't tried it).

I have moved every 2-5 months for three years now. I am tired of moving.

I get to live in my new place for 9 whole months! Amazing.

It's got lots of light, a huge backyard and lots and lots of wildlife. I think I will love it.

The only problem is... It is STILL raining. I cried a little this morning when I got up and saw it was raining.

One of the women in my summer research program, who is also from the Bay area and grew up in Arizona, told me that she dreamt it rained for six months non-stop. It certainly feels like that some days.