Week 6: In The Small Animal Hospital And Pig Handling!

Here I am today in the small animal hospital with a classmate from California! I have blacked out my patient's eyes to protect his identity (actually, this dog belongs to another classmate of mine so I do have permission to use the photo :)

Below: The sunrise and sunset have been pretty spectacular lately. It's hard to tell because it is blurry but on the way to school this morning there was an orange sky below the grey clouds, with the mountains below.


This evening was not quite as eery. It was a lavender and pink sky instead of the pumpkin orange of the morning (taken in the vet school parking lot on my way to a dinner break).


Yesterday I learned about handling pigs. I was lucky to get to go onto a pig farm as the large commercial operations have such strict biosecurity that they do not allow vet students to visit. The reason? Pigs are at a high risk of contracting the flu virus from people and such transmission can be devastatingly costly to a pig farm.


And here I am with my classmates getting ready to enter the farm:


Vet school week 6 is almost over. The pace continues at breakneck speed. Tidbits from some conversations today:

Classmate (owner of dog in photo above): "I try to stay on top of my workload and not get behind. But it's hard. It's like trying to keep your head above water when you keep getting hit with big waves."

Me: "I don't have a game strategy. I'm always behind. It's not like keeping my head above water. It's more like not breathing when you're underwater the majority of the time!"

She laughed good naturedly or maybe she actually thought I was funny.
*
Conversation in the library at 9 pm tonight--

Me admiring free hand drawing of collateral circulation to the stomach and commenting on my classmate's phenomenal ability to picture things three dimensionally.

My classmate: "Well, yes, just today I was picturing what it would be like to walk down the esophagus and all the structures I would encounter along the way."

Second classmate overhearing this: "I was imagining myself as a dorsal mesentery sliding down and becoming the bursa [of the omentum]."

Yes, people, there is a reason that I do not fit in. It is because I do not think like this. I need to learn to be more 3 dimensional and less square!