The Gendering Of Animals In Children's Clothing: Feminine Cats and Masculine Dogs

On my way back to Ithaca I stopped over in New York city to see my one year old niece, Talia (above). She's wearing a sweater that I picked up for her in San Jose. It has a stylized cat on it (in case you can't tell from the picture) and says 'Meow' (all you can see is the 'M').

I've noticed an interesting trend in infant clothing-- boys' clothing features lots of dogs and girls' clothing features far fewer animals, only an occasional cat. I'm fascinated that as a society we not only go to great lengths to identify infants' gender from day one (and if a baby is somehow dressed in an ambiguous, gender-neutral outfit then people inevitably inquire as to its sex) but also have denoted certain animals as masculine or feminine.

I wonder how dogs got to be masculine and cats got to be feminine? Women are sometimes derogatorily referrred to as catty. Could that have something to do with it?
Some rap singers refer to themselves as big dogs in their songs. (Akon has a song titled 'Big Dog' and Cordazar Calvin Broadus goes by the name 'Snoop Dogg'). Some little boys' clothing even says 'Big Dog' on it, although I doubt they are specifically referencing any rap songs.

I think it's fascinating that even in a language where objects/nouns are not gendered, we manage to assign a gender to animals.

That said, I did manage to find one top for Ian featuring a jaguar (that's a _big_ cat, not a big dog) and an older girls' top with a Scottish terrier (albeit wearing a jeweled collar). You know me, I like to be subversive!

Goodbye 2009, Goodbye California

Above: Sunset in San Martin on my last day in California 2009.

It's the end of a long year. I'm going to take a break from blogging for awhile. I'll update in a few weeks, until then I'll be hard at work in my second semester of vet school.
Hermit Thrush

Updated-- I'll do my best to keep writing. It's a nice way to keep in touch with people and I love that some complete strangers read me and offer support. Thanks all. But it is tough when faced with the onslaught of my second semester.

San Martin-- Arabians, Bucks And Cowboys

Above: View of San Martin from SelfSustainableNurse's kitchen. It's not easy to piece together a panoramic view like that from multiple photos-- I'm sure there has to be an easier way to do it than how I did it.

I plan to spend my last hours in the Bay in San Martin. I've roamed the Bay, from San Martin to San Anselmo (given a few more days I would have extended my range South to Monterey, possibly even to Big Sur, and to Point Reyes in the North). The two ends of the Bay are my favorite-- the coast of Monterey bay and Point Reyes National Seashore. Two of my favorite places on this planet. (My other two being the forest in central North Carolina where I grew up and Maayan Tsvi in Northern Israel, overlooking the Mediterranean ocean). And of course I love San Jose, the perfect mid-point, in particular the trails and hills of Almaden Quicksilver.

I made SelfSustainableNurse and her husband laugh a good deal on my visit. I wasn't even trying to be funny. I was just studying. Part of what I have to learn for my 'Veterinarians and Society' course, which specializes in ethics this block/semester, are the different breeds of horses, cows, sheep, goats and pigs (do not ask what this has to do with ethics-- I've long since stopped trying to make sense of my courses and accepted that they are beyond ecclectic in the mix of material covered). I've always found horse breeds especially difficult to distinguish, even way back in tech school. While looking over Arabians, I asked SelfSustainableNurse if she'd ever owned an Arabian. She and her husband just about fell off their chairs in the kitchen laughing. When she regained her breath she explained that both her horse, Percy, and her husband's horse, Phoenix, are Arabians. So yes, two of the horses that I looked at all winter and spring are Arabians. Oops. SelfSustainableNurse loves Arabians because she says they have such distinct individual personalities. But she admits that they are easily spooked/very reactive, which is why I am wary of them.

Next, I was looking out the back kitchen window and saw the new, registered Nigerian Dwarf goat that SelfSustainableNurse recently purchased. I commented, "There's your new ram!" To which she replied, laughing, "You mean buck!" Right. I do remember memorizing that, as well as other livestock terms. Obviously it didn't stick.

One thing I love about San Martin-- the cowboys. There are lots of people out on horseback. SelfSustainableNurse distinguishes between the real cowboys and the macho Mexicans on stallions foolishly showing off just to be cool. She assured me that the photo below was of a real cowboy.

Working Emergency Over The Holidays

Above: That's how I felt at the end of three shifts in a row at the emergency clinic!

I worked Wednesday, Christmas Eve and Christmas. Although everyone has been complaining that business has been slow this year, it was pretty busy. I had a hard time keeping up with the pace-- it's been a year since I've worked as a technician and to top that off everything had moved (those of you who have worked emergency know that there is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find what you need quickly-- I couldn't even find the muzzles as they were in a completely different place than last time I had worked there!)

We saw a lot of chocolate toxicities, which is typical of this time of year. Giving charcoal or UAA gel to animals is one of my least favorite things to do as a technician. Not because it is messy but because I am terrified of my patients aspirating. I've seen a few charcoal aspiration pneumonias that have been referred to us for overnight care and none of them have lived. I especially dislike giving charcoal when my patient is still heavily sedated from the drugs used to induce emesis or is struggling with me fiercely. In fact, I had one very stubborn (but otherwise totally sweet) chihuahua fight me so much that I told the veterinarian I could not get the full dose into her patient. She then came over to help me and found the same thing to be true with both of us working on getting the charcoal into this dog. She commented that one way to get veterinarians to realize that what they are asking is impossible is to make them help. I know that I am just working relief and so I don't really have the doctors' trust the way a regular employee would... but still I hope that if/when someday I am a veterinarian that I trust my technicians' judgment and don't push them to do things that might jeopardize my patients' health.

I also saw one marijuana toxicity. Classic signs-- ataxic, acting as if it is reacting to something when there is no stimuli, low heart rate, peeing all over the floor. The receptionist asked me to triage the dog and after doing a quick once over (pink mm, normal capillary refill time, low heart rate, acted like it had neurological disease and/or was hallucinating) I asked the owners point blank, "Do you have any marijuana in your house?" I think my bluntness caught one of the teenagers off guard and she nodded. Mom was ready to kill. I felt badly and explained we had no interest in the legality of the matter but that it would be much easier to treat her dog if we knew what it had eaten.

What I enjoyed the most on my shifts was the two things I've always liked best as a technician-- lab work and anesthesia. It was rewarding to find that after not working for so long I still knew what I was seeing under a microscope. I found tons of giardia on a direct fecal smear from a puppy that had projectile, watery diarrhea and had just been treated (suprise, surprise) for giardia. It's been a long time since I've seen that alien face-like trophozoite staring back at me through the microscope, flagella undulating wildly. I also found schistocytes on a blood smear from another patient when doing a differential-- I called out from lab to the vet, "Hey, has this dog had a splenectomy?" To which she replied from her desk, "No, why?" Well, it turns out the dog had splenomegaly. Hmm...

I had a cat with rouleaux on the blood smear, differential was a classic stress leukogram. Nothing too remarkable in my book as far as blood work goes in an emergency clinic. The vet later told me she suspected FIP based on a constellation of signs-- uveitis, high globulins, not responding to treatment. When I showed her the lab work she noted that rouleaux is often found in cats with FIP, has something to do with the elevated globulins. I thought that was interesting.

I also got to be the anesthetist for two difficult anesthesias. The first was a geriatric dog, which made me nervous as after not doing any anesthesia for a full year the last thing I wanted was for my first patient to be old and sick! And it was not a smooth anesthesia-- the dog was too light once the vet started doing something painful, and when I deepened the anesthesia the dog got too deep and so we partially reversed its premed dose of hydromorphone. The vet joked, "This dog either wants to walk off the table or die." No fun. But the veterinarian got her job done in a hurry and I turned off the anesthetic gas expecting a fast recovery. Twenty-five minutes later I was still monitoring an intubated patient on oxygen. Realizing that the patient was not going to wake up on its own, I asked the veterinarian if we could reverse the rest of the hydromorphone. She agreed. About one minute after I gave the naloxone to the dog intraveneously, it woke up. Amazing. In all the years I've worked emergency this is the _only_ case where I've ever had to reverse a premedication.

My other anesthesia was a c-section. I had trouble intubating (super elongated soft palate!) and was nervous because there were no premedications on board and a masked induction, which can make for a rocky anesthesia. Plus, I wanted to keep my patient as light as possible so that the puppies would not be too anesthetized themselves when delivered. My patient's blood pressure tanked and wouldn't come back up no matter what I did-- lighten the anesthesia, bolus fluids, give hetastach... you name it. So finally, once all the puppies were out, the veterinarian had me give a dose of hydromorphone to see if that would help. As soon as I had injected the hydro IV, the dog began to tremor violently. I don't know what was going on. I've never seen anything quite like it (although I did once have a dog seize on a propofol induction). My first panicked thought was that my patient was going agonal, but the continuous, steady heart rate and regular, spontaneous respirations did not support that. Eventually she stopped shaking. (Of course then I was shaking from the adrenaline rush that came from thinking my patient was dying). She had a smooth recovery and went home with her pups the next morning.

I went home at 4:30 am Christmas morning after being on since 5:30 pm Christmas eve. That's emergency. And I came back the same day at noon. Now you know why I konked out like the puppy in the picture after I was done working!

Random Useless Information, Results Pending On Post-Mortem

I was extremely lucky to make it back to California last night after an extended stay in the Syracuse airport thanks to the blizzard that wreaked havoc on air travel. I think it is just plain luck that accounts for me getting the last seat on a flight to San Francisco after missing my connection to San Jose.

I'm back, but none the wiser. I find that I know a lot of useless information:

• When I saw a logo with a woodchuck, I thought of what lesions from hepatitis and lymphoma look like on necropsy of a woodchuck. How's that? Cornell has a breeding colony of captive woodchucks that they use for research (apparently a good animal model of hepatitis?)

• When merle coat color in dogs came up, I knew that it arises from a SINE_Cf insertion.

• When a melanoma in a grey horse was mentioned I thought of the connection between grey coat color and the eventuality of developing melanomas and knew that both grey coat color and melanomas also result from a specific insertion (read more here).

• When my dad mentioned an epidemiological study on statins to me on, I immediately thought of how statins are contraindicated during pregnancy based on the discovery (by Cornell veterinarians) that Veratrum californicum is the cause of cyclopia in ewes that ingested it around the second week of gestation. The biological mechanism underlying the teratogenicity of Veratrum has to do with hedgehog and patched signaling and cholesterol hence the concern that statins would also be teratogenic.

• Perhaps most disturbing of all, while watching a TV documentary on Jack the Ripper (article here), I understood why the coroner estimated that it took at least fifteen minutes for Jack the Ripper to severely mutilate his victims' bodies. It's not that easy to cut up a dead body. It takes skill. Which is perhaps why profilers also suggest that Jack the Ripper knew some basic anatomy and perhaps worked in a mortuary. Kind of disturbing that I followed all the profilers' thought processes. If you've never cut up a large dead body (I'm thinking alpaca, horse or cow) then you don't know what hard work you're in for. You have to repeatedly sharpen your knife with that kind of sustained effort (which is another reason the profilers suspect Jack worked in a mortuary-- he'd have access to the kind of instruments needed to quickly and effectively disfigure a body).

And speaking of post-mortems... Back when I was a first year in college I got placed in a special advanced chemistry intro class that was mostly quantum mechanics. It was legendary for being incredibly difficult and for being next to impossible to get an A in (though I did achieve that much to my surprise). The first exam was so tough I still remember questions off of it-- like this one "Prove that orbitals are symmetrical." Uh-huh. I was convinced that I had flunked and I remember telling that to my professor as he prepared to leave the exam room with our stack of papers. He said coolly, "Wait and see what the post-mortem shows." Which, like most exams in my life, yielded a grade much better than my wildest expectations.

So now I always associate grading exams with the word "post-mortem." The problem with Cornell is the time it takes them to do a post-mortem is maddeningly long. I took a midterm at the beginning of December. I will not get it back until I return to school in January. Given that this waiting game makes me extremely anxious, I decided to institute some ground rules for myself to help manage this anxiety. Rule one: do not look up answers after leaving the exam. I can often recall almost every question on an exam just after finishing and would look up ones I was unsure of. This only heightened my anxiety when looking up something made me realize I got that question wrong, especially if I realized I had gotten several questions wrong. Rule two: do not, DO NOT, think about the exam. At all (if possible). Forcing myself to stop thinking about the exam when I find myself worrying about my grade also helps.

Winter Rebirth

alone in the library late at night
snug in my jacket, legs curled under me
a heavy book
(pathologic basis of disease)
half-balanced against the chair's armrest
there is the low background hum
of computers, printers, fluorescent lights
and outside snow falling under a street light

stepping into the parking lot
everything is coated anew
with fine powder

the white layer covering the ground
unblemished
like the smooth skin of a
newborn

there is no ice, no treachery
the fresh snow is crunchy underfoot
like styrofoam packing peanuts

and i think
what better reminder that every moment
i start anew, afresh

i'm starting over, tonight
is the first moment
of my new life
there is no trace of the old
scars and worn ruts of bad habits
i couldn't break

soon this new snow will be marred too
with footprints (already I see dog pawprints by the back door)
soot from car exhaust
and mud from the sludge of soaked soil underneath

but for now i am reborn
silent, in awe
like a puppy taking its first breath

8 Nights Of Hanukah, 12 Days Of Christmas And 13 Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

It's the first night of Hanukah. I took my block 2 midterm this morning. In just over a week I fly back to California.

I want to celebrate with Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird." I hadn't thought of this poem in awhile, but yesterday while composing my own (yes, I wrote "Frozen"), I remembered how much I had loved this poem and realized how well suited it is for December in Ithaca.

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

I.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only thing moving
Was the eye of the blackbird

II.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections,
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI.
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII.
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII.
It was evening all afternoon
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.