2.5 Weeks Into Vet School

It dawned on me yesterday while looking at some CAT scans of a dog's head that I might actually become a doctor. I mean, c'mon, I've only been in vet school for 2.5 weeks and I'm looking at CAT scans! In case you haven't done this yourself, looking at a transverse section of the head for the first time is pretty confusing. I'm usually quite good at picturing things in 3 dimensions but this was HARD! It involved some pretty serious mental contortions to try to figure out the structures I was seeing and their relative position to each other because when I dissected my canine cadaver we cut the head in a sagittal plane, not a transverse one, so I had to flip everything around in my head and then try to figure out in what part of the head the section had been cut by looking at the structure shown on each CAT scan.

I've also gotten to look at some angiocardiography-- that's where you inject contrast material into an artery to visualize blood flow through the heart. It's neat! I was looking at patent ductus arteriosus, that's when the blood vessel present in fetuses that connects the aorta to the pulmonary trunk in order to bypass the fetal lungs does not close after birth.

Possibly my favorite lecturer and topic is embryology, taught by a world famous researcher (my rooommate told me that once he was watching a program on the Discovery channel called 'In The Womb' and he thought the voice narrating the program sounded kind of familiar, and then when he looked at the credits for the program he saw the narrator was our very own embryology professor!)

This professor, I'll call him Dr. Entertaining for short, is very witty. When he was explaining the development of the embryo, he asked us, "Have any of you ever been on a date where someone told you 'I like your trilaminar structure!'?" Of course, none of us had. And the reason, according to him, is that humans are not flat like a stack of three pancakes (that would be a pancake of ectoderm, a pancake of mesoderm, and a pancake of ectoderm). The embryo folds to create a tube, and eventually a whole human even though we all start out flat like a stack of pancakes!

Dr. Entertaining was in fine form in our lecture on Friday. He presented a mini-case on a white foal that was colicy, weak and dyspneic. I quote him:

What the horse does with its ascending colon is not unlike what I did putting on my bowtie this morning, except I wrapped my bowtie around my neck and not a mesenteric artery.

In an analogy on misfolding of the intestines to origami: Not every attempt at folding gives you a prong-horned antelope-- I never got beyond a sailboat or a hat!

After substituting the word impaction for obstruction: You can tell experienced faculty because they can come up with five syllable synonyms at the drop of a hat.

I really enjoy his lectures, not just because it is like watching a stand up comedian (unfortunately I cannot re-create for you his finger puppet projections of various embryological structures), but because he clearly loves his work. He reminds me a bit of my physiology professor at San Jose state, who was also an excellent and funny lecturer. I will always remember him starting a lecture on the parasympathetic system and when he ran out of time at the end of class, saying, 'We'll stop there and save eating and sex for next time!'

Embryology is, however, a hard subject. It's hard to believe I was ever an embryo, just a clump of a few cells. Was I really ever that little? It's kind of like trying to grasp quantum mechanics-- it's beyond any experiental knowledge I have of the world (for example, I cannot tunnel like an electron and I also find it hard to believe that I once had gills/aortic arches!)

I've got to get back to studying though. This week they threw the nervous system and larynx at us. Actually, the larynx may be more challenging to understand than the nervous system. The muscle that abducts the vocal folds is called the cricoarytenoideus dorsalis muscle-- try saying that ten times fast! The nervous system is not simple either because most structures receive both parasympathetic and sympathetic structure (and that is just the autonomic nervous system for starters). The only structures that just receive sympathetic innervation are the erector pili muscles that make your hair stand up on end and the smooth muscles of blood vessels that contract during 'flight or fight.' The only structures that just receive parasympathetic innervation are the salivary glands (I wonder if that gives new meaning to 'drooling over' something?)

Well, back to the books. I would best describe vet school as RELENTLESS! We don't even get labor day off so I'll be up bright and early tomorrow to discuss larngeal hemiplasia.

Sheep Handling 101

Above: I am semi-successfully restraining my sheep. Key aspects of restraint-- keep the head pointed up and if possible back the rear end into a corner.

Below: Me getting taken for a ride on the same sheep.


My hair was driving me crazy in the lab but I resisted brushing it out of my face because this herd is known to carry orf, which is a zoonotic virus that causes nasty skin sores in people. So I'm wearing gloves and avoided touching my face. Less likely is the risk of Q fever, and since these are older animals, there is a decreased risk of cryptosporidiosis.

Overall, sheep handling was a lot of fun, if a bit intimidating. The sheep all outweighed me and were stronger than me, so I got thrown around a fair bit but I think that is to be expected even with more experience. My first sheep must have sensed I was hesitant because she reared up like a horse twice and dragged me all over. Once I finally gained some confidence and learned to straddle the sheep high up, almost over the neck, things got easier. But then a stray sheep decided to use me as a platform to get over the fence and springboarded off my back. I didn't even see it coming!

Not only did I restrain, but I got practice evaluating body condition, mucous membrane color, drawing blood, giving vaccines and trimming hooves.

Next up: cows!

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.