Many Updates!

Whew, it has been a crazy couple of days! There has also been not nearly enough sleep happening!

Sunday evening was my last night on call and I took the phone home over night. Thankfully no calls came in over night since I had a final exam that afternoon! I did get a call at 8:15 from a veterinary student who was unable to reach the main hospital line (turns out the front desk staff had the day off) so I took her emergency call (10 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off isn't bad!). Lucky for her, I later found out from the clinician who called her back, the medication her pet had ingested wasn't toxic and was highly unlikely to cause any harmful side effects. I'm sure she was thrilled to hear that!

We had our animal nutrition final exam in the afternoon that covered small animal nutrition. Officially done with a fourth class! I did very well and am pleased to have secured another A. My goal is to have all A's in my 1 and 2 credit classes and no less than a B+ in the others. Fingers crossed!!!

We did an IV catheter placement lab Monday evening through the student veterinary emergency and critical care club which was a lot of fun. I have placed catheters before but figured a little practice couldn't hurt! Students volunteered their dogs for the activity, and we used 24G catheters (woah what a breeze!). Most of the participating students had never placed a catheter before so it was a great teaching exercise. We worked in pairs and I helped walk my classmate through the process. Since I just started placing catheters this summer, I definitely didn't expect to be teaching someone so soon, but it went pretty well. She had a little bit of trouble visualizing where the vein was and figuring out how to hold the catheter during placement, but that comes with practice (I would know!) :).

The rest of Monday and most of Tuesday were spent working on a group project for our Intro to Research class. We had to create a research proposal based on a study we designed that had something to do with Grenada. We chose to make our topic about looking at the zoonotic potential of Ehrlichia canis between island canines and their owners. Thankfully we didn't actually have to perform the data collection, just design the project as though we were going to do so. It was a lot of work. I expected from the get go that I would foot most of the work just because that's what I tend to do. I like things to go my way, what can I say? This project was definitely no exception to all of the others I've done. Oh well, some late nights and a lot of work later, I am VERY pleased with the final product. It looks very nice if I do say so myself : D. The only thing left to do for the class is to make a brief power point presentation for Friday. Hopefully that won't take too long!

Today was the last day of small animal anatomy lab!! I am super thrilled to be done with that class! I will not miss gross, formalin preserved, rotting specimens. Now to just make it through both anatomy exams in a week...gulp!

I went swimming with several of my classmates this afternoon. They are very fond of this spot at the peninsula of campus behind the library and often go cliff jumping into the ocean. I personally think it is crazy, despite how much fun they proclaim it is. I did want to swim though, so I scaled the rock wall down to get into the water (way more work than just jumping off haha). There is a reef all along the rock wall that extends for miles. It is absolutely beautiful! So many different corals and tropical fish of all colors! I can't wait to have an waterproof camera next semester so I can share pictures of these beautiful fish! Blues, reds, purples, yellows, oranges, stripes, spots, and solids!

Group Projects

I hate group projects. I love/hate that I am very good at putting project type things together and am a good writer.

It's 3:40am and I have to be up for a quiz in less than 5 hours so I am going to go to bed, but I promise to update with more exciting information soon! (Can you tell it's final exam time? haha).

Got Goats?

Oh the things you see on the side of the road in Grenada...

Many Sundays Down, Only One Left to Go!

The end is near! Tomorrow begins the last week of classes for term 1! We are all VERY excited! Unfortunately, this whole semester coming to an end thing comes along with painful final exams. 6 of them. And an ugly group project/presentation. *Grumble*

Oh well, in less than two weeks, I will be home snuggling puppies and piggies (well just one, and she's a guinea pig-Penny, my love). I will also be sleeping 14 hours a day because I can, and shopping at real stores! There will also be cars that drive on the right side of the road, grocery stores that always have items in stock, and a genuine oven! It will be full of seeing friends and the people I love, and a bit of traveling to see and do things I love-very exciting!

Tonight marks my last on call shift for the semester too. Fingers, toes, and everything else crossed that the phone will remain silent over night-we have a final exam tomorrow afternoon! The animals ran us in circles tonight (apparently everyone enjoys peeing, pooping, and vomiting in their cages just a little bit too much). The hospital is currently going through some (very awesome) changes. Things are being reorganized, new and better supplies are being ordered, and we actually have reasonable catheters in stock!!! Not a fan of using 22G and 24G catheters, but that's what the staff had been fond of until now (I mean come on, those go in baby animals-not 80lb adults!!). We also have t-sets and nice, well organized medical charts! I am very pleased and excited (the OCD side of me is VERY happy). Christmas has come early!

p.s. the words of the night apparently are "very" and "excited"-sorry about that!

I Went For a Swim...

And then it started to rain.

When I woke up today and was studying, it was gorgeous outside. When I finally got through the amount of material that I had required myself to get through first, the skies were not nearly as pretty and blue as they had been earlier. But I was determined to go for a swim anyway, so I got dressed and headed down to the campus beach.

I swam around collecting shells and glass and looking at pretty fish for about 30 minutes before it began to rain. I think by the time I leave this place in 2.5 years I may finally over come my fear of the sea grass (I refuse to swim over top of it or go near it-it creeps me out!!!). The rain itself was not enough to drive me out of the water. I lasted at least another 10 minutes before finally quitting. After all, if you are already in the water, what does it really matter if more is falling from the sky? Unless it's a thunderstorm, and then I suppose that would be different. However, those are very few and far between in Grenada so that was not the case today. What finally got me to quit was the increased roughness of the waves making visibility crummy. Can't really treasure hunt and look for fish if you can't see anything. I also decided to avoid getting tossed up on shore by a strong wave.

When I got out of the water it was pouring rain. Although I had had the foresight to stuff my belongings in a grocery bag before coming, they were still pretty soggy when I got to them (thank you ocean and rain). I wrapped myself in a towel (more for decency's sake than to dry off-obviously!) and made my way back to my dorm. A security guard and student were hanging out at the entrance to my building, taking refuge from the miniature monsoon the sky was currently bestowing upon Grenada. They both chuckled at the sight of a girl soaking wet, bare foot, and wrapped in a towel-to their credit, I totally would have laughed too!

All in all a lovely swim, even if it was cut a bit short. Oh ad by the way, when I say swim, I mean that I spent a majority of my time in 2 feet of water. I just swim while doing it (much easier to use the appendages that way).

Sea Glass

So throughout the semester, whenever I've gone near a beach, I've kept my eyes peeled for sea glass (as there is tones of it here!). I have begun to build up quite a collection (today's haul really raking it in). I think it is really pretty to look at and I'd like to do something artistic with it some day (maybe when I retire and have time??).

I like to imagine that each piece has some historic story, comes from a far away place, and perhaps even came from some sort of treasure lost at sea. In reality, it's all from broken beer bottles, but hey a girl can dream!

Today's haul:

Overall collection:









I've been bleaching everything just to be sure that I've killed any hitchhikers. As it turns out, you can kill more flies with bleach than honey. How do I know this? Well I laid out honey one time in my old apartment when we had a fruit fly infestation. Number of flies caught and killed? ZERO. And I left it out for several days. Fill a sink with bleach and leave it for a few hours-number of flies caught? TWO! And this was unintentional!

Pancakes!

As these last few weeks continue to drag on, I continue to struggle with what I am going to cook for myself every day. I've grown tired of cooking and the dozen or so meals I have come up with. I want more variety! Too bad Grenada doesn't seem to stock the things I would like for said variety to occur!

Tonight while grocery shopping (to my amusement, they've added MORE Christmas decorations haha), a box of pancake mix caught my eye. Now I am sure there are those of you who scoff at the thought of making pancakes from a box, but I grew up on pancake mix and I think it tastes pretty darn good. Until proven otherwise, I shall continue with my box mix ways! Anyhow, despite the fact that I am desperately trying to use up the food I have left, pancakes seemed like an awesome dinner idea so I splurged and added a small box of pancake mix and bottle of syrup to my list of things to finish off in the next 2 weeks (if anyone has any ideas for easily finishing off an entire jar of grape jam without making dozens of PB and J sandwiches, let me know).

In addition to my pancake dinner, I found turkey bacon to go with it. I was also raised on turkey bacon and think it happens to be quite delicious so poke fun if you like, but I think it tastes great AND it's the healthier option, so there! Unfortunately, I happen to be terrible about checking expiration dates in the grocery store on things other than milk. Once it is home on my shelf I watch it like a hawk, but in the store I remain oblivious for the most part. My package of turkey bacon had a use by date of today, Nov. 25. This left me faced with a dilemma: I could eat the whole package tonight (21 slices), eat the entire package over the next 4-5 days and ignore the use by date, or freeze what I didn't cook tonight. Clearly the last option is the smartest, and what I went with. I was even smart enough to independently wrap portions for myself so that I don't have a defrost nightmare every time I use it up (have I mentioned the defrost button on my microwave? it's terrible! i'm pretty sure the manufacturer got the words "defrost" and "cook" mixed up, because that is exactly what happens to anything microwaved via the defrost setting).

Anyhow, my pancakes turned out very well and were delicious! I was very proud of myself for successfully cooking them and making the bacon on the stove as I am notoriously bad at cooking any breakfast food. 

And for fun, can you spot the green anole in the tree outside my window?

Happy American Thanksgiving!

I must admit, I still like American Thanksgiving better than Grenadian Thanksgiving. The holiday is more joyous and tastier haha.

Although we didn't have the day off (or tomorrow), we do have a lighter load of classes (although I believe this is due to finals approaching rather than the holiday haha) between today and tomorrow. We also had a traditional thanksgiving meal complete with turkey and every imaginable side dish-it was delicious!

Hill's pet food donates 30 turkeys to the SGUSVM every year which are distributed amongst the students to cook and bring back for a pot luck meal on campus. Everyone else who attends brings a side dish of their choice. We had so much amazing food for our dinner tonight!

I like desserts and I like making desserts so I went on a Google hunt for something different and easy. I came up with Oreo truffles. If you think they sound amazing, they taste even better! The recipe I found traditionally calls for a package of oreos, 8 oz of cream cheese, and 8 oz of melting milk chocolate, but since IGA only had chocolate creme oreos, I decided to go with white chocolate to balance out the extra. You crush all the oreos in a bowl, mix in the cream cheese, roll the "dough" into balls, and dip them in the chocolate. While this produces a tasty product, it is very messy and rather time consuming. I think if I were to make the recipe again, I would pour a layer of white chocolate on the bottom of a greased dish, lay the dough on top, and pour the remain white chocolate over it and garnish with remaining chips. This is simply because it would be easier, less messy, and makes kind of a cheesecake fudge that is also delicious. This is what i did with a small portion of my batter (only I just put chocolate on the top, not on the bottom) and it was super yummy. All in all, if you're looking for an simple, sure to please recipe, this is one to go with!

 Anyhow, this was a fantastic way to do Thanksgiving. There was so much variety and new things to try! I also enjoyed being able to try multiple variations of a dish (i.e. mashed potatoes, turkey) because everyone's was a little bit different. We sort of lacked in veggies (not a big item in Grenada) and I personally didn't get any pumpkin pie, but I'm sure I can make up for that during my winter break!

 

 

Super huge THANK YOU to Hill's for their generous donation and to our SCAVMA board for organizing this event!

Eating Habits

Lately I have been craving sleep so much that I have been skipping breakfast and even lunch to get as much sleep time in as possible. If I don't skip lunch, then I'm eating at like 3 or 4p and then having dinner close to 8 or 9p! This is very unusual for me. Today I skipped both breakfast and lunch in favor of more sleeping time and then had an early dinner. After eating dinner, I was bewildered for a while as to why I was still so hungry! As it turns out, the body doesn't appreciate the drop off in meal consumption, so I ended up eating dinner twice today haha. Lesson learned!

Veterinary Acupuncture

We had a mini lesson in veterinary acupuncture during anatomy lab this morning. Dr. Sage brought all of her dogs in for us to try it out on. She gave a very brief overview of what we believe is going on when acupuncture is used in animals. She had more of a Western explanation for acupuncture for us. At Virginia Tech, I attended a few lectures about equine acupuncture by Dr. Crisman at VMRCVM. He typically explained everything from the Chinese perspective (although he has a background in internal medicine). It was really neat hearing the other view and matching things up with what I have previously learned. We also enjoyed practicing :).

The acupuncture needles we used were VERY tiny (32G). Contrary to common belief, needle diameters decrease in size as guage size increases (for instance, an 18G needle is very big), and this has nothing to do with length. An acupuncture needle is on the left, typical injection needles are on the right (though this is a bit zoomed in so don't freak out too much!).

Christmas in Grenada

Every day, my facebook page is full of comments about the upcoming holidays and current weather in the US. I must admit, to me it doesn't feel anything like Thanksgiving and Christmas time! For starters, it is still 85 and sunny every day. If you spend enough time outside, you are guaranteed to get a sun tan or burn and to be sweaty. The beach and the ocean are still beautiful and warm, and I can still wear shorts and a tshirt to dinner and the grocery store! Every other year of my life, I have found myself bundled in hats, scarves, heavy coats and clothes long before this time of year, therefore my brain just doesn't seem to recognize that it's really November! I think it is confused.

Bits of Christmas songs have been circulating on the bus radios for quite some time now and rumor has it that one of the offices on campus has had a Christmas tree up since mid-October. I have noticed that as each week passes, hits of holiday decorations are popping up more and more, and the music is being played with increased frequency.

Last week when I went to the grocery store, I discovered that our IGA has covered the store with decorations! There is a 10 foot tall (well decorated) tree at the entrance to the store, wreathes and colored balls hanging from the ceiling and on the walls, and garland with decorations and lights everywhere! The other stores in the "mall" have added their own decorations and cheer to the mix. It's all quite cute.

Christmas is a very big holiday in Grenada because the islanders are very religious. I sort of wish that I was going to be here to experience Christmas from their point of view seeing all of the decorations and festivities (but not enough to actually stay!!!).

 p.s. I hope you enjoy the pictures, I endured many strange and judgmental looks while taking them for your viewing pleasure! :-p

Asparagus

I love asparagus. It is one of my favorite vegetables. Unfortunately, at the grocery store here it typically costs $18-$25 EC, which is just absurdly expensive. I'm not paying $8-10+ for a vegetable! Not as a poor student! It also doesn't typically look very healthy-it looks picked over and beat up (probably from the long travel).

This week when I went to the store, they had asparagus on sale for $13 EC! While still $5 for a bunch, it looked decent and I decided what the heck. So I picked out a bunch and excitedly brought it home (sounds like I got a new puppy haha).

Tonight I cooked some of it and it was delicious! It made an excellent addition to my usual steak and potato Sunday dinner (family tradition). I look forward to eating the rest of it throughout the week! Maybe I'll even get lucky and it will be on sale again this week!

 

Another Saturday Down

Up early this morning to work the first shift at the clinic with some of my classmates. Really not sure what possessed me to sign up for an 8am shift especially since I hate mornings, but this shift wasn't too bad. I am amused how much shorter these shifts feel than the night ones (which makes sense, they are shorter but the go more quickly it seems).

It was pretty quiet for most of the time. We did get one walk in who was hit by a car. We spent the remainder of the shift stabilizing and treating that poor dog. A fractured femur with several bone splinters within the muscle-owwwww.

We have our last exam of the semester on Monday. After that it's all finals! Exciting but terrifying at the same time! 3 weeks from now at this time I will be back in the US in my own bed-crazy! I spent most of the day studying for my exam Monday with a little break in the middle to study the bones of the skull with a classmate.

SGU SVM Award Ceremony

Tonight was the SGU SVM award ceremony. A bunch of us went to support the rest of the school and out of curiosity (oh yeah, and the promise of free food hehe). The award ceremony was very nice-who knew the school had so many awards to recognize the students?! Most of them were mainly upper term awards, and there were a few staff and faculty ones.

Afterwards there was a nice (and super tasty) reception at the Caribbean House on the peninsula behind the library. The SVM certainly knows how to pick the tasty finger foods! Who ever has been in charge of this and the white coat ceremony foods needs a bonus or a raise for doing such a good job! My favorite finger food is the mini cheesecakes. They consist of filo pastry, a tablespoon of cheesecake, and a fruit topping and they are absolutely amazing! When I'm home over break or next summer, I am definitely going to have to try and replicate this recipe because they are sooooo good!

Animal Nutrition-Small Animal Edition

So I NEVER thought I'd enjoy or be fascinated by anything veterinary nutrition related, but I have to say this class is pretty awesome! Dr. Hammond has thrown tons of information at us in the last four days and even more things just to ponder. I think some of my fascination comes from the fact that it all acts like a giant puzzle that you have to work out. You have to figure out each of the individual parts in order to see the complete picture.

Today we had a 2.5 hour nutrition lab with 12 stations. Each station covered a topic in pet food such as ingredients, energy/food dose calculations, label reading, weight loss products, feeding costs, canned food, palatability, additives, treats, feline lower urinary tract health claims, and oral health. The stations I found most interesting were the calculations (because I enjoy simple math), label reading, feeding costs, and oral health.

At the ingredients station, Dr. Hammond had several baggies of common pet food ingredients that are used as fiber, protein, and vitamin/mineral sources. All of the ingredients were ground into a fine powder just as you would find them used in foods. It was pretty neat to see and feel the different textures through the plastic.

At the calculation station, we calculated the resting energy requirement, daily energy requirement, and food dose for a provided scenario animal. Several food labels were available for us to choose from to calculate a food dose, which is based on each individual food. If you wish to feed Brand X's Y food, you use the kcals per cup of food to determine how many cups a day that pet should eat (based on calculations of RER and DER).

At the label reading station, we looked at various ingredients in the foods and looked at dozens of packages for AAFCO labeling. AAFCO stands for the Association of American Feed Control Officials and is a group that establishes the rules for the specific naming of a feed ingredient. They also complete feeding trials and have trial standards for companies who wish to prove that their food meets AAFCO standards. We were to look at the packages to see which foods actually had undergone AAFCO feeding trials, which were simply formulated to meet the AAFCO nutrient profiles, and which were labelled for intermittent or supplemental feeding only. That last category was a little bit scary-this is a food that is not nutritionally complete and is meant to be an add on, but there are people out there who have no idea (after all, you'd have to read all of the fine print on the label) and feed this to their pets all the time leading to deficiencies and an unbalanced diet!

We learned how to calculate how much a food costs per year to feed to a pet. This was kind of fun and now I want to figure out how much it costs to feed my pets per year! This can be clinically relevant if you need to switch a client's pet's diet and they are concerned about cost. In one example given to us, the food the owner was currently feeding was more expensive to feed per year than the prescription diet, it was just how much that was purchased at a time. The original food was bought in small quantities at a time, making it seem less expensive!

The last station we did was an examination of foods and treats that claimed to have oral health benefits. We learned that the only food items proven to back up their claims are those with the VOHC seal. The purpose of the Veterinary Oral Health Council is "to provide an independent, objective, and credible means of recognizing veterinary dental products that effectively control accumulation of plaque and/or calculus." The table had at least two dozen different products on it all claiming to benefit oral health, but surprisingly few actually had the VOHC seal on them.

All in all, the message of this lab was to be aware of what's out there in the pet food world. There are tons of different products on the market and it's important to realizing what you are actually buying and feeding your pet, and veterinarians are supposed to play a major role in helping clients to figure this out.

Jokes in Grenada

Tonight turned out to be a great example of how humor doesn't always cross cultures. At least both parties involved found the outcome funny, except for maybe the waitress (who probably thought the men she was serving were incredibly rude).

It was one of my classmate's birthdays so we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. We had purchased a cake yesterday to bring along with us. After we finished dinner, we pulled out the cake and asked our waitress if we could borrow a lighter. She was a really nice Grenadian and told us yes on one condition-we sang really loudly and let her sing too :). We laughed and of course agreed, lit all the candles, and sang Happy Birthday. Amazingly enough, it only took a minute to get all the candles lit (unlike for my cake where it took a solid 20 minutes to successfully light the candles-same restaurant too!)!

We had cut up the cake and were eating it when another waitress walked by and told us that the 3 middle aged men (at least 1 was American) she was serving had asked her where their cake was. Apparently they told her that since they had sang too, they wanted some cake! So she walked over to ask us. We laughed and told her to tell them if they brought us plates they were welcome to some of the cake (all assuming they were joking at this point). She walked away back towards the kitchen, and much to our surprise, returned with 3 plates a few minutes later! We were very surprised and a little taken aback, but we had left over cake and figured that if the guys wanted to be rude about it, they could have cake. So off we sent her with 3 plates of cake.

I overheard their reaction when she arrived at the table with the cake-they were just as surprised as we had been! Our table had a good laugh over the apparent miscommunication between all of us and this poor Grenadian waitress! One of the guys later walked over and offered to buy our table a round of drinks. We graciously accepted, and they bought each of us whatever we wanted to drink! Very nice of them.

I thought this was a very amusing scenario for how actions and behaviors don't always cross cultures. Another classic example here of this is horn honking. They honk horns to say hello to a passerby. Americans honk horns to convey irritation and annoyance at others' actions or just out of general frustration. This is why I try very hard to be as humble and polite here as possible, I am really concerned about something not translating appropriately. Best to avoid any trouble whenever possible!

What a Day!

Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but I feel like I did nothing but run in circles all day.

In anatomy lab we are dissecting the head now. If you don't want to know what that means or how that's done, skip this paragraph. We started lab yesterday by switching animals around for a fourth and final time. Since my group has never had a cat, we traded for a cat. I kind of planned it this way because when working with the head, I felt it would be less traumatic and disgusting to work with a tiny head and since I never learn anything in lab anyway, it doesn't really matter if we can't see 50% of the things we're supposed to find because they're too small on our cat. Any how, we cut the head off the cat, dissected out the tongue attached to the esophagus and trachea (called the pluck), and then sawed the head in half. Literally. With a saw. Of all the things we've done in lab this semester, sawing a head in half and breaking all the ribs was by far the worst and most gruesome part. Most of the head sawing was done by the lab guy, who is impressively good at this bit. For our head, he held it in his hand like an apple and simply sliced it into two halves. I personally would never touch a sharp object that large much less use it so close to my hand!! Dissection is pretty boring work right now since basically only one person works at a time. I really need to start reviewing vessels, nerves, and some random muscles (and oh yeah, the entire reproduction system that I skipped because I didn't go to lab or pay attention when I was there-hey it wasn't on our exam last week!).

I am extremely impressed with the veterinarian who teaches the small animal portion of our clinical nutrition class so far. He seems brilliant. His intelligence is a bit intimidating, but I find myself hanging on to every word he says. I am definitely going to learn a ton about nutrition and I am very excited to finally have some knowledge about small animal nutrition.

Any how, night after night I fail to meet my goal of going to bed "early," as it is already 1:30am. Never enough sleep here!

Physiology Exam Tomorrow!

And I still don't have hot water. *sigh* I could be more pesky and persistent to the university about this, but I'm afraid of making the people who are in charge of fixing things mad. Yes, I do realize it's their job, but Grenada has a whole different way of doing and viewing things. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable for a store clerk to be rude to a customer who is rude to them. And while this may seem like common sense, think about it-in the US, this would be HIGHLY frowned upon and might even get the clerk fired. Not so here-treat them with respect and you shall receive the same. I'm just being extra careful not to step on any toes accidentally while I'm still learning about life here. I look forward to the day when I feel like I can handle it all haha.

Anyhow, today was full of extra lectures. Pfizer did a dermatology lecture at lunch and the AVMA PLIT (liability insurance for students and veterinarians) presented at our SCAVMA meeting (SGU is officially a SCAVMA member and no longer just an affiliate!). I think most of us left the PLIT lecture ever more fearful of making any mistakes and everything that can go wrong in practice! Yikes!!! Too bad that's a major part of learning and being human!

We also finally started our unit on small animal nutrition. I am looking forward to learning about diets for the dog and cat! Our visiting professor seems really awesome and I think we are going to get a lot of valuable information in the next 9 lectures!

Lastly, we have our renal physiology exam tomorrow. I'm really nervous! I felt fairly unmotivated tonight and didn't get nearly as much studying done as I had hoped. Hopefully the couple hours I have tomorrow will be sufficient-I'm really hoping for an A! My favorite part of this stuff is the section on acid-base chemistry (metabolic/respiratory acidosis/alkalosis). I find that stuff really interesting and fun to figure out!

More on the Cold Water Conundrum

No hot water when I woke up today. I turn the faucet on and instead of a stream of water, I get a little elf who hops out and begins pointing and laughing at me. Thanks little elf.

I worked a noon shift at the clinic today with two of my classmates. One lives in the same building as me and the other lives in the brand new building across campus. The girl across campus said she definitely had hot water, the one in my building wasn't sure (although we were assuming it was a building wide shortage at this point). The clinic had hot water when we were there too.

I ran into one of my neighbors on my way home who said she had taken a cold shower this morning (thus confirming my theory that I was not the only one without hot water). I went home and took another cold shower (didn't really want to continue smelling like the animal hospital) and was very disappointed that the hot water had not returned in my absence. A little while later I found out that someone else in my building did have hot water (but I still did not) which puzzled me.

In order to further procrastinate writing an article review for animal nutrition, I decided to start poking around and finding out who did and did not have hot water on my hall. Turns out it's just one neighbor who is lacking hot water (or any water from that faucet like me). The people above us have hot water, it's just us who are special. Fantastic! On call maintenance will hopefully come tonight and find out what the problem is because I REALLY don't want to take another cold shower this week. One thing I'm grateful for is that because it's so warm out, we never have ice cold water so I've just had chilly showers.

The most amusing part about this whole thing is that I just assumed it had to do with the water main break. After all, the note said possible water outages! Why should I suspect any different?

Cold Shower

Earlier I was pondering what to blog about tonight but SGU has come through and provided me with a topic to write about!

We have a dry erase board at the entrance to our dorm where announcements can be posted by the RAs. It almost always says the same things, but occasionally something else will be scribbled on it. When I went out earlier, I noticed that it said there had been a water main break on campus and that there could be possible water outages this weekend. Awesome and noted. Mentioned it to a couple of my hall mates (who had not seen the message) and went on with my life.

Until I went to take a shower. The knob was already turned to hot so when I pulled on it, it gave a quick sprinkle (as opposed to the normal gush) and then died to a couple of droplets. A quick panic and I tried it again but with the lever turned more towards cold (I was looking for a cooler shower anyways because I had just finished exercising and was already hot and sweaty). This gave me a little bit of a stream with enough pressure that I felt I could successfully wash all shampoo and conditioner out of my hair.

So as it turns out, we have no hot water. Yayyy...Guess I'll hold off on washing dishes because I'd prefer hotter suds for that job. Before you gasp and think "oh my gosh! what a horrible place!", remember that water main breaks occur anywhere, and that they are often accompanied by water shortages or outages. The only difference between a water outage here and one in the US is that it probably will take the whole weekend and into Monday to get this fixed. Grenadian work standards are just a bit different here. For example, SGU has to independently contract out for weekend bus drivers because it is Grenadian law that the university cannot make staff work on weekends (and our regular bus drivers are staff). Welcome to Grenada!

Pizza

I am currently making myself a little pizza for lunch. An AMERICAN pizza. I specify the type of pizza because Grenadian pizza, while tasty, has a very different type of sauce. It has a strange sweet taste. I miss my more salty/acidic pizza from the US!

I was meandering in the refrigerator aisle a couple of weeks ago when shredded mozzarella cheese caught my attention. Looked like a potentially tasty snack. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed pizza crusts! So that got me thinking, maybe they have pizza sauce in the spaghetti aisle! I raced over and sure enough, they had some Ragu pizza sauce!

My shredded cheese only lasted for 2 of the 3 pizza crusts so last week when I went to the store, I planned on getting more. This being Grenada, they of course had no shredded cheese left (of any kind). They did have blocks of Kraft mozzarella cheese so I decided to try that because it was better than nothing.

That brings us to today, when I decided to make pizza for lunch. I definitely wasn't sure how it was going to turn out and was pretty skeptical that it was going work, but it did and it was DELICIOUS! Even better than the shredded cheese!

Counting and Count Downs

As human beings, we seem to be compelled to make lists of things we need to do, count downs for events that are going to happen in our lives, and to generally look forward to the future while sometimes ignoring the present. I am certainly no exception to all of this. Each week I list out all of the classes, exams, and review sessions I have on a white board calendar, make a task list of things I want to accomplish for the day/week/certain time frame (although this seems pointless because I almost never get things done in the way I had anticipated), and lately we have all been counting down the weeks of class left, the number of classes left, and the days left on the island. Definitely a coping mechanism to help get us through the enormous amounts of stress placed on us throughout the semester as we tackle dozens of exams, hundreds of lectures, and thousands of pages of study material.

Here are a few of my count downs right now:
# of anatomy labs left: 9
# of anatomy classes left: 6
# of histology classes left: 9
# of physiology classes left: 5
# of exams left until finals begin: 2
# of final exams: 5 (unless you count anatomy lab and lecture separately-which they probably should be!)
# of weeks of classes left: 3
# of weeks until I am done with semester 1 of vet school: 4
and finally I leave the island for the US one month from today! I haven't been keeping up with the number of days (many of my classmates have been and I catch up on how many days I have left based on when I know they're leaving).

These are the numbers that are keeping me sane! Tomorrow I will officially be done with my third vet school class, I can't wait! We have our animal welfare and behavior final exam in the afternoon, although no one is quite sure what this really means. Best case scenario we have no exam, just a supplemental lecture. Another is that we have to take an exam but it doesn't count/we go through the questions in class. Worst case scenario we have an exam and it actually counts without being curved (this scenario is hopefully very unlikely). I'm just not quite sure what to expect so I spent a few hours this evening reviewing the material presented to us by our visiting professors. Nothing too difficult so hopefully any sort of exam would be fine. We'll see!

And just a little update on the nutrition exam from Tuesday: remember how I said I wasn't worried? Well I scored a 24/25 on the exam and intentionally picked what I assumed would be the "wrong" answer for the question I missed. This is because the question wasn't worded well and although I was 99% certain that she was looking for a specific answer (and I was right), I wanted to make sure to cover my bases by picking the one that was technically correct based on the wording of the question. At the end of every exam (after we submit scantrons) we review the correct answers and are given the chance to write any "challenges" we have for any of the questions. I had my fingers crossed that we could get the question thrown out (a lot of people challenged it) and I was right! So that means I technically got a 24/24 and I am THRILLED to have gotten a 100% on a vet school exam! Hopefully I can keep this trend up throughout the last couple of exams and finals to finish out the semester strongly!

Italian Food

Okay, I swear I won't mention anatomy for awhile : D. Glad that's done and over with!

To celebrate the completion of our nutrition exam and anatomy exams, a classmate and I decided to go out for dinner. We ended up eating at this delicious little italian restaurant (I won't even try to spell the name let alone pronounce it!). This is the first time in 3 months that I've had anything italian, unless you count my pathetic spaghetti (which is delicious, but no where near as good as restaurant food). Everything on the menu sounded delicious, and I ended up going with lasagna (which was indeed delicious). On top of having delicious food, the service was really quick! We were in and out in about an hour! This is an amazing feat in Grenada, where I normally don't plan on eating within two hours of arriving at a restaurant. Everything here is just really slow, laid back, and relaxed. Once you adopt this mindset (just set the bar really, really low), you're good to go and will adjust quite well. Ways to adjust to life in Grenada include believing that if you go out to eat, it will take 3 hours (you're then pleasantly surprised if it doesn't), assuming that what's on the menu might not be available (just pick 3 dishes you'd like to eat and go down the list), and avoid making time limits/wearing a watch. If you don't pay attention to the time and eat a snack before you leave you should be just fine!

Last Post About Anatomy...

Until finals time. Which is in a few weeks. Yuck!

I had no reason to worry about nutrition today (which is good because I wasn't worried). I knew all the right answers, which made me very happy! Next up: small animal nutrition! I am looking forward to this section of the class!

So back to anatomy. AHHHHHHH!!!! That pretty much sums up how I feel about the exam tomorrow. There is just so much to know! It's killer! I'm sure I know more than I think I do, but it certainly doesn't feel like it! I still have more lab stuff I want to cover tonight since that part of the exam is first. Then tomorrow during lunch/class, I plan on reviewing and cramming as many more facts into my head as possible!

Dr. Pasquini keeps telling us that we only need to remember about 20% of anatomy once we graduate and that no one will fail the class, but the more I hear stuff like that, the more determined I am to know as much as I possibly can. Which inevitably leads to A LOT of frustration and anxiety. Stupid anatomy!

Nutrition Exam Tomorrow!

I think I should be a lot more concerned about my horse nutrition exam tomorrow than I actually am. There is a ton of material but some how it just doesn't seem so bad to me. The student practice test was pretty easy, hopefully its a good indicator of what we'll actually see tomorrow. Maybe if I didn't have anatomy looming on Wednesday I'd be more worried about this exam tomorrow, but all of my panic resources have gone to trying to learn every possible little anatomy detail.

I also swear that one of these days I'll make it to bed at the time I plan to rather than a solid 2-3 hours later haha. Both last night and tonight my goal was 12a, but both nights that has proven to be a laughable goal. Last night I didn't fall asleep until nearly 3a! Ugh! I really need more hours in the day haha (that way I could sleep a reasonable amount AND study as much as I need).

Fingers crossed that I do well tomorrow!

Anatomy, Anatomy, and More Anatomy

We have another anatomy exam on Wednesday. I am *so* not looking forward to it (not that I ever do haha). I am just not good at anatomy and it frustrates me to no end!!! We also have a nutrition exam on Tuesday and our animal welfare and behavior final on Friday.

Our exam Wednesday covers the thoracic limb, the thorax, the back/neck, the abdomen, and the pelvic limb. All the vessels, nerves, muscles, and associated structures (of which there are hundreds!) to know. And that's just the lab exam! More national board questions, hundreds of Q and A's, 4 objectives of which one will be guaranteed, and 30 objectives from which 2 will be on the exam, and about 60 drawings of which there will be 3 or 4. I am sufficiently freaked out over this exam!! I'm already panicked about the final exam too (it's only a few weeks away!). And then there's large animal anatomy next semester-yikes!

Jinxed

Well I majorly jinxed myself last, night. I finally fell asleep at about 3am only to awaken to the the on call phone ringing at 4am. The call was from a couple of veterinary students who had a dog with a suspected brain tumor who was having cluster seizures.

The team made our way back to the hospital to prepare for the incoming emergency. Unfortunately for our patient, a brain tumor and seizures are not a good combo. His seizures had been getting worse and more frequent lately and soon after they arrived, he crashed and we euthanized him peacefully. My heart goes out to that couple-he seemed like such a nice and beautiful young dog.

I got home a little after 5am and decided that I needed to take a shower. It took me awhile to fall asleep, reflecting on the case and the earlier evening.

I fell asleep at 6am. At 7:40am, the phone rang again. This time, a Grenadian wanted to bring his dog in who has been "hopping about." A little bit confused and absolutely exhausted, I asked for a little more information (when did it start, which leg seemed to be the problem). I was sort of expecting it to be nothing. Sometimes we wake up with a stiff leg or joint and favor it-happens in animals too. Instead, he told me that it was her left rear leg and that he suspected that "she had become tangled up with the car she had been chasing" the previous evening. You just never quite know what you're going to get here! We advised him to come in, and he said he be there a little after 8am.

I was very glad that the next shift would be in charge of handling the new emergency (I was soooo tired!!) and grateful that I would soon be able to go to sleep for real! 5 hours of sleep, a 2 hour morning nap, a 1 hour late night nap, and a 1.5 hour early morning nap are NOT enough sleep! I slept soundly from 8am-4pm and I am looking forward to going back to bed in a little bit!

Amazing Evening On Call!!!

So for all the mopey feelings I've been having over the last two weeks because I am absolutely exhausted and sort of fed up with this semester, tonight was an amazing reminder of why I am here in school for 3.5 more years and what I really truly love.

Some where along the way I fell in love with emergency and critical care medicine. It's kind of funny because the first few times I experienced emergency medicine I said NO WAY is this for me. Wrong! Turns out I absolutely adore it. I love that you never know what is going to walk in the door. You have to be at the top of your game in all areas because you never know what area of medicine you're going to need to draw upon to help you figure out what the problem(s) is. You meet people at some of the worst moments of their lives and you make an impact, no matter what the out come is. You make moment by moment decisions based on what is happening right in front of you using your skills and knowledge, technology, and a bit of luck. And there is a nice adrenaline rush associated with it all too.

We walked in this evening to a critical case that was being managed by the new emergency and critical care specialist at SGU. A young kitten had been attacked by a dog and was fighting for life. The kitten was obtunded (practically comatose), had neurological deficits, had no deep pain in the hind legs, and had a clear puncture wound in the abdominal region. When we were rounding cases with the doctor, he told us that rather than tell us what was going on with the case out right, he wanted us to perform a physical exam and review the radiographs and blood work with him and tell him what we thought was going on. Unfortunately for this kitten, the dog had done a lot of damage to the lumbar vertebrae and had crushed the spinal cord in at least one place. It is cases like this that make me so grateful that we have the option of humane euthanasia in veterinary medicine. The owners opted to euthanize the kitten (sad outcome but really good teaching case).

The next interesting case we saw was a suddenly neurologic papillon. The owner thought perhaps the dog had fallen and hit her head, but the doctors think that something else is going on. As we were working with the owner and on the dog, another dog came in that had tried to eat a cane toad and was now actively seizing. It took a long time to stabilize that dog, but he was doing A LOT better when we finally left for the night. He is also really cute! Both of the neurologic dogs were doing a lot better with medical treatment and medications when we left a little while ago :).

Case number 4 of the night was a dog that was seen being hit by a car. A good samaritan brought the dog in even though he had no idea who the owner was. Unfortunately for the dog, he also had paralyzed hind legs and no deep pain in his hind end. We did a quick physical exam, gave him some pain meds, and took radiographs to asses the damage. The radiographs showed a completely crushed and displaced spinal vertebrae which meant that he had very severe spinal cord damage. Outwardly, the dog was showing signs of Schiff-Sherrington spinal damage (if you're a pre-vet or vet student, go look it up!). It is heart breaking to have to euthanize such a young dog (we estimated him to be about 1 years old), but I am grateful that he is no longer suffering from the intense pain that he was in when he first came in. I was easily able to place a IV catheter in his leg (small victories).

Okay, I think I am finally ready to go to sleep. Hopefully the rest of the night will be uneventful because I have the phone! I am really not looking forward to having to get up at 7:45a to take the phone back to the clinic for the next shift! Usually it's not a big deal to get the phone back in the mornings on Mondays because as soon as the work day hits, the phone service switches back to the main hospital phones instead of the on call phone. Oh well. I am going to be exhausted!!

I owe a HUGE thank you to anyone I have ever worked with or shadowed because you all have taught me SO MUCH! I am so grateful to have the knowledge and skills that I have-and you all have been wonderful teachers whether you realized it or not! Feeling confident and know what to do is an amazing feeling and I am so lucky to be able to step into these sorts of situations and feel comfortable doing everything I am needed to do. THANK YOU!!!

Ultrasound Lab

Our radiology lab today was a hands on ultrasound demonstration. We had a class earlier in the week to talk about ultrasound technology, its applications in veterinary medicine, and some common terminology. I have spent hundreds of hours with boarded radiologists so it was pretty much all stuff I'd seen and heard before (I think I learned a couple of terms when it comes to artifacts-not explaining, you don't need to know haha).

We started by having Dr. Lawson perform an abdominal ultrasound on one of our classmate's dogs. She walked us through each step in the process, showed us the organs, and gave us tips and advice for performing an abdominal ultrasound. When she finished, she had each of us come up and find one of the abdominal organs (there are lots to choose from-kidneys, stomach, spleen, liver, urinary bladder, intestines, prostate, adrenal glands, vessels, basically everything in the abdominal cavity). I think for all but a couple of people, this was the first time they were performing their own ultrasound and they were very excited. I have done it before so it wasn't my first time, but it's still fun never the less. Dr. Lawson had me find the right kidney (and we happened upon the descending duodenum in the process). Our "patient" was VERY cooperative and easy going the entire time-such an awesome dog!!!

I enjoy radiology because you are presented with a set of images, and you describe the structures just as they are. It's fairly "black and white" (no pun intended) because you don't make inferences based on what you see. Radiographs, ultrasound, CT, and MRI are diagnostic tools, but they are not in and of themselves a diagnosis. As a student learning to interpret the images, it is very hard not to try and make inferences and impose potential external information on what you're looking at!

(Kidney-our's wasn't quite as well defined. Kidneys are my favorite because I personally think they look really cool!)

(For fun here's an abdominal radiograph showing both kidneys and the urinary bladder-the arrow is pointing to where a lymph node might be seen if enlarged.)

(Off topic but another one of my favorite images-can you guess what these are? Hint-count the skulls : D )

Veterinary Behaviorists

I have added another are of veterinary medicine to the list of things that I am NOT interested in. That would be behaviorism. Yes, there really are veterinarians out there that specialize in animal behavior problems! This means that they had to complete extra training and pass a board exam to become a specialist in behavior.

Not talking down on the field of behaviorism, but ugh it is not for me! We are currently in our third (and final) week of Animal Welfare and Behavior and I cannot wait for this class to end. The first third was interesting about the ethics and welfare of animals, and the little bit of human psychology that has been thrown into the mix is mildly interesting, but as soon as we start talking about common behavior problems (like separation anxiety) and how to work through them, I get completely bored.

I'm mildly amused that I am so disinterested in this subject considering my intense fascination in humans and the field of psychology. Heck, I even completed a BSc in psychology! So I'm not really sure what about veterinary behavior that has me shaking my head and saying no thanks! For anyone who is interested in reading more about veterinary behaviorism or is in need of a specialist for their pet: http://www.dacvb.org/.

As a refresher, this list includes:
Any type of farm animal
Any type of food animal
All things equine
Veterinary Behaviorism

And on an unrelated note, happy palindrome day! 11/02/2011 (I think it's pretty cool haha)

A Trip to Amerijet

Another Grenadian adventure!

Today was a really rainy day in Grenada. It's funny, because I don't remember it looking grey and overcast out when I went to lab, but when we left we were met by dark storm clouds and lots of rain. I think it was all there this morning but I was still half asleep on my walk to class.

Anyhow, I shipped a box to a friend today. Not something I would normally do, but she wanted a few of the things she's currently storing here on the island mailed to her, so I discovered how the process works. Let's make it clear that I still feel totally clueless when it comes to all things Grenada. I was really hoping to just pay someone to drop the box off, but unfortunately because of how the process works, I needed to be present to take care of the paperwork and such.

The very nice man at the campus bookstore arranged for an SGU worker to take me to where the shipping stuff occurs. I really imagined having to drive about 20 or 30 minutes to get to where ever this whole process happens, but I often forget that I live in St. George's, the city where all of the action happens. It was about a 5 minute drive to the first building where shipping stuff is normally taken care of, but they asked us to head over to the airport to do things directly.

Another 5 minutes down a different road in another direction gets you the airport. We needed to get a pass and visitor tags before we could proceed around back to where the Amerijet hanger is. Here is a little snapshot of what the airport looks like.

Once we had our pass, we drove all the way around back of the airport (which is really quite small) to a little road with a gate. My driver warned me a few times that when we arrived at this gate we would have to go through a security check. Behind the chain link gate is a little building no bigger than a shed. Out pops an umbrella followed by a very disapproving security guard. It is still pouring rain. He comes over to the window, sizes us up, and asks to see the pass. After a brief look, he hands it back and waves us through, and then hurries back into the shed to be dry again. My driver found this amusing (apparently they are supposed to give you a full pat down and then accompany you to the hanger).

We proceeded down what is probably the most narrow and overgrown road I have ever been on for a short ways before reaching the hanger. The process of weighing and measuring the box and then filling out the paperwork was very easy. My driver seemed to know everyone in the room with us (which always surprises and amuses me, but I've never lived anywhere small enough to know all of the people in the area) so they chatted while I took care of the paperwork. They were very nice and friendly to me (again, although I shouldn't be surprised at all, I was a bit surprised not to be harassed at all because I was expecting them to not be nice for some reason!). Yet another Grenadian encounter that has left me smiling and speechless because the people here are so incredibly kind and friendly. They are not out to get you and they are not all about themselves like a lot of people in the US are.

We went back out the way we came, turned in our passes, and headed back to campus just in time for me to grab some lunch and head to class!