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!