Happy Halloween!

There was a Halloween hash tonight, but I have a pharm exam tomorrow, a path exam and parasit quiz on Friday, a virology final on Monday, and a clin path exam on Wednesday. Sadly hashing was not in the cards for me tonight :(.

So be sure to eat some candy for me and have a lot of fun! And check out all of these really cool pumpkins! http://slideshow.nbcnews.com/slideshow/today/ghoulishly-grand-carved-pumpkins-39421834/

Sandy

Stolen from a friend on facebook:

"Hey folks at home, enjoy Sandy! You wanted the beach to come to you and we have provided! Oh? You didn't want the sand in the form of a hurricane? My apologies. Some things get lost in translation. ;)"

I am quite amused that as we are winding down hurricane season number two here on this island, I am 2-0 in hurricane/tropical storm avoidance as a Caribbean resident while my family is 0-2 in hurricane avoidance. Sorry about that folks. It really is better that you get the hurricanes though - this poor little island simply couldn't handle it and it would add an infinite amount of unwanted stress to my life (not that storms aren't bad in the US for sure).

Doubts

If you choose to go to veterinary school, you will have days were you doubt everything. You will wonder if you are doing the right thing, putting yourself in so much debt, studying for long hours, and turning your eyeballs and brain into mush. You will wonder if this is really the career you want, if you actually truly want to be a veterinarian every single day for the rest of your life. You will question your intelligence, and doubt your abilities to make good judgements on behalf of your patients. You will wonder about the terrible mistakes you make in the future that will cause a patient harm. You will see nothing but dark tunnel on some days, and you will want to curl up under the blankets, close your eyes, and want to never come out and face the world. (The good news is that there are lots of days where you will feel energized, enlightened, and in love with what you're doing. You may not love vet school because not everyone does, but you will do and learn things that you love. Those are the days that help you get through the rough patches.)

For students that choose to go to foreign schools, there is an added burden of being in a new country. Whether it is somewhere like the UK or Ireland, Grenada or St. Kitts, you will have extra things to over come.

Let me start by saying that I love Grenada. I love going to school here. I really wouldn't want to be anywhere else, because I absolutely love waking up to beautiful, sunny Grenada skies every day. And the following stuff I'm going to say are my personal views and opinions. One person. So please keep that in mind.

I have two roommates and we currently live on campus. One is a good friend from Virginia Tech and is a semester behind me, the other is a classmate who I have been friends with since we started classes. I'll call them T2 and T3 from here on out.

At the beginning of the term, T2 announced her intentions to seriously pursue off campus housing with another classmate for the upcoming spring term. She was tired of having little space to herself and really just wanted something to come home to at the end of the day to call "home." I was disappointed that we were going to be splitting ways for the upcoming term, but fine with out personal opinions. A lot of students prefer not to live on campus. The housing is small, expensive, and there are other little things that people don't care for. I on the other hand, enjoy living on campus. It is very convenient for classes, it is quiet and well kept, it is pretty darn safe, and I like having a small living space. I definitely wasn't considering moving off campus until at least my 3rd year just to maintain continuity.

Unfortunately, I don't get that choice. A lot of students have found themselves in the same boat now, as the housing lottery came back negative for many people. Boo, no more living on campus, and same for T3 (who was also perfectly content to live here forever basically). I am not a fan of change. I do not adapt well. Force it on me and I will panic and rebel. That is how I deal with change. So being forced to move off campus is a MAJOR deal to me. I am a young, caucasian female who spent childhood growing up in quiet, sheltered suburbia, and then moved to practically the safest town in the US for college (Blacksburg, VA). Living in Grenada is a vast difference for me, and it's probably safer here crime-wise than living in a major city!

However, the events that took place during my first ever two weeks in Grenada robbed me of the ability to feel totally safe and secure. Some times I feel complacent and comfortable, but I have never truly felt safe. I feel like a walking target. I feel like the words helpless and weak are stamped across my forehead, and I am just generally untrusting. This makes me more alert and aware (which is a good thing), but it leaves me with a general feeling of fear and anxiety when I stop to think about it.

T3 and I are currently facing the dilemma of finding an apartment. We are both terrified. We have no experience with this, we are naive, and we are both young and white and generally look vulnerable. The ideal apartment for us would be right next to campus, fortress protected, pet friendly, and like a lavish palace (okay, just a modest little 2 bedroom apartment will work just fine!). While I would be scared out of my mind to have to drive here, I think I could do it and be just fine. T3 does not feel this way, and therefore we will be stuck relying on the bus system (because I cannot afford to have a car on my own). I DO NOT want to live alone. I will not rent a studio apartment unless I am absolutely forced to. I have made my opinion very clear, but T3 really likes looking at studios despite not wanting to split up and wanting to live together. ?? Huh, not so sure there! So that part is stressful.

It is stressful thinking about relying on the not-so-reliable SGU bus system (although it has improved in my 3 terms). It is stressful to worry about finding a place that is safe and located in a safe area, especially when you have no idea where to start. I am for sure getting a dog to live with me and be my ears when I'm being oblivious, so I at least can cross that off my list. However, a dog will be an extra time and financial stress, and bring an animal to the island will be a challenge as well. One day at a time! I am stressed because the only people who seem to think this is a big scary deal are my parents, T3, and myself. I'm not getting the sympathetic support of my friends who seem to think I am being silly. Am I being silly? Okay probably a little. But the reality is, burglaries do happen here. People have been mugged at knife point in the middle of the day. People have had knives pulled on them in totally innocent situations, and occasionally someone breaks into your house while you're in it. Does this happen to everyone? Probably not. But any one of those things would be a BIG deal to me!

This is all really just an incoherent rant to say that I'm scared. I'm really scared. I feel really vulnerable at the moment. I feel really helpless, and I'm scared to become a victim. There are things that you have to over come in life, and there are times when you will doubt whatever it is that you're doing. This is one of them for me. It's all just been a week of what the heck was I thinking when I decided to come to another country for vet school, and what the heck am I doing?!

Claws

Happy Grenadian Thanksgiving! If you are wondering what Thanksgiving is like in Grenada, read all about it here! Not a particularly exciting day, but it was a day off from classes, so that is always a plus in my book!

I was planning on a leisurely early afternoon swim, but the idea of having to put sunscreen on was quite deterring. Instead, I opted to go later in the afternoon around the time the sun started to set so I didn't need any sunscreen haha. Lazy!

I have noticed the underwater world tends to be pretty active late afternoon. I feel like I see more activity and more fish when I go swimming later in the day. Could be a coincidence, by I like to think that it's dinner time and everyone is out getting a meal before it's dark out. Who knows.

Today's theme was things with claws. Lots of different critters with claws, and some I've never seen before! I also saw a new type of eel. He was pretty cool, but he definitely scared me silly because he was pretty interested in me! I saw him, snapped a really good picture, but wanted more. So as I reset and swam in for close ups, he began to inch is way out of the hole, watching me the whole time. When he was far enough out to sufficiently freak me out, I swam away fast! I'm just not used to the marine life being very interested in me. Usually the animals are indifferent or terrified! So I swear he was going to eat me (although I didn't see any teeth!).

Proptosis

Heads up, this is not a post for the squeamish.

Last night I was on call at our hospital. I was torn as to whether or not I wanted it to be a quiet evening, as I really have quite a lot to study these days, but it is refreshing to think about clinical medicine with a live patient!

We started off with the cutest golden retriever. She was apparently hanging out on the beach and found by some students. They dropped her off hoping that because she had an external fixator on her leg (for a fracture repair) that perhaps she was a clinic patient and they had owner contact information. Well, it turned out that the fixator was supposed to come out months ago, as it was an old break! We were going to anesthetize her and remove the device after taking confirmatory radiographs, but the clinician decided to grab a second opinion in the morning instead. So she got to hang out with us and cover us in dampness and sand :).

We received one emergency call about a kitty who's owner suspected had been hit by a car. The owner brought the cat in, and I had my first real ophthalmology case!

I think eyes are gross. They weird me out, and I really prefer to have nothing to do with their abnormalities, with the exception of an easy eye infection or simple corneal ulcer. Get much beyond that and all I can think is "yuck!" I had always heard stories of emergency veterinarians seeing cases where a dog got to excited and popped its eyeball out of the socket, and that makes me seriously cringe. This is usually in the little bug-eyed breeds such as shih zhus. Obviously trauma can cause this "proptosis," but it isn't necessarily uncommon for a smushed face breed to pop one out. Gross. Just talking about this makes me cringe. I hated our "pathology of the eye" section in pathology a few weeks ago. 50 minutes x 4 loaded with nasty eye disease pictures, and not usually on live animals mind you. Because pathology is all about the dead. Sometimes these nasty eyeballs were attached to heads, most were just set on a dissection board and photographed. Did I mention that quite a few of them were human?! EW. While I am not seriously grossed out by human stuff like some people, I REALLY prefer that pairs of nasty looking human eyeballs didn't stare back at me during class. All this is just leading to me stating that I figured that if I ever had to deal with something super nasty in the ophthalmology department, I'd be really rather freaked out and grossed out.

Turns out I was wrong. Or at least sort of. Our dear friend came in with his eyeball and all attached muscles just sticking straight out. not hanging there by a single attachment or anything you see in cartoons, but looking like a completely "normal" eye just sticking an inch out of the socket. (And don't say I didn't warn you, it was sentence number 1!!) So some answers to questions you might be thinking - yes I'm sure it hurt like heck, but kitty was in shock, had some head trauma, and was not quite mentally right. What did we do with the eye? Well, a proptosed eye is not life threatening. Head trauma and open wounds are. Being in shock is definitely life threatening. So assessing our friend and getting him started on fluid therapy, heat therapy, and pain meds were crucial. We determined that the poor cat had quite a few cranial nerve deficits and he really didn't seem to care about all our poking an prodding (which isn't a good thing, because if it was you are me and we were mentally appropriate, we'd be freaking out and very painful). We could have theoretically tried to replace the eyeball in the socket, but with the other head trauma, mental inapproriateness, and his blindness in that eye had us deciding to leave it and en-nucleate it when he was stable at a later date if that was in the cards for him. The plan was to support him over night, keep his eyeball well lubricated, and assess him the next day.

I believe the outcome of this case was euthanization. I am sad that we were unable to "fix" him and give him another shot at life, but I am very glad that he is now pain free and doesn't have to worry about everything he would have to overcome to get back to a "normal" life. I am so glad we have that option sometimes, because to watch a patient dismally suffer for a long time is heart wrenching. I know finances played a role in this case, but that is often the case in veterinary medicine. It is everyone's least favorite part.

So long story short, it really didn't bother me at all. I was surprised but pretty pleased! And if you're really brave, here is a link to a proptosed eye. 

A Failed Criminal

Today I learned that neither my roommates nor I are cut out for crime. We all fail miserably.

We were benignly hanging out in our rooms idly pushing papers around (or at least I was!) when all of the sudden, the power dies. Beep! Go the computers, the AC unit's quiet hum cuts out and the kitchen lights go out. Well dang. At least the internet still magically works!

My first thought is "oh no, what if we're without power for a long time and have no water?! or if we have water, what if it's not safe because there's an issue at the filtration center we don't know about!" So one of my roommates and I begin crazy stock piling water into every container we have as the stream begins to slow to a trickle.

Well, perhaps that was a little over board, because the power came back on in 10 minutes. Sighs of relief all around. Unfortunately for us, the return of power meant that some idiot med student could then cook and viciously burn something. Good job future doctor who we will crazily entrust our lives to, you have now set off the building fire alarm. And this is exactly why our smoke detectors are beeping low battery all. the. time!

So with the alarm blaring in the background, we begrudgingly turn to our new problem. You see, when the power cuts off, the AC unit resets to off. This used to be an easy fix - just open the closet door and turn it back on, but some genius university official decided that locks should be on these doors so that students cannot "tamper" with the units. Gee thanks. MUCH appreciated. By the way, I think we'll do the same to your cushy home and let you sweat it out for a few days, as the people with keys now have to go to EACH individual suite, unlock the closet, and reset the unit. Last time the power glitched, this took several days. And we still had access at that point, so that was a 60ish fewer rooms to visit. There are 7 superdorms on campus and at least a dozen other small residence halls, not to mention all the other buildings on campus that will need to have their AC reset because for some reason all the defaults are to off.

Now what? We were standing there rather annoyed at the new situation, and declared "well lock picking can't be that hard, right??" Wrong. Well over an hour was spent between the 3 of us trying out different techniques, reading articles, watching videos on youtube, and making homemade tools out of paperclips and bobby pins with a key-chain multi-tool and pocket knife. No luck. Or rather, no skill. We stink. We even tried the supposed credit card trick and failed. The locking pin is in the front and prevents the card from sliding in to open the door. So we are not master criminals. We should probably stick to our day jobs, as we were clearly not meant to be criminals!

Oh yeah, and 10 minutes into our antics, the power went out again. Alarm still blaring in the background, I couldn't help but add a little more water to the collection! This time it was out for an hour. The internet also finally died about 20 minutes in as well. I tell you, there is no worse feeling than that of being completely alone and isolated on this island. Being cut off from the rest of the world is a very scary feeling. I'm not entirely sure why, but it is. At least we still had working cell phones today.

It was a good reminder of how woefully unprepared we are for any sort of disaster or crisis. Our water comes from the university filtration center, otherwise it wouldn't technically be safe to drink (though I'm not exactly sure what the risk is). We rely on electricity and internet to study and make contact with the outside world. Friends, family, etc - we are almost completely reliant on the internet for this stuff. Cell phones run on batteries, and what happens if the service suddenly cuts out? It's how we connect with each other and an extra lifeline (albeit very expensive for the receiving end) to contact people throughout the world. Food? All of our perishable products are in the fridge, and that's most of our food. We don't have a gas stove, so without power we can't cook anything. At our apartment, that means meals made of raw pasta, cold tomato soup, cookies, chips, dry cereal, and crackers. So admittedly we'd survive for awhile, but no power also means no water. I have a couple of flashlights on hand, and we would have been heavily reliant on those tonight starting at about 5:30p when the sun goes down if the outage had continued. Now what if it's not just a fluke but caused by a severe weather storm? We could be living like this for days. Could we do it? Of course. But it would be a frightening and eye-opening experience.

Just a week ago, we came very close to being hit by a near tropical storm or actual tropical storm. By some miracle, it passed over us without a drop of rain. We were teasing ahead of time as we watched it come closer and closer to us that if it was going to be a total wash out weekend, then it needed to be a tropical storm so that we could at least claim something cool. Seeing pictures from other islands that were hit by Rafael, I almost cried. The damage was significant. Cars were flooded under feet of water, trees and foliage were broken, buildings were damaged, the place looked like it was hit with a hurricane. Except that these are third world countries with infrastructure that doesn't hold a candle to what we have in the US. It scared me to realize that what I was seeing on other islands would have been us if the storm had come here. Hurricane Ivan was a category 3 back in 2004 and destroyed nearly 95% of the island. I can just imagine the damage a tropical storm could do to this little island.

Oops, this was supposed to be a light hearted post! It's nearly 78 degrees in here, and while that's not really unusual in my room (as the AC unit doesn't do much besides circulate air), it makes a big difference to have circulating air versus stagnancy! I will be sure to keep you apprised of how it all plays out!

 Some of the water and a few of our "tools"

"No Tropical Cyclones At This Time"

I got up this morning nice and late (I love super sleep in mornings!) and decided that before I did anything else for the day, I was going to go run my errand to an office on campus to pick up some papers. Get the sweating and grossness out of the way first basically. Because it's pretty much a guarantee here that walking around outside will leave you feeling like you are melting and in desperate need of a shower.

On my walk over, I noticed that it almost felt "cool" out, there was a pleasant breeze, and that it felt quite nice out. I figured I just hadn't had enough time outside yet, but I came back with the same feelings! It was beautiful out, and looking out at the ocean, I really wished I had my camera with me so that I could share the beauty of the day.

As I was heading back into my dorm, I happened to glance off into the distant skies to note they looked rather dark. The source of the lovely weather no doubt (previously blocked by buildings on my route). Yup, within minutes it was sprinkling, and the weather simply deteriorated from there.

I had looked at the NOAA hurricane page this morning to see the statement "no tropical cyclones at this time" pasted across the Atlantic ocean. "Where did Rafael go?" I wondered. Either way, I smiled thinking this meant that it would no doubt be beautiful for a while without the threat of a tropical storm! WRONG!!! But not to worry, I just love being wet in class and in reviews.

When In Vet School...

So it's no secret that I have been hacking for a week and a half, thank you bronchitis. Certainly can't ply hide and seek! Over the weekend it seemed to get better, but now I'm not so sure. Having ample access to a stethoscope, I took a listen. The result is markedly different sounds between the left and right lung fields. The left field is markedly noisier than the right, but one of my roommates swears there are crackles on both sides, just worse on the right.

Yes, this is what we do in our spare time. If you're in the health or pre-health field, you've probably been curious to listen to wacky lung and heart sounds!

1st Day Back

Well I certainly didn't want to go to class today, but all in all it wasn't too bad. Lucky for me, I don't have to start Mondays off with morning labs. My day is Tuesdays.

Four classes this afternoon - parasitology, pathology, clinical pathology, and virology. Our parasitology professor is an all-around fun and lovely lady so I definitely like that class. The last 3 classes had new professors (all visiting) so that kept things interesting. The first is a very southern DVM/PhD for GI pathology. Love him! It is so refreshing to have someone with an American accent, nevermind a southern accent!! He's also very laid back and fun to listen to, so I have a feeling I will learn a lot in GI path! Next up is another American from UC Davis. He is also super awesome and easy to understand. He is also rather passionate about teaching clinical pathology. Combine that with a topic I'm really interested in (immune mediated cell destruction, transfusion medicine, etc.) and that class is also super interesting at the moment. Our last new professor is for virology, and while he's American without an accent, I definitely found myself yawning and daydreaming a bit during class. Let's face it - virology is not a thriller. There are a few interesting points here and there, but as a whole the subject doesn't have you on the edge of your seating dying to find out what else is out there. Or at least not for me haha. He's also not very good at getting to the point. I just want to beg him to spit out what he wants to say, it's driving me crazy!

Weekend Recap

What a weekend! We got so incredibly lucky that tropical storm Rafael magically skipped over us! It could have been a total wash out otherwise! Also, after seeing some pictures of the Virgin Islands post-storm, it makes me grateful that it wasn't us, because the flooding and damage would look exactly the same.

Picture recap:

Friday Snorkling

 Friday Dinner/Cake

 Saturday Hashing

 Sunday Snorkling