What Makes a Rainbow?

Remember when you were in grade school science class many years ago and they taught you how a rainbow is made?

Lucy and I went for a nice walk this evening after her dinner. Up until the last couple of days, she's had to do it as a tripod as she wasn't allowed to bear much weight on that limb. She was recently cleared for short walks and just bandages to protect the new tissue. Anyhow, it was a beautiful evening. Shining sun, lovely weather, gentle breeze, and a double rainbow. See where this is headed?

A rainbow is made when there is sun and rain. We had the sun part, and about 2/3rds into the walk, we found the rain part! That walk turned into a quick run back to the apartment! We both ended up pretty wet. If I thought we were going to get wet, I'd have tied her foot up and brought our rain coats! Oh well, at least she was up for a bandage change anyway!

Surgery Skillz

What does a second semester second year veterinary student do you ask? Well, we get to start taking the "fun" classes. You know, the ones we came to veterinary school to take. Pathology II; Avian, Fish and Exotic Animal Diseases, Anesthesiology, Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Clinical Neurology, Epidemiology, Veterinary Public Health and Surgical Skills. 

What do we do in surgical skills? We learn all about the princples of surgery! Asepsis, scrubbing/gowning/gloving, prepping and draping a patient, and the fun part - learning suture patterns! We all felt like we were real doctors back in 1st term when we learned how to do a physical exam on a patient. And then we spent the next two semesters taking classes that taught us how to really build on that exam and help us to localize the lesion. Now we feel giddy because we are learning surgeon's material! We learned how to look cool holding a stethoscope, now we're learning how to look cool holding surgical instruments and tying knots. Next term, we get to learn how to wield the ever-mighty scapel blade! Real doctors eventually!

We have a surgical skills practical exam tomorrow afternoon. It consists of several continuous patters and quite a few interrupted patterns, and this is only part one! We still have two more units to go after this! A complete surgical knot, the cruciate stitch, interrupted vertical and horizontal mattresses, the surgeon's knot, simple continuous, ford interlocking, continuous horizontal mattress, and intradermal (with two separate tie off techniques). Fancy, huh?

New Apartment!

It took me forever to get around to cleaning up my room and organizing things enough to take pictures of my new living space, but here they finally are!

Mangoes

I currently have 13 mangoes sitting on my kitchen table. That's a lot of mangoes!

There is a man who sells local fruit from a stand near the grocery store bus stop, and from time to time I pick stuff up from him. His prices are extremely reasonable and he is very generous. It's also really nice to support a local individual and eat fresh island fruit instead of the imported stuff from the grocery store. Grenada has such an amazing fruit basket!

Anyway, I don't buy fruit often because I am a naughty girl and I don't eat my five a day. I end up wasting so much and I hate it! Yesterday after going to the grocery store, the mango man walked by and offered us mangoes, and since I hadn't had any in a long time, I decided it was time for a bag and that I'd just share them around the building with my friends. I didn't quite realize that I'd be receiving 21 mangoes in my purchase! Really really nice of him, but I really won't end up eating more than 4 or 5! Most of them are very ripe and ready to eat immediately too, but a few are still green and waiting around. I was able to share 4 with a couple of 2nd term girls upstairs who had never had Grenadian mangoes before and pawned 3 off on our security guard. That left me with 14, and I just ate one as a midnight snack! 13 more mangoes to go, hopefully I can at least pawn another half off on my old roommate, or else I am going to have mangoes coming out my ears!

As a quick note on Grenadian mangoes, they are pretty much the best thing ever. They are much different from any mango I've ever had before, mainly because they are a sunset orange color inside and sugary sweet rather than tangy and sour. I'm not really a fan of other types of mangoes, but boy I do love a good Grenadian mango! It's like biting into a little slice of juicy heaven. Sticky and sweet, the texture is finely pulpy. You don't taste the stringiness of the fruit until after you've devoured your prize and you're left with little silky strands stuck between all your teeth. It makes me wish I could share the delicious experience with my dog because it is so pleasant to consume one! Too bad I have very strict no people food rules for Lucy, and mangoes would probably lead to diarrhea (so don't feed them to your pet even if you don't have a no people food rule haha).

The Adventures of a Naughty Dog Part 1

This shall be a series of posts to expose all of Lucy's dirty little deeds!

This first even took place quite awhile ago before we came back to school. They day before we came back to school actually.

As Lucy has some issues with anxiety and fear, it was decided that perhaps a course of anti-anxiety medication might be helpful for her long day of travel. Unfortunately, these drugs (benzodiazepines) don't tend to work the same way they do in humans, and can have unpredictable effects on animals. In humans, examples of these drugs include xanax and valium, and they are used to treat anxiety and panic, as well as other things as they are well known for producing "relaxation." In animals, they can cause the same effect, or they can make them more aggressive, more anxious, or have little to no effect. Fun right?

Anyhow, the medications had some odd side effects for Lucy. I don't think they really did much for her anxiety, and she actually showed some signs of separation anxiety during that time (yikes). She also seemed a little bit more on edge. All in all not a drug I'd use again on her, but just because I don't think it really helped her at all.

To get to the heart of this story, I have to preface it with another brief one. You know those weird shredded rawhide treats that you can buy at pet stores at Christmas time that are shaped like various Christmas-y items? My uncle had given Lucy 2 for Christmas. I hadn't gotten around to giving them to her (insert vet student nutritional analysis haha) and so they had been sitting on my dresser for a few weeks.

Back to the story. Thursday afternoon (the day before I left), I went out to run some final errands.  Lucy normally stays in my room while I'm gone (sometimes she's allowed out in the house, but she tends to retreat to my room anyway, so I generally just get her in there - not that it would keep her in if she decided to hop it) and usually I find her curled up on my pillows or sitting on the end of the bed waiting for me when I get home. Nothing different that afternoon when I arrived home, but a few things from my dresser had been knocked to the floor (including a package of chocolate!). I didn't really notice anything missing and was extremely relieved to find the chocolate untouched, and so I went about my ways. Lucy didn't even really act guilty (now she does) so I assumed nothing happened. After sitting on my bed for several minutes, I realized there were a bunch of red crumbs all of the floor, and a sweeping scan of the room found me two empty plastic wrappers. Little sneak stole and ate both goodies while I was gone!

Not really a big deal, but since it was less than 24 hours before we were going to be spending an entire day on airplanes and in airports, it was less than ideal to be dumping large quantities of foreign food into her GI tract. Thankfully the repercussions were extremely minimal. I really lucked out there! If it had been one of my parent's dogs, I'm sure massive amounts of diarrhea and maybe even some vomiting would have occurred!

Silly dog! Stay tuned for part 2!

Happy Snowstorm!

Just wanted to say hi to all you folks currently buried in snow. Winter stinks, huh? I keep seeing complaints and pictures of the latest winter wonderland, and I'd just like to say hahahahaha. :D

Also, enjoy these pictures I took while basking in the sun on the beach today!

Frozen Milk

In the US, you go to the grocery store whenever you please and as long as you've chosen a reputable place and are careful to look at the date, you can buy milk with a rather long expiration date of usually at least 2 weeks.

In Grenada, you have to go to the grocery store on certain days of the week to actually get milk while it's in stock, and you have to be extremely careful when you look at the dates to make sure you get the longest expiration date possible (one week). You also have to decide if it's worth nearly $7 for a gallon or nearly $4 for a quart.

At home, I drink a ton of milk. Perhaps because someone else is paying for it, perhaps because I drink less water, or perhaps because I just happen to think about it more (and we have milk every night with dinner). Who knows. In Grenada, I really don't drink much milk. I'm happy enough to drink glasses of water all day and I really hate how expensive and short lasting it is. I rarely go through a quart before it expires (luckily sometimes it's still useable for a few days past expiration). I put it in cereal for the most part, occasionally in recipes, and rarely just in a glass.

One of my roommates last term used to buy milk and then freeze it. My other roommate and I laughed at her, made odd faces at her, and generally thought that was the strangest and weirdest thing ever, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a good idea. I'm not interested in freezing a whole bunch, but I figured if I could freeze half of a quart and then split the whole thing between two weeks, no harm no foul and money saved! When I was home over winter break, I found a nice cheap container to store my frozen milk in and gave it a shot for the first time last week.

I pulled the second container out yesterday afternoon to defrost in the fridge as the other container was used up. Here's what I've learned so far: it takes an obscene amount of time to defrost milk! No really, it's been nearly 24 hours now and there is still a big chunk of frozen milk in there! In the future, I will have to remember to take it out in advanced or else I might be left milk-less one morning. Perhaps it's related to the fat content of the milk? I accidentally bought whole milk last week (they mismatched the cap color with the label so I didn't notice I had the wrong one until much later) instead of skim. We shall see!

Lucy's Plight

Sometimes it's tough being the dog. I know, it's hard to imagine there being any downside to being a dog whose owner is a veterinary student studying in the Caribbean. Beautiful beaches, lovely weather, soft plush bed, delicious food, and all the health care she could ever possibly need! Turns out that beach part can get us into trouble!

Last Saturday, we hiked with several friends to a place called Hog Island. I didn't quite realize just how far it was going to be from my house, but it turned out to be a good 3.5 mi or so hike just out to where the island is. 2 miles to one of our classmate's house and then the extra 1.5 miles or so off road through the forest. It was a long and tiring walk, but it was really nice out and it felt really good to be out and about with both human and doggie friends! When we finally arrived, we were rewarded with a small beach were we could dip and relax in while the dogs played chase and swam. Lucy is not much of a water dog (more of that in a later post), but she adores playing chase. She's a bit on the shy side too, so it tends to take her a little while before she becomes really comfortable and wants to play.

After we had been there for about 30 or 40 minutes, Lucy started a game of chase with a few of the bigger dogs with us. They were having a great time. Racing around trees, into and out of the water, through the sand, lots of fun for a dog. And then Lucy came back limping. Uh oh. One of the girls with us noticed it first and went over to investigate. Much to our dismay, the limping was caused by a large gash in her second toe pad (for those not in vet med, that would be the 1st toe pad on the foot closes to the other foot). Awesome. Remember, we're 1.5 miles away from the nearest house/civilization. This means we get to take turns carrying Lucy back! Yay. 31 pounds feels a lot heavier than it should.

She was seen on emergency services by our teaching hospital, bandaged up, given pain meds and antibiotics, and put on strict exercise restrictions. Lucky us. We've been changing the bandage daily and adhering to the medication schedule as best we can (I can be forgetful sometimes...). The exercise restriction is so that she avoids putting to much weight and movement on the open, healing tissue. It's kind of like if you've ever cut the skin over your knuckles and it takes forever to heal because you're constantly moving your fingers. Paw pads take a long time to heal just because of the type of tissue they are and where they're located. 

The exercise restriction is driving us nuts. She's a young and otherwise healthy dog. She wants to run and play, she wants to go for walks, and she doesn't understand why we're no longer doing any of that. I've been playing around with tying her foot up in a sling a little bit and that has helped us go for walks, but it's just not the same. My little tripod dog hops along and gets hot and tired very quickly.

We had our first recheck appointment yesterday which went well. They cleaned the wound really well and basically repeated all the previous orders: daily bandage changes, give the same meds, and keep her exercise limited. Our next appointment is in a week, hopefully we won't need too many more appointments after that because it will be healed!

It's a long and slow process for sure. She is very bored and desperately wants to play with her friends, but she will have plenty of time to make up for lost ground in hopefully a month or less from now!

Fish, Fish, Fish

I must say, fish become substantially less interesting and more of an overall drag when you have to know about them for a grade. Perhaps if it was more of an ID class than a veterinary class it would be more interesting? I'm already not a huge fan of pathology though, so I'm just really not that interested in learning about the pathology of fish. Good thing this part's over next Friday!

Our professor is a really neat guy who has traveled all over the world doing various fish/pathology related things. He has tons of cool stories and pictures for us as well. He also has an English accent, which makes him fun to listen to, even though I'm not all that interested in the pathology of fish haha.

The one upside to learning about these fish is that we have an associated lab, where we get to anesthetize, exam, collect blood, make a blood smear, and recover tilapia. That was this afternoon, and that was pretty darn cool! Collect blood from a fish you say?! Yes, you can actually collect blood from a fish and veterinarians actually do both antimortem and postmortem! There are 4 different sites that you can collect the blood from: midline behind the anal fin, just ventral to the lateral line, from a sinus in the mouth, and directly from the heart. It's definitely one of the more bizarre things I've done in vet school!

Anesthetizing the fish is pretty simple. You place them in a bucket of water (that is suitable for the fish) and add an anesthetic agent such as clove oil or MS222 and wait for them to "go to sleep" like a dog or cat. You need to be sure that you don't scrape off the mucous layer while you're handling them because you'll take off the epithelium with it and leave them open to infections. You also need to keep them moist (squirt them and their gills with water containing the anesthetic from time to time).

Recovery is pretty simple as well. You place them in another tank of water that is well aerated, and support them and watch them until they begin to wake up. As someone who is intimately familiar with small animal emergency medicine and anesthetic recovery, it was so frustrating and difficult to not be able to give the fish some sort of reversal agent, supplementary oxygen, and emergency drugs. We were advised to kind of "swim" the fish around a bit to stimulate them, but for the most part it was just a waiting game. You first begin to notice their opercula moving (the part that flaps over the gills) as they wake up. Next they'll start moving their pectoral and pelvic fins a bit, and eventually they begin to clumsily start to swim. Once they've fully metabolized out the anesthetic agent, they're back swimming around like normal, as if nothing ever happened!

A lot of people gave their fish names, but we didn't. Not sure if that was a conscious decision on our part, but I don't think it really changed how I saw the fish. Thank you Mr. Tilapia for the educational experience today. And to my future clients, I suppose now if you bring your goldfish to me, I can look at his red and white blood cells and also look for blood-borne parasites!