Cake in the Microwave

Fastest way to bake a cake? In the microwave of course! Yes, I did just suggest you bake your cake in the microwave, not a toaster oven, not a real oven. Have I lost my mind? Maybe, but it actually does work!

A friend sent me a recipe for making chocolate cake in a mug over the summer. I never did get around to trying it (or bookmarking the recipe-oops!), but the idea has sat in the back of my mind since then, just waiting for an opportune moment to pop out. That moment came last night, when vet school roomie and I found ourselves with an entire can of vanilla frosting (open) and no cake with which to eat it. Now, of course you can eat the frosting plain and it's quite delicious, but what better excuse to add cake to that frosting??

So I did a bit of Google searching and found myself a recipe for yellow cake in the microwave. We would have of course preferred chocolate (being the addicted chocolate lovers we are), but alas neither of us has thought to buy cocoa powder since making that spur of the moment chocolate cake several weeks ago. So we found ourselves scheming to make a cake in the microwave.

How does one do this exactly? Well, the recipe is pretty much the exact same as any cake, except instead of sticking it in the oven to bake, you put it in the microwave on half power for 10 minutes. Now this scared me a bit, because last time I stuck something in the microwave for 10 minutes (albeit full power), I nearly caused a fire. But sure enough, half power was nearly enough to cook the cake. After those 10 minutes, the recipe recommends microwaving for 30 seconds at a time on full power for up to 20 minutes. Ours only need an extra 1.5 minutes.

The top and sides didn't brown at all (because that's what the oven does) so it looked a little strange, but other than that, it really was a cake. We slapped some frosting and sprinkles on for color, and gave our creation a tasting (after it cooled of course). It was interesting. It has sponge cake consistency and seemed a little dry, but all in all, not bad for a cake made in the microwave! I'm pretty impressed that it even cooked, let alone tasted decent haha. For anyone curious, you can find the recipe here.

2 Busy Nights

I am finally done volunteering at the small animal clinic for a while. When I signed up for these shifts, I figured it would just be 6 or 7 easy hours of study time. Wrong! Very busy. So instead of getting anything done, I ran around like a crazy person for 20 hours this week. That's basically a part time job!

The only pair of scrubs I had left by the time yesterday rolled around was a black pair. :( I don't like wearing all black, makes me feel very gloomy. However, what did I do last night? I force fed 400mls of activated charcoal to a pair of dogs. Black, sticky, messy charcoal, to unwilling participants. I still have it around my nail beds, even after washing my hands a million times and showering! So black turned out to be the perfect choice for last night! The dogs were on proactive treatment for possibly being poisoned, because a kitty housemate turned up dead as did a neighbor dog across the street and another neighbor dog is missing.

Our botulism friend is slowly getting better. He has more muscle tone now, it's really incredible to feel! Although he still has a long road to recovery, this has been a really cool case to follow. I'll have to pop in sometime next week to see how he's doing.

Yesterday we had our second lab in the simulation teaching lab. We had one last semester too. The SIM lab is a mock hospital with many mannequins for teaching. Unfortunately they're all teaching with the exception of one stuffed dog with a lung speaker, but it's fun all the same. Basically we listen to heart and lung sounds (normal and abnormal) and discuss what we hear. It's a neat tool that we have access to.

I'm really hoping to catch up on sleep and studying this weekend, I desperately need lots of both! I ended up ducking out of class early today because I was too exhausted to learn anything. I figured it was probably just better for me to go home and take a nap than sit in class like a zombie and let facts bounce off me without comprehending or learning anything. I can't wait for midterms to be over with!!!

Busy Night at the SAC

Last night I covered an on call shift from 5p-12a with my vet school roommate. Because I pretty brought every study item I own, we were of course busy pretty much the entire night. We even had one emergency. 16 patients in the hospital was the main culprit for keeping us running around the whole time, which was fine. It certainly made the shift go pretty quickly! Our emergency was a dog with a seizure and brain tumor history who was brought in while the owner was out of town. It unfortunately seemed as though his tumor had progressed further because anti-seizure medications were only stopping the seizures temporarily. My heart goes out to the owner who had to make a tough and hasty decision last night after having been away for awhile.

The botulism case is slowly improving. He is not as flaccid as before (some muscle tone when you go to move him) and can sort of pick his head up for eating (which he loves!). The majority of our other patients were orthopedic patients recovering from surgery (which is usually a multi-week process here because of extremely low owner compliance rates) or boarding patients. Never the less, when you have 16 of them, the time gets eaten up pretty quickly!

Thankfully we didn't get any calls over night, but I only managed to get about 5.5 hours of sleep again. I am exhausted! And on top of being worn out, I am already very nervous and stressed about all of my upcoming midterm exams. I just feel like I am so behind and that there is just not nearly enough time to get everything I need to do done. I don't like this feeling at all. I'm on call again tomorrow night and am really hoping that it will be a bit calmer (doubtful) so that I can get more studying done.

The Owl

What do you do at the end of the day to unwind? Veterinary students on a Caribbean island get to take advantage of the lovely weather and go outside to hang out. Beach time, bar time, house parties-it is all done outdoors in the temperate weather. And of course, there is usually alcohol involved (except that I don't drink, but whatever).

One of the local bar/restaurants is called The Owl, and on Monday nights they have hermit crab races. Yes, you read that correctly, hermit crabs! They have a whole bunch of hermit crabs that are put in the center of a sandy circle, bet on to be fastest, slowest, or any of the other categories they run. The crabs are then released and people cheer and yell until the crabs cross out of the circle. You can also play pool upstairs near the bar, but that's not nearly as popular when there are crabs to be watched! My roommate and I went and joined many of our classmates there for drinks and some fun in the sand. Despite the huge crowd that turned out, it was still very relaxing as we sat just near the water and could see for miles all the lights in the Grenadian homes. I treated myself to a delicious fruit smoothie :).

Botulism, Anatomy, and More Sleep

I volunteered at our small animal clinic yesterday afternoon. Although we didn't see any emergencies, we certainly had a full house! Several of our patients were just hanging out after having limb fractures repaired (unfortunately we see a lot of hit by car animals here), but two had a very surprising differential diagnosis-botulism toxicity.

Both dogs turned out to be housemates who had initially presented for care after the owner noticed all her dogs were flat out and foaming at the mouth. Sadly, one died at home before the other two made it in for treatment. One of the dogs was doing so well yesterday that he was discharged to go home, the other is stable but still in fairly critical condition. So how does one suspect botulism toxicity in a dog? Well, mainly be reviewing the symptoms. The hallmark symptom for botulism is flaccid paralysis (aka "floppy" paralysis). This dog is completely flaccid, apart from being able to open its eyes and lick with its tongue (which are good signs!). As far as I know, treatment is basically just supportive care and time. Apparently in humans they have antitoxin, but I haven't heard of any for animals. Which makes sense, this isn't very common in people and has to be even rarer in animals (except for maybe horses eating from big round bales of hay, but that's another story!).

Our anatomy exam was tough! Fortunately everyone seemed to feel the same way and murmurings from the professor indicated that the class average was extremely low. The questions were very nit-picky and I felt a little bit mislead on what the areas of focus where. Oh well. Exam #7 is now complete. Next up? Midterms! Let the stress and major studying begin tomorrow!

Sleep? I got 5 hours of sleep last night because I stayed up extra to study. Turns out that was a waste of time! Oh well. I took a 4 hour nap today to compensate haha.

Study, Study

It's just one of those days. One where I pretty much don't leave my room or my desk. I did however manage to get 12 hours of sleep last night. I feel 1000x better today than I have recently. I know I've said it before, but vet school is exhausting. Despite sitting on my bum all day every day, vet school has this way of sucking every last ounce of energy out of you and then begging for more. Chronic sleep deprivation is pretty much expected. It was a little bit easier last semester when lab started an hour later most days because having to get up early is just killing me this semester! It's not so much that I hate getting up so early (I mean don't get me wrong, I definitely do), but more the fact that it is extremely hard to get to bed at a reasonable hour at the end of the night. There is always so much to be done, not enough time, the fact that I tend to lose track of time after about 10:30p, and my night owl tendencies.

Anyhow, twas a day of studying, procrastinating, and lazing around. Vet roomie and I treated ourselves to amazing smoothies this evening as a study break-they were delicious! I got chocolate fusion (chocolate and peanut butter), roommate got PawPaw and peanut. I have no idea what a PawPaw is. Not even after tasting her smoothie. I assumed it was some sort of fruit, but it certainly didn't taste fruity so who knows. Good for her for being brave and trying something new! My favorite is banana (just plain banana), but they were out of bananas (not surprising since it was later on a Saturday evening and they use all fresh/local fruit). In short, Grenada, in addition to having beautiful weather and beaches, is home to the best smoothies I've ever had. No matter where you get them, they are simply wonderful. If you ever come here for vacation or school, you must try lots of them!

It's a Small World

An encounter with an SGU student today left me realizing that perhaps some people do not understand the meaning of the phrase "it's a small world." This is an appropriate phrase to use when you find out that your friend's best friend knows one of your classmates, who is from the UK (while the friend's friend is from the US). It is not an appropriate phrase when you run into someone who lives down the hall from you at a restaurant that is frequented by students on an island with a population of 100,000. It's not even something bat an eye at. So there you have it folks, use that phrase appropriately please!

Physiology exam was fine, made some stupid mistakes (although at the end of the day as long as I actually know the material, I don't care as much). I also had my first radiology lab today (end of week 5...). Much to my dismay, this semester's focus is on large animal radiographs. This is partly because I'm just not a fan of large animals, and partly because I'd really rather learn this stuff AFTER I've learned the anatomy, not during or even before hand. Seems to me that it would make more sense to have radiology 1 this semester covering dogs and cats and radiology 2 next semester covering large animals, after all, this is how our anatomy sequences go. But what do I know. We'll see what happens with this class...