One Month

Well, it's officially been one month since Lucy passed today. Ironically enough, I'm sitting here studying for a large animal surgery exam, the same exam I took that morning. My already biased distaste for this class has grown into pure hatred so thankfully we only have 12 more classes left until our evil cumulative final exam. Then I can put "surgical procedures" of large animals behind me.

My house is still very lonely. It makes me sad to come home to no greeting at the door. I'm bad at waking up to my alarm if I don't have to get up for class in the morning. I miss getting a nose in my face looking for food the moment the alarm rang. No one tries to steal 2/3rds of the bed anymore. I haven't properly stretched out in my own bed since last December (it was always about accommodating Lucy to make sure she was comfy!).

My heart is still very heavy. The double edged sword of being a vet student is that all of my friends and classmates have pets, and they all love them as much as I loved Lucy. That means at least 20 times a day, someone posts a video or picture or status about what their silly pet is doing on facebook. It means that I get to continually feel like my nose is being rubbed in the fact that everyone else has their beautiful animals and I don't. Lucy and I didn't deserve this fate. She had an excellent home and a great life. She was young and reasonably healthy (except that she had started peeing on the bed occasionally...). We'd only had each other for 9 months. She got a walk every day and tons of attention. So why her? Why my dog? What if I had come home a little earlier? Why didn't I just take the extra stupid 30 seconds to put the food away?! All I had to do was cross the room! That's it! Such a simple act could have made things so drastically different for us. Rhetorical questions I will never have the answers to.

I am at least starting to not cry every day. Only three out of the seven days for last week. I guess that can be considered progress.

50 Dives!!

This weekend I had the pleasure of escaping from reality for a bit to carve pumpkins under water, do a night dive in the Molinere statue garden, and complete dives 49 and 50!

To celebrate Halloween and be super silly, Eco Dive arranged to get a couple of pumpkins from Grenville, and then we took them out to the marine park to carve for fun. Poor weather and busy schedules prevented us from getting them done before Halloween, but I think Saturday worked just fine too. After all, every day of the year looks the same here weather-wise, it's not like it feels different now that it's November. Grenada also doesn't celebrate Halloween, so there's no stark notification that the holiday has come and past. Anyhow, we (Christie) had the foresight to cut the top off the pumpkins before we left for the marine park. Not really sure how we would have gotten them to the bottom if we hadn't preemptively opened up the huge air bubble inside! Grenada pumpkins don't quite match American pumpkins - they are funny shapes, colors, and really really thick! One of the pumpkins must have been at least 5 inches thick!

We sank the pumpkins in about 20 ft of water and got to work. It ended up taking an hour to get them to look how we wanted. Eventually the fish figured out something was up and came over to investigate the pickings. A school of sergeant majors was particularly interested in snacking on floating pumpkin bits! They were pretty entertaining to watch! The award for most entertaining actually goes to a crab in a hole. I (of course) had my camera and was slowly looking around when I saw movement in a hole in the sand. Not wanting to scare him so that I could get a picture, I crept over and while I watched, he voluntarily crawled out quite far claws ready! I happened to have a wedge of pumpkin in my hand and curiosity got the better of me. I poked the piece of pumpkin at one of his outstretched claws and he immediately clamped on and sped off down his hole. Problem? The wedge was too big to fit! I gently grasped the pumpkin piece and gave it a tug, but he was intent on keeping it! He did eventually let go of the pumpkin chunk, but when offered another smaller piece, repeated the same exercise!! He'd come out, grab a piece, race back down, repeat! It was hysterically funny! Christie swears he's got two cups of pumpkin stashed somewhere in his lair and I believe it! He just kept taking pieces! Silly crab! We are currently trying to figure out what kind of crab he is.

When we finished our pumpkins, we left them with glowsticks inside at the base of the new circle of children to be discovered on our night dive. Awesome! A blowfish and a bat awaited the Halloween night dive group!

Next up was of course the Halloween night dive! One of my friends has a Halloween birthday and really wanted to dive the statues at night as a "scary" theme type of deal. The dive was originally set for last Monday night, but Grenada weather has been super crummy and miserable lately so it had to be postponed. It meant we got to have pumpkins in the garden though and the weather was lovely so it all worked out for the best. It turned out to be a gorgeous dive with tons of life and critters! Many octopi, eels, slugs, a squid, sleeping fish, awake fish, a zillion starfish (I love watching brittle star legs shrivel and shrink back into the cracks and crevices as you shine a torch on them), and much more! I was pretty pleased to see the squid and took a ton of pictures in hopes one or two would come out well (still searching for the perfect shot but these weren't half bad). It was a great dive and we enjoyed every minute!

This morning I went back to the marine park for two more dives to hit my 50 mark! I can't believe I've done that many already! It hasn't even been a full 8 months yet! Both dives were lovely although the water was a little chilly! Yes, wimp here, I think 83F in a full 3mm wetsuit is cold. Feel free to poke fun. We were greeted by two sea turtles (separately) on our second dive and the largest barracuda I have ever seen (he must have been 4ft or longer!). Lots of little critters seen and a bunch of lionfish culled!

My original goal was 50 dives by May, so now I have to make new goals. Where to go from here, hmmm!

From Paw Prints to Ashes

Today was almost a completely good day. I woke up feeling better than I have in over a week and generally felt pretty up beat about the day itself.

On Thursday morning, my friend and I went to investigate the process of pet cremation here. It's a pretty uncommon request (cultural thing) and rather expensive. Another student passed along the name of a funeral home that did pet cremations so we drove through town to go and talk to them. It turned out to be pretty cut and dry - yes they did them, they were free to do it whenever we brought the dog, it would be done the next day, etc. After that brief speech, the guy offered to show us the facilities. I was inclined to say no, but my friend was interested so I went along with it. Just what I really wanted, to see the oven you are going to burn my beloved pet to a crisp in.

I wasn't really expecting to have Lucy cremated that day, but they told us they'd be free the whole day and we should just bring her by whenever. Yes, that's right, we brought her frozen body to the crematorium. It's about a 20 minute drive each way so we went over to the clinic, picked up her body, and brought her back. As it turns out, seeing the cremation facilities was inevitable because they had us drop her off right in front creamator to load in. They even offered to let me press the button to start the process. I politely declined - not really interested in starting the process of turning my once beloved baby into ashes, but thanks anyway.

Yesterday morning we went back to pay and pick up her ashes. The whole process cost $800 EC (a bit pricy). It's hard to believe that all that is left of my gorgeous dog is a small storage container about 4"x2"x2" filled with ash. It's almost unreal.

I almost feel a little bit in denial these days about her passing. I find myself about to say something about her and then catch myself and remember she's not here anymore. I find myself staring at the corner of my bed and feeling a bit surprised she's not sleeping there. I miss her dearly. My beautiful Lucy. I'm just waiting to wake up from this horrible nightmare and yet each day passes and that doesn't happen. I just want to cuddle her close to me. Take her for a walk. Play with her at the beach. Throw a squeaky ball. Something. And yet, there's just nothing but emptiness here.

My friends and classmates here can imagine just how impossibly painful this all is. All I see now though are pictures and statuses about everyone's pets. They're such a big part of our lives. If you're having trouble understanding my heavy grief over a dog, I can just say that for a vet student, the loss of a pet is like the loss of a child. Suddenly you become acutely aware that all your friends are living happy lives with their pets and you're not. Today alone I was treated to 23 posts and pictures of everyone's pets. It's like that every day, I just never noticed it before. I miss her so terribly much and I know that it's really hard to understand for a lot of people.

These are a some beautiful gifts I have received from friends in honor of Lucy.

 

A Few Days Later

A few days have passed so far and I'm finally starting to really run out of tears. I'm sort of grateful for this because tears and gunk to really help to improve anything. I'm just left with a constant dull ache that is sometimes sharper than others as I cope with the loss.

I couldn't part with the last of my Lucy hairs on Friday for housekeeping but it really appears that most of the hair on the floor is mine. I am suspicious - there is no way I shed more than my dog, right? Where are all those hairs hiding! Answer - the bed, under the bed, under the desk, etc, but it's still kind of funny. I've done a little bit of rearranging and putting things away. It's not so much that her toys and things are a tangible reminder I can't handle (because the voids they leave behind in space are equally as loud and painful), I just...I don't know. They're hers and she's not here for them anymore.

The single hardest thing for me to face right now is coming home. Having to come back to an empty apartment is like having a 100lb rock dropped on me, and it starts long before I actually get home. The dread, agony, and despair of coming home to something so empty and soul-less is wrenching. It's followed pretty closely by several other things like waking up in the morning, the 5 o'clock dinner routine, going to bed, being pawed at while studying, doing laundry, potty breaks, heck even opening the bedroom door was a thing for Lucy (I suspect she really found my room boring and annoying to be stuck in because she'd go lay just outside it if I left it open while studying - a dog can only have but so many comfy spots in one room, right?). I guess it's all just really hard - but having to come home is the worst.

I spent the weekend diving. It was both a way to get out of the house, do something I normally enjoy, and get some self time while being in the proximity of friends. No one really knows what to do with someone so heart broken (myself included, fair enough). I logged 5 dives this weekend and did a lot of crying under water. It's an oddly comforting sensation. You're practically weightless as you drift along and you don't have to do anything other than breathe. Hard to explain. Either way, Friday afternoon dive - 90% tears, Saturday morning dive - 90% tears, Saturday late morning dive - 70% tears, Saturday afternoon dive - 40% tears, this morning - no tears. It's a bit of a relief, even though it doesn't mean any of the sadness and pain is lessened. Plenty of cake between yesterday evening and today as well. My friends are too sweet. :)

Rest in Peace Lucy

Today I lost my very dear friend Lucy. Greed got the better of her and laziness got the better of me. As you may know, it's our midterms week so things have been a little more than hectic with all the studying to be done.

This morning we had our third exam of the week, large animal surgery. That class scares me. A lot. My friend and her dog were over yesterday studying for this terrifying exam. We studied in the pool for a bit and then in my kitchen. We had some snacks, read our notes, let our dogs lounge around together.

This morning while I was at my exam, Lucy helped herself to the remainder of those snacks. Although I pushed them to the center of the table before I left, it wasn't enough to discourage her from being a thief. First it appears she stole a handful of vanilla oreos. At some point she found herself a granola bar to indulge with, and then I can only assume that finally she went for the 2/3rds empty bag of cheetos on the table. By the time I found her, she was passed out and long gone with her head stuck in the bag.

I am beyond devastated and distraught. I rushed her to the clinic in case a miracle could be performed, but I knew in my heart that she was gone. They did everything they could, but her snacking and thieving had gotten the best of her.

Why didn't I take the extra two seconds to put the food away this morning instead? Why did I even buy those silly chips full of calories? I could ask questions for hours, but it simply doesn't change anything. Perhaps I could have been more vigilant, or perhaps she could have been better trained, but it was just simply her day.

I can't understand the loss, she's just six years old. We deserved many more years together. More time at the beach, more time to cuddle, more time for walks. Who is going to get me out of bed in the morning? Force me to go outside each day for a walk in the sunshine? Listen to all my ranting and raving about life? Be my gym buddy? Snuggle in bed with me each night? Keep me safe? Be my canine companion? My heart is simply broken and I am at a loss for words. I know I gave her a fabulous home, but it doesn't stop me from wanting her to have that home for many more years to come.

Lucy I love you and will miss you dearly. My heart won't be the same without you and my home will be very lonely. I hope you at least enjoyed those tasty snacks and I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you in your time of great need. You were a great dog every day we were together.

Diving the Bianca C

Miterms time is here. Ugh! So much studying to be done. This week ended up being surprisingly kind and light though. A professor unexpectedly had to take a leave of absence this week so his four lectures (that were supposed to be on the midterm but aren't not) were replaced by 4 lectures from other classes that aren't on midterms. Yay! Most of the replacement classes were in small animal surgery so it wasn't too painful.

We had our first midterm today in theriogenology - my favorite. It was a mess, a real disaster really. This man is ridiculous, I can't believe he is really allowed to teach here! His thoughts are barely coherent, he is rambling at best! Grr. When asked for guidelines for the midterm, he told us (and then backed it up with the barest study guide outline ever) one set of things, and then gave something completely different today. We asked if it was cumulative, he said no, his exam said yes. We asked for the question breakdown, he told us mostly VPs, he gave us mostly his questions. It was a great time and there was a log of grumping amongst my classmates for sure. Honestly at this point I just don't care. It's not like I wish I had studied differently, I did exactly what he told us to do and I knew that material very well (and got those questions correct!). Can't fault myself for not being a mind reader! My grade once again came out higher than I expected, so I really can't complain that much.

Next up is small animal medicine on Monday. I'm most looking forward to this exam because medicine is my forte. I "speak" the medicine language haha. After that is small animal surgery on Tuesday, followed by large animal surgery on Thursday and Diagnostic Imaging on Friday. The last two are going to be terrifying! I am very scared for both - I definitely need to do well on these two exams and they aren't really subjects I'm all that good with (DI might be better if it wasn't mostly statement based true/false questions, I could handle looking at 100 radiograph questions!). Should be an interesting and stressful week for sure.

After my exam this morning, I decided I needed a dive to clear my mind for the weekend. I ended up with a little more than I bargained for! We ended up going out to the Bianca C, the deepest ship wreck in Grenada! The boat lies in 165 ft of water, but the top of the boat (where divers explore) is in 100-130 ft of water. That's just at the edge of recreational dive limits. It's a several minute descent down in dark blue water to this ship. I don't know if it's really the case, but any time I'm really deep, I really hear myself breathing in and out. The bubbles breathed out just sound different - louder, more tinkly, bubbly. It's hard to describe. Sucking air in sounds louder too.  It might just be that I know I need to pay extra special attention to my air consumption since the increased density of the air at that depth means it goes a lot faster.

Either way, it was a beautiful dive. The wreck is gorgeous and I really enjoyed spending time peeking at all of the bits and pieces. Plenty of lurking fish and I'm sure if I'd looked a little closer, I would have seen lots of invertebrates. The visibility wasn't good enough for me to kind of crawl along and look closely, and the ship is really too long for that with the very limited amount of bottom time you have anyway. Multiple visits will need to be made to take away the most from this beautiful treasure.

One thing that really struck me on the boat was just how colorless a lot of it really was. You lose read and orange light waves at those depths, and yellow is certainly not far behind (I'm pretty sure I remember seeing some yellow sponges though). The wreck was dark and shadowy with an ominous feeling to it, despite the fact that only two people died in association with it's sinking (and one was a week after the fact). A lot of the infrastructure has collapsed over time and the wreck lays partially on its left side. It is a massive structure underwater and took us nearly 20 minutes to swim it end to end.

After we left the wreck, we slowly made our ascent in a sloping fashion off the ship towards a reef. We swam for several minutes until we hit the reef and then just gently climbed upwards with the reef from there. My computer mandated a 2 minute decompression stop at 58 feet which was easily achieved while we were coasting over the reef and then a 3 minute decompression stop at 10 feet (which gets made between 20 and 10 ft) before a 3 minute 10 foot safety stop. It was cranky! Over all it was not very fond of me going so deep - it definitely had my best interests in safety in mind as it calculated the residual nitrogen buildup in my blood stream! Amazingly enough, my dive instructor's computer was the most liberal of all and didn't care if we did more than a 3 minute safety stop (she did two dives this morning which is what makes it surprising!). Another guy's computer mandated even more deco time at 10 feet! It's really neat to see these things in action. They can be integrated into you hose/tank system and attached to your gauges or on your wrist like a watch. I wear mine on my wrist and I really appreciate knowing what my dive profile is each time and as we go (max depth, time, air mixture vs nitrox, no decompression allowances, safety stop time, decompression stop time, etc). Just adds extra safety to recreational diving for me!

A couple of notes:
-I didn't flood my mask today :(
-My computer got on my nerves a lot for being grouchy about depth and particularly when we had to hang at 20-10ft for 10 minutes!! I was annoyed with it by the end haha.
-These pictures are terrible - the visibility wasn't great and there was a lot of large brown particulates floating in the water. It was also pretty dark. And cold. Did I mention how quickly and easily I get cold in this beautiful tropical water?? It's ridiculous!!
-None of these pictures was taken from inside the ship. I have no desire to do that. Ever. The window one was taken looking through an open section of the hull. I don't have a death wish, particularly not a claustrophobic-trapped-in-a-box-of-sharp-metal death wish!

Green Squash (Zucchini)

Does tomorrow really have to be Monday?? I have had a string of really great weekends this term (despite how annoying and less than fun many of the weeks have been). Lots of diving coupled with some solid studying and this weekend was no exception!

Yesterday afternoon I visited Flamingo Bay for a nice dive. I've marked down as having been there before but it didn't look familiar to me. What a beautiful reef! The corals there are exquisite and it is full of life. So many Christmas tree worms and shrimp! The thermoclines in the area were pretty impressive - we enter a couple of pretty chilly locations! Okay, I say chilly but my computer was reading 85 degrees, so maybe I'm just that much of a wimp. I'm not convinced though, because it was ready 86 degrees most of the time and it certainly didn't feel like it just got one degree colder. It said the same stuff today; I am skeptical! We snorkeled at the sculpture park for a little while afterwards and I did a little bit of free diving to get some pictures of the statues.

This morning I went back up to the Marine Protected Area to dive Flamingo Bay and then the sculpture park/Buccaneer wreck/grand mal wall. This is such a beautiful part of Grenada, I am so glad we have protections in place to help keep it that way. During my dives I found a kite, some fishing line and a hook, a large rusty nail, a KFC cup, and a beaded necklace. Not exactly the kind of things you want to see on such beautiful reefs! Makes me think of turtles accidentally ingesting stuff and dying (but they certainly aren't the only ones that accidentally eat rubbish lying around under water). Luckily my BCD has nice big pockets so I collected the stuff for later land disposal. Yay for doing good deeds :) Kind of hard to turn it down though when you're diving with a company with the word "eco" in the name!

Both dives were gorgeous overall and my air consumption was better than the dive master with us : D. I enjoyed rubbing it in his face a little! That's what he gets for forgetting my name! I dropped 2lbs off my weight belt this weekend. I had kind of forgotten that I was going to need to re-evaluate the amount of weight I carry after a couple of weeks of school (combination of getting used to diving again and losing weight because I never eat here - I am so tired of eating the same things!!). Last week when I did a dive I paid attention to how much air I needed to add to my BCD on the bottom to achieve neutral buoyancy (it was a lot) and then how much I dumped throughout the dive (very little). Both a sure signs you are over weighted! Regardless, I feel much better diving with 2lbs fewer. It's amazing what a difference it can make! I don't feel as much drag and I definitely think it helped contribute to my excellent air consumption. It's a pretty great dive when you're down for 50 minutes and only breathe half a tank! Part of that's being female (smaller lungs), but a lot of it has to do with controlling breathing well and not over exerting yourself (in other words being lazy).

I've been diving so much lately that I'm actually starting to develop blisters and ulcers on my ankles from my fins! The first one hurt a lot when it started, but now I barely notice it. Is that a bad sign? I have this large ulcer on my ankle that I don't notice when it rubs?? Poor nerves haha. Guess we'll see if it heals some over midterms! It's amazing to me just how fragile skin becomes when it is soaking wet and supersaturated. This is largely what contributes to all the scrapes and cuts I come back with after being on the dive boat! That thing is dangerous! No not really, these are always really minor little wounds.

I think my next task to "conquer" will be my mask issues. I really love the ocean, and I long for the ability to just jump into water without worry. I haven't really jumped into any body of water since I was little, it's just too risky. Just thinking about flooding my mask makes me feel panicky. My heart rate elevates, my breathing becomes irregular, and this is all just me thinking about the task! I kind of doubt I'll ever like getting my face wet, but I'd at least like to be a little less afraid of it. After I first got certified, I spent my whole dives thinking about 2 things: breathing evenly and slowly, and making sure my face was protected at all times. I focus mainly on breathing these days, but you'd better believe that I'm conscientious about where my mask is when I roll into the water and when there are people around me. Can't have anyone accidentally kicking it off my face! It really scares me to wonder how I'd react to that. I had a small leak in the seal against my face yesterday and as I tinkered with the placement I had to remind myself over and over to breathe and that it was just water!! Not cool! The sneaky thing is, I've set a small list of required "steps" that must be in place in order for me to practice. Only at the end of a dive, only if Christie is present, only if the dive conditions are good enough. Not an extensive list, but it does have to be 100% and so far since I've been thinking about practicing this skill (4 dives), those three things haven't been met. Oh darn!

In addition to all of this diving, I did plenty of studying this weekend. I made some good progress on diagnostic imaging and large animal surgery, two of my "harder" courses. My first exam is this Friday - theriogenology. No one really knows what the heck is going to be on that exam. We know to studying the first visiting professor's notes and the current visiting professors notes, but what the heck did he cover in his 4 lectures?? Not a clue (and yes I was there in class for all of them). I think I'd have a better chance of understanding his material if it was written backwards in German.

I also made some delicious and long overdue zucchini bread this weekend too. Grenada being Grenada (and not very reliable in the grocery department), I decided to plan for three different types of bread and hoped that I'd be able to get all the ingredients for one. In order of my interest, I chose zucchini bread, banana bread, and pumpkin bread. Lucky for me, they actually had all the ingredients, but I was pretty set on zucchini bread so I stuck with my original plan. I really had no idea whether I could get zucchini in Grenada (I'm pretty excited they sell it here!). I recognized the zucchini before reading the label - they call it green squash (zucchini) here. As I was buying the ingredients, I decided hey why not make a double batch and share lots! As it turns out, I am not the only zucchini bread lover and my neighbors and friends enjoyed the benefits of my baking. I was a little bit surprised by how many people had heard of zucchini bread before and like it. I really had no idea it was so popular! In my sharing though, I did manage to find one person who had never heard of it before (turns out she likes it a lot haha). The only weird thing that happened with a couple of the loaves was that the very bottom was a little bit gelatinous and tasted like buttered eggs. I think some of the egg settled out while I was filling all the pans causing it to cook slightly funny! Lesson learned!