Archives for July, 2008
I may look cute, but I am a Kitten of Mass Destruction.
It’s very rare that my arms are pristine. Between my intermittent pastime of rock climbing and the overzealous-Labrador-Retriever-of-the-week, I almost always have a scratch or two somewhere.
The worst my arms have ever been, though, was the week we had the kittens.
Oh sure, everybody thinks kittens are sweet, cute, and cuddly, but in reality, they are downright vicious. After a week taking care of four kittens, my arms looked like I’d been lashed by a bull whip with pocket knives tied to the end. Them little cats is downright slippery!
Fortunately, due to that whole cute and cuddly looking thing that they have going on, they were all adopted rather quickly. My arms were relieved. (Okay, okay, I miss the little buggers.)
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Jul 28, 2008 | | Animal Tales
I’ve been having a blast (ha!) studying for the GRE, which is now less than a month away.
Since my previous GRE scores, stellar though they are, are now more than ten years old, I get to take the test again. Back when I graduated, the GRE was still on PAPER. The only reason I took it at all is that it was free: I was part of the Educational Testing Service’s experiment as to the feasibility of computer based testing. Lord knows I had no intention of ever setting foot in the halls of academia again. Funny how life throws you curveballs.
The bummer is that I’ve yet to match my original scores in any of my practice tests, and it’s driving me NUTS. Did I study for it the first time around? No… Have I just forgotten basic algebraic principles and multi-syllabic vocabulary words? Well…
The good news is that in all the questions I’ve missed, I’ve readily understood the explanations. So it’s not as though I’ve forgotten any concepts entirely, it’s just that they don’t always jump immediately to mind when staring at a question with that darn clock ticking down in the background. Hopefully a little brushing up will set me back on track.
I really hope all this hullabaloo will make me a better vet. If anything, I will continue to be sedulous in my studies, so that I might garner sapience. With my capacious vocabulary, I shall appear rather urbane to my coterie of fellow vet students. Grr. Eat Me.
Jul 20, 2008 | | Getting In, Non-Traditional Students
I spent last weekend climbing and camping near Aspen with my handsome other half, who was having a birthday. I snuck around to all the other campsites and left invitations to drop by for cake and ice cream. About 30 people showed up (boy was he surprised), and every one was interesting and fun to talk with.
The most interesting to me, though, was a woman who looked to be in her seventies or so. We got to talking about my going back to school and she told me she was the first woman ever trained as a surgeon in the state of Colorado. She’d had a forty year career as a general surgeon, and, as she put it, “had to break down a lot of barriers.” (I probably misquoted her slightly, but that was the gist.)
At any rate, meeting her reinforced my decision to go to school. So what if I don’t graduate vet school until I turn 40? At least, as a friend put it, I’ll be 40 and a vet, instead of just plain ol’ 40. And what I’ll have to overcome is nothing compared to being the first woman ever trained as a surgeon in Colorado. I should count my lucky stars.
Thanks, Amy, it was an inspiration to meet you.
Jul 19, 2008 | | Non-Traditional Students
The display on my friend’s laptop was behaving erratically last week, and, after trying every tweak and trick I have up my sleeve, I decided there was nothing for it but a new motherboard.
In one of my former career incarnations, I was a computer geek for the National Park Service. I enjoy fixing computers, I think because it’s like solving a puzzle. From what I’ve seen at the vet hospital, the process one uses to diagnose a sick dog isn’t all that different from the process one uses to diagnose a sick computer: evaluate the symptoms, determine the likely suspects, and rule out each of these systematically until you figure out what’s wrong. I’m definitely looking forward to that aspect of veterinary medicine.
One thing I’ve been fearing, however, is surgery. I’ve watched several surgeries and find it fascinating, but I also find it frightening to think I could open up a living creature and muck about in its insides. Read the rest of this entry »
Jul 19, 2008 | | How I Got Here, Miscellany
Cat has been a patient of ours for the last couple months.
He originally presented with 3/4 of his fur missing, and crusty scabs over his head, back, haunches, and tail. His previous vet had done a ringworm culture which came out positive, yet, curiously, had not treated for ringworm.
Despite the fact that the fungal culture we did came up negative, we started him on sulfur dips anyway, which are known to help in cases of ringworm and demodectic mange, either of which could have been the cause of his scabbiness. Allergies weren’t suspected, because his owner said he didn’t scratch himself much, if at all.
It was my job to give him the twice-weekly dips, and during the time we spent together, I came to be quite fond of the little guy. Cats aren’t exactly notorious for enjoying baths, especially baths in stinky sulfur, but he always behaved very sweetly despite our torturing him. And he always mewed politely whenever you walked by his kennel.
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Jul 03, 2008 | | Animal Tales
I volunteer once a week at a wildlife sanctuary, Greenwood Wildlife. It’s baby bird season, which means that a whole lotta baby birds need care and feeding from sunup to sundown. My job consists of feeding baby birds with a syringe.
The trouble with birds is that there is an opening into the trachea (the glottis), at the base of the tongue. If the bird happens to have its glottis open when something lands in that spot in its mouth, that something goes straight into their lungs. So, obviously, one doesn’t want to squirt a syringe full of food right onto their glottis, or they will aspirate it and keel over. One has to shove the syringe further back into the throat so as to avoid the glottis.
Finches, being the little bitty birds that they are, are even littler and bittier when they are babies. And a syringe tip is just about as big as their mouth is. This makes it a little tough to get the syringe past the glottis, so you just try the best you can. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work.
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Jul 03, 2008 | | Animal Tales, Wildlife
