I started feeling icky a few days ago, but didn’t start feeling really yucky until yesterday afternoon. And then I felt a smidge better yesterday evening, and I thought, “Tomorrow’s only four hours of class–I can go, and then sleep, right?”

But then the little birdie’s voice said, “If you’re sick, stay home.”

Why is it that I have such a problem staying home when I’m sick? Thirty years ago, I would have given up my lunch money to stay home from school. I get really annoyed when other people come to school sick, so why do I have a problem staying home?

I mean, here my body is screaming, “Hellooooooo, idiot! I feel crappy! Stay home now or you’ll be sorry later!” But my head is thinking, “Well, I don’t feel *that* sick. I probably shouldn’t stay home. But if I do stay home, I should at least study all day.”

And then I feel guilty if I don’t study all day. (Meanwhile, the body is smacking hand to forehead.)

Why can’t I just be sick and sleep all day and watch movies and drink orange juice and eat chicken soup and not feel guilty about the whole thing? I’ve decided it must be a Type A overachiever thing, so, to help all you other Type A overachievers out there, I have assembled this handy guide:

The Type A Overachiever’s Guide to Determining Whether You are Sick Enough to Stay Home from Work/School

1) Do you feel crappy?

(If you answered ‘yes,’ proceed to question 2.)

2) Are you contagious?

(If you answered ‘yes,’ stay home. All other answers, including ‘I don’t know,’ proceed to question 3.)

3) Which of the following symptoms do you have? Check all that apply:

__ After you take a nap, you are alert, awake, and ready… for a nap.

__ Sore throat

__ Foggy thinking, e.g.: You are walking to the kitchen and hear beeping. You think to yourself, “Wait, we don’t have a microwave.” Never mind that you do have a kitchen timer, one that you have used thousands of times and know well.

__ Stuffy head

__Things you would ordinarily do to goof off feel like too much work, e.g.: “Sudoku? That’s so… hard…”

__ Achiness

__ You waste time doing things you would never do when well, e.g.: You don’t ever watch TV, but you watched an entire episode of ‘Glee’ online before 8 a.m. and then took a 3-hour nap. Prior to that, you weren’t even sure what ‘Glee’ was.

__ Upset stomach

__ Simple tasks take 3-4 times longer than normal, and may require great mental effort, e.g.: You have to dictate aloud to yourself the steps involved in preparing dinner for your cats. “Okay, bowls out of cupboard. No, two bowls, dummy, you have two cats. Now open the fridge…”

__ Craving for Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup

__ Your thermostat is off, e.g.: it is well above 70 degrees in your house, yet you are wearing a poofy fleece sweater, sitting in a sunbeam, and shivering.

__ Facebook status updates read like Moby Dick

(If you checked one or more of the above, stay home. If you checked one or more of the above and still think you should go to school/work, you are a Type A overachiever. Or a moron. Or both.)

I think, though, that it’ll also be the coolest class…

The professors are fantastic. It’s pretty clear that all of them are really excited about helping students, and that goes a long way to making things interesting. One of the experimental things they are trying on our class this year is teaching us how to use surgical instruments now, so that when we get to our third year, we haven’t developed a bunch of poor scalpel-wielding habits and we aren’t having to think about every. little. detail. when it comes to surgery.

To that end, one of the surgeons from the teaching hospital gave us a lecture about instrument handling, and included a portion on tying suture knots. WAY COOL! He also created a whole series of helpful little videos, so we can stop and rewind, play them in slow motion, and really get a feel for things.

To practice our technique, we have “surgery boxes”–plywood boxes with an array of little items like hooks, nuts, bolts, marbles, BBs, springs, rubber tubing, suture, etc. Using our surgical instruments, we manipulate the items in the boxes while mimicking actual movements that we would perform in surgery. So freaking cool. And all brought about because these professors are continually trying to find better ways to teach things. I love that.

The other awesome part of anatomy is the dog dissection. Our class is divided into groups of four students, and each group is assigned one dog to dissect throughout the course of the semester. It’s amazing what a difference having your hands on and in something makes. It really brings the pictures in the book to life. Well… death, anyway.

(By the way, for those of you who are concerned, our dogs come from the local humane society, where unadoptable dogs are euthanized. That makes me sad, of course, but it also makes me happy that at least our dog’s death will be helpful to hundreds of other animals in the future. The school is very, very good about treating all of our animals with respect, and they are continually examining the ethics of our animal use programs.)

Our group’s dog is a big, intact male pit bull. And, I have to say it, he’s a badass! He’s really gorgeous and muscular. We named him… well, let’s just say we were inspired by a certain uninspiring football player…

Fortunately, I like the other people in my group a lot. Vet school students tend to be Type A overachievers, and there are a few other groups that are having some personality clashes as a result. Our group gets along great. Phew!

The other good news is that after my stint in necropsy, the smell in the anatomy lab is completely manageable. Actually, I don’t even notice a smell!

We’ve started with the pelvic limb, because it’s supposedly the easiest. I shudder to think what the rest of the semester holds, if this is easy… (Well, actually it is “easy.” There’s just a LOT LOT LOT of it.)

To help generations of us poor freshmen out with the pelvic limb, our very own veterinary band, Bog Spavin (named for the swelling of a horse’s hock), wrote this lovely little ditty, which our professors played for us on the first day of lab. ‘Cause anatomy’s everywhere, man.

Our first day started out with Dr. Fails’ anatomy class, and let me tell you, I don’t think there is a better person to have welcomed us to our very first class in veterinary school than Dr. Fails. She was enthusiastic, empathetic, funny, well-spoken… just, wow. She really made me excited for the coming four years, and indeed my entire new career.

Here are the classes I am taking:

1) Anatomy, a million or so hours per week
2) Histology & Physiology, a half a million or so hours per week
3) Immunology
4) Radiology
5) Perspectives in Vet Med (an overview of the profession)

That’s only five classes, right? How bad can it be?

Monday was totally doable. Tuesday was beginning to seem like a lot of information. By today, our brains had turned to mush.

Not that any of the information we’ve had thus far has been difficult, mind you. It’s not like o. chem, where you really have to struggle to understand a concept. This information is fairly straightforward, but the sheer volume of information is overwhelming. I have already used up an entire set of note cards! That would have taken several weeks in undergrad classes.

The other piece that makes this overwhelming is the class schedule. It’s just bizarre. It seems like any given class meets at a different time each day, and none of us really knows where in the heck we’re supposed to be. I just try to follow the herd and moo a lot so it seems like I belong…

But here’s the amazing thing. Even though we are turning into zombies, we are so excited to be here! I had such fun today studying pelvic bone anatomy with some of my classmates. We are all so interested in and motivated to learn the material, and all of us had something interesting to contribute to our discussion, because we come from such diverse backgrounds.

Now…

The writer in me wants to tweak this post so that the prose flows better, and so that it really expresses the whirlwind of feelings that I’m experiencing–joy, excitement, nervousness, confusion, exhaustion, belonging, fascination–but the vet student in me is saying, “Eh, I need to sleep. They’ll get the idea.”

Welcome to Zombieland. It’s gonna be a good four years.

Last week was 5 1/2 days of orientation. But before I tell you about that, I should mention that the week before was spent painting for three days, moving furniture, running errands, buying groceries, setting up my new room, etc. And then it was time for orientation:

Day 1: Listen to a bunch of introductions and overviews, plus a two-hour seminar on personal finance that was utterly useless to non-trad students. Well, any non-trad student with their act together, that is. It covered things like building credit, automatic investing, loan repayment strategies, etc. I was bored. So was the 40-some woman sitting next to me. But it probably would have been moderately useful to a non-non-trad. (That’s just more fun than saying “traditional.”)

We also got to see where our desk for the next year would be. All the first year students have a desk in an area known as “the cubes,” which consists of several large rooms with lab-bench style desks. Each person’s desk had a sign that said, “Welcome Dr. *insert your name here*!” a Purina dog food bowl full of candy, and various other goodies, such as the ubiquitous Hill’s backpack. With the planner inside that has the Hill’s logo emblazoned on every page. The one that matches the logo on our new lab coat (see Day 5B). One of my classmates remarked that we probably all have a Hill’s chip implanted in us, too.

Sorry, there I go again, getting all sarcastic. Hill’s REALLY donates a lot to vet students, so I suppose they have the right to plaster their logo on things…

The welcome to the cubes was very nice, and I really liked where my desk was, although I was a little alarmed by the breath of the person sitting next to me. Hopefully it was a fluke. I probably won’t spend much time in there anyway, since I like to study by myself.

Days 2-4: Head to Pingree Park, CSU’s mountain campus. Sleep in bunkbeds and eat cafeteria food. Bond with classmates. Some bonds were formed while having fun, some bonds were formed from suffering through together. Overall, this was a lot more fun than I’d anticipated, except for the whole bunk bed/shared bathroom part. I might have even sung along during karaoke.

Kevin Fitzgerald, the guy from Animal Planet/Alameda East, did a stand-up comedy routine. He’s my new idol. Entertainment biz, regular practice, and wildlife work?! Sign me UP!!

We also took the True Colors personality test. I learned that I am a nerd.

I met a few folks with whom I’ll probably be friends for life, which, you have to admit, is pretty cool.

Note: This event was sponsored by Hill’s, and their logo was NOT emblazoned on everything there. So, Hill’s, I apologize.

Day 5A: More talking heads. I think they went over financial aid and class rank. I think I heard two things that were new to me.

(This is the problem with being Type A. I have already researched all the topics they covered during orientation, so almost everything I heard was something I’d heard before. Nerd!)

Day 5B: Coating ceremony. A lovely shindig wherein we were each given a lab coat and name tag and officially welcomed into the veterinary profession. Plus there was cake. Mmm. Cake.

Day 6: Get photo ID badge and books, set up desk in the cubes. Forget that I am wearing said ID badge and proceed to shop at four different stores before realizing my idiocy.

Today I’m trying to get organized, plus I need to finish my homework, yes HOMEWORK! School hasn’t even started, and already we have homework. Too bad napping isn’t one of our assignments. But at least I am oriented.

Last night’s dream featured a multiple choice test, along with people interrupting me every ten seconds to make comments under their breath or to ask a question. Consequently, I couldn’t ever fully read through a question, and had to keep starting each question over. I had about twenty questions left in the last five minutes…grr!

Unfortunately, this scenario isn’t too far from reality. I discovered something very interesting about myself at the beginning of last school year, when I was taking my first Mammalian Physiology exam. There were so many people in the room, and my grasp on the material was fairly tenuous, and I was really nervous… Every. Little. Thing. Distracted me. A person moving their leg, a pencil hitting the table, the clock–any of these would fully remove my attention from the test, and then I would have to start reading through the question all over again.

Here’s a sampling of my thought process:

“Sodium channel blockers inclu… oh god, look at the time. Sodium channel blockers include which… would you shut up? Stop tapping your pencil. Sodium channel… oh, crap, I only have a half hour left. Sodium channel blockers include which… PLEASE stop shaking your leg!”

I remember one question where I knew that both answers B & C were correct, but I couldn’t figure out which one the professor would think was “more” correct. I must have read through that question, literally, 50 times. After I got the test back, I saw, for the first time, that answer E said “Both B & C.”

I went to talk to the professor afterward about my miserable experience, and he was awesome. I mean, really, the guy could not have been more helpful and I will be forever indebted to him for listening to me and nudging me in the right direction.

It turns out that I probably have ADD. I never in a million years would have guessed that about myself, because we (or I, at least) associate ADD with the kids who are “bad” in elementary school–they never sit still, they always get into trouble for talking, that kind of thing. I was just the opposite as a kid. It also turns out that I am also not the first person to discover this about themselves as an adult. And I have to tell you, it explains a lot.

I think about my first miserable college experience, my bazillions of little unfinished projects, my foot shaking habit, my ability to hyperfocus when I’m really interested in something–the pieces start to add up. I decided it wasn’t worth the $400 to get someone to officially label me as having ADD, and instead I am just aware that it’s an issue for me. And when I catch myself doing certain things, I just make a note of it and redirect my attention.

Am I worried that it’s going to get in my way in vet school? Not really. I’ve gotten this far just fine. That is, I’m not consciously worried. Apparently, my subconscious keeps wanting to bring it up when I’m asleep. Pipe down, subconscious, I’m trying to sleep!

The assignment is this: “Please bring an object, small enough to be held in your hand, which represents or symbolizes for you the meaning of veterinary medicine in your life.”

First, some background. CSU’s vet school orientation lasts one week, and three days/two nights of that week are spent at Pingree Park, the school’s mountain campus. So, sorta like summer camp. Pingree is supposed to be a bonding experience for the incoming class, and everyone I’ve talked to either loved it… or hated it.

Now, I have to admit that there is a part of me that is cynical, thinking that I am a little too old to play get-to-know-you games. Actually, age is irrelevant. I didn’t enjoy team-building games when I worked for the feds 15 years ago, either.

Part of me thinks it’ll be fun. There’s hiking, that guy from Animal Planet, karaoke… Might as well let myself enjoy a few days in the mountains.

We’re supposed to bring our object with us to Pingree Park, but I’m having the darndest time coming up with a suitable object. I don’t generally have trouble with this kind of touchy-feeliness, but I am having trouble reconciling this sort of “fluffy” assignment with an academic, university setting.

I have bouts wherein I consider what veterinary medicine really does mean to me, and come up with all sorts of abstract concepts that can’t be symbolized by an object (except, perhaps, one of those little garden rocks with inspiring words engraved into them, and I refuse to bring one of those). Then I have bouts wherein my mischievous side takes over, and I come up with all sorts of inappropriate objects. A la:

1) The vet I work for. This was her idea. She said, “I’m busy that day. I can’t be your object.” Besides which, she doesn’t fit in my hand.
2) I just watched Legally Blonde again recently. Remember the über-feminist girl/token lesbian? How fun would it be to pretend to be her and bring, oh, some neuter leftovers in a jar?
3) A marble. Clearly, I have lost mine.
4) A wad of cash, or a Matchbox Porsche. I could go on and on about how veterinary medicine is going to make us all rich! Rich, I tell you, rich!
5) A rock. This was actually a serious thought, seeing as my first degree is in geology. But if I brought a rock, no one would think I was taking the exercise seriously.
6) A beer. ‘Cause it’s all fun and games.
7) A can of alphabet soup, because I’m only doing it for more letters behind my name.

See how much fun this exercise can be?

I finally stumbled upon a suitable object last night, and the more I sit with the idea, the more I’m okay with it. But–I’m not going to tell you what it is. You have to find your own!

Last night I had my first, and hopefully last, of these lovely dreams.

Mine went something like this:

My anatomy lab partner and I went into the lab late one night to work on our dog dissection. For some reason, our dog had been cryogenically frozen while still alive, so when we took her out to dissect her, she started to wake up as she thawed!

Thinking quickly, my lab partner decided to cut her jugular vein, which proceeded to flop around, cartoon-style, like a garden hose on full blast when no one’s holding it. We were both covered in blood. Lovely. But we had a lot to do, so we ignored the blood and worked late into the night.

Lo and behold, our first anatomy exam was the next day. Because I’d been in the lab so late, I didn’t manage to look at the study guide until right before the test. The study guide included an entire year’s worth of material, and I recognized about three words on it. Great.

When I went in to take the test, there were various stations set up, each of which had a note card with a question on it. Instead of writing my answers on my answer sheet, I managed to write all my answers on the cards, for everyone else to see. Really, this dream was not going well.

Fortunately, I was spared further humiliation because I woke up at that point.

Egads. Let’s hope there are no more of these…

Instead, I am in freak out mode. I’m not freaking out about starting vet school, though–I’m freaking out about how much crap I have to do between now and then. Vet school is the furthest thing from my mind.

Here’s a sampling of the list:

• get the house re-roofed
• paint a bedroom, a bathroom, and three pieces of furniture
• attempt to finish off four continuing ed classes (not gonna happen, but I can dream)
• schedule 6 different social outings with people I won’t be seeing much the next four years
• design two websites
• design a headstone for my grandmother’s grave
• buy a baby shower gift
• mend three pairs of the other half’s pants that have been languishing for months
• clean the house, before it gathers four years’ worth of dust
• buy cat food
• and so on and so on…

Even if I weren’t working full time, I don’t think I’d be able to finish it all. As it is, well… *sigh*

Where did my summer go? Can’t we postpone this vet school thing another month?

Just managed to burn through an hour reading old posts.

I laughed, cried, and thought deep thoughts.

Good stuff.

He spent his last two days on death row.

Mr. Bones’ only crime was having had one too many staph infections.  When his owner also came down with a life-threatening staph infection, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to jump to the conclusion that Mr. Bones might be the carrier of an horrific strain of bacteria.

It might have taken a rocket scientist, however, to convince Mr. Bones’ owner that Bones wasn’t necessarily the source of the harmful bug, seeing as how staphylococci lurk pretty much everywhere.  Rather than jumping to hasty conclusions, it might be a good idea to determine whether the strain of staph that Mr. Bones carried matched the strain of staph that almost cost the owner her arms, and her life.

Apparently the owner’s doctors didn’t see it that way.  They managed to convince her that Bones was a dangerously lethal germ-carrying machine, despite our attempts to prove otherwise.  So Mr. Bones was left with us, and our task was to euthanize an otherwise healthy 4 year-old dog.

His last two days with us were happy ones, filled with unexpected treats, rousing games of fetch, and lots of forbidden foods, including part of a chocolate cupcake.

As we took him to meet his end, he stopped when he saw our resident clinic cat.  Mr. Bones flopped onto his belly so as not to be intimidating, stretched his paws out in front, and wagged his body, wanting to play.  He was a good dog, and a few more treats found their way into his mouth before we let him go.

While I mourn the loss, and question the morality of euthanizing healthy pets, I try to remind myself of three things.  One, if I were in the owner’s shoes, without a thorough understanding of staph, and relying on my physician to provide that knowledge to me, I might have come to the same conclusion as she did.

Two, try as we might to change the owner’s mind, she was absolutely unfazed.  If we had refused to euthanize Mr. Bones, she would have taken him to a vet that would.  Better that he go surrounded by people that loved him.

And three, close to 10,000 homeless pets are euthanized every day, most for no good reason other than that our society still considers every species but one expendable.  At least Mr. Bones had a good four years, and at least he died a happy dog.

His ashes are under the big tree out back.