Germs are all OVER that keyboard.

You’d think that, after having taking a course in epidemiology this year, my classmates would be fastidious about general hygiene.  Alas, no.

Here are some of the more amusing (and disgusting) things I’ve observed this semester:

• Setting running shoes on top of drinking fountain
• Failing to wash hands after using bathroom
• Eating with hands and typing at the same time in computer lab  (Hooray for your keyboard!  More bacteria than a toilet seat.)
• Putting foot in the middle of desktop to tie shoe
• Using pencil to poke dead stuff in pathology lab
• Using the same pencil to gesticulate and accidentally fling droplets from dead stuff in pathology lab
• Not washing hands after poking dead stuff in pathology lab
• Dragging sleeves through dead stuff in pathology lab
• Talking on cell phone while on toilet
• Pouring water from personal water bottle–after taking a drink from said water bottle–into community teapot

Future health professionals all! So… make sure your doctor washes his/her hands.

My favorite course, by far, since starting vet school has been clinical pathology, wherein you learn to interpret things like blood work, urinalyses, etc. The beauty of the class, for me, was the fact that it all had clinical relevance. There was very little “Why do we have to learn this?” and a lot of “That’s so cool!”

Another upside to the class was that the emphasis was not on memorization and regurgitation, but rather the application of a small set of facts to solving a problem.  In other words, clinical reasoning, the kind of thing I am really good at.

At any rate, that class, plus the fact that most my other classes were somewhat more clinically relevant than my freshman classes, made this past semester fantastic.  It probably didn’t hurt that I got off my butt and joined a gym, too.  Exercising regularly did wonders for my mood and stress level.

Enter sophomore year, round 2.  Widely regarded by the classes ahead of me to be the worst semester of vet school.  Why?  Time will tell.  It might have something to do with the fact that we start class at 8 a.m. every day and are there until 3 p.m. every day, if not later.  It might have to do with the fact that it’s 24 credit hours.  Maybe it’s just the fact that we have to suffer through still one more semester of classroom-only work before we get to see real patients.

Whatever it is, I’m not really looking forward to it all that much, mostly because I am savoring my last few days of vacation and productivity in other areas of my life.

These are the times you have to remind yourself just how bad you wanted to get into vet school.

After the exam, I had more cleaning to do at the rental, and then I had to head home and pack, and the next day I was on a plane. Where was my time to grieve?

As difficult as it was after that experience to hop on a plane and go spend two weeks with complete strangers, it turned out to be the most therapeutic thing I could have done. Instead of sitting at home and feeling Mr. Tabby’s absence acutely, I was thrown headlong into a very challenging learning experience with no time at all for self-pity. And I got to interact with hundreds of animals, which in itself is therapeutic. (I’ll give more details about that trip in a later post.)

After I came home, the worst of the pain had subsided, I think, but losing a loved one is a lot like having a scab. Sometimes the pain is barely noticeable, and sometimes something rips it off, and it becomes fresh and raw all over again. Over time, though, those somethings become further apart, and the scab heals a little more until the pain is finally gone, but the memory, like a scar, is always there.

The wound was fresh and raw the day I Googled cremation jewelry; at that moment I felt a compelling need to keep him with me all the time. The wound was raw the day I got his ashes back, tied up with the metal tag that I’d placed on his foot. Except now the tag was blackened and charred.

There are happier moments, though, too. Cat Mandu, whom I would have called very set in her ways, has taken up loping around the stairwell when her meals are being prepared, something Mr. Tabby used to do. It reminds me of him, and makes me smile.

Whenever I open the downstairs closet where he lived for so long, I think about seeing his cute little face tucked among the blankets.

And when we talk about things like lymphoma and PCVs in school, I touch the little moon-shaped necklace I sometimes wear to remind me of him.

The fourth-year student who worked on Mr. Tabby’s case had told me that I wasn’t crazy for pursuing treatment. If anything, he said, I would learn a lot more about cancer than I’d learn in class, so it would be money well spent. He was right about that.

What I didn’t expect was discovering just how far in love you can fall with a handsome little Maine Coon cat who used to live in the back of your closet.  No one can prepare you for that.

I miss you, Tabs.

I was taken to a comfy little room with a sofa and a year’s supply of Kleenex, then left alone to say my final goodbyes. What was there to say? It was more important just to be, to hold his little head in the crook of my arm one more time.

I sang him his little lullaby again. “Bubsy’s boat’s a silver moon, sailing in the sky, sailing o’er a sea of dreams, as the clouds drift by… Sail, Bubsy, sail, out across the sea, only don’t forget to sail back again to me.” I had trouble getting the last few words out.

By the time the doctor came back I was ready, but I cold only whisper a little “I love you” as he slipped away. We put his little body, snuggled in a blanket, into a box, and I cradled the box as I walked out of the hospital and into the sunlight.

What happened next is almost comical.

As frivolous as it might be to some, I wanted to have him cremated, but I wanted to do this through my vet at home. That was an hour away, and I still had several hours worth of cleaning to do at the rental unit before I could head for home. So I did what any sensible vet student would do: I put him in the fridge. If my renter had any idea…

Eventually, I got Mr. Tabby’s body to my vet’s office, where I’ve bagged up many pets for cremation before, but never my own. As I put the identification tag around his foot, put him in a body bag and into the freezer, and called the crematorium, I was proud of my ability to do these things. It was a tiny veterinary rite of passage.

I thought about backing out of the trip, but I’d been planning on it for a while before Mr. Tabby got sick, and I knew it would be a fabulous opportunity. Still, I had one eye on the door just in case I needed to bail out.

About two weeks before finals, I looked over and saw Mr. Tabby snoozing peacefully in the sun, and, for the millionth time, I was really, really happy that I’d started chemo. Mr. Tabby seemed to be in better spirits than he’d ever been. But something made me grab my camera and start snapping as many pictures of him as I could.

That something wouldn’t show up until two weeks later. The day before finals, he seemed a tiny bit off, but not enough to warrant dragging him in to the hospital. I drove down to school with explicit instructions to the handsome other to call me if anything got worse. I took my first final and then called home.

“Well, he’s not really worse but he’s not really better. He puked up a lot and he’s been hiding under the futon all day.”

GGGGAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! I couldn’t really fault the better half, since he isn’t all that experienced with cat behavior, and cats do have a tendency to just lie around all day, but to me this signaled a major turn for the worse. I drove straight home, grabbed Mr. Tabby, and drove right back to school.

Mr. Tabby’s PCV was nine. NINE. For non-medical readers, PCV measures red blood cell concentration. Anything below about 25ish is anemic. Mr. Tabby wasn’t just anemic, he was practically dead.

I didn’t understand all that at the time, though, since I hadn’t really learned much about blood work yet. In retrospect, I probably would have euthanized him right then if I’d had a decent understanding of the various processes at work in him, but I was just a freshman, and all I knew was that my kitty had been just fine not two days before. They started a blood transfusion, and I tried not to think about the fact that I had three more finals to take, not to mention needing to clean out the rental and pack for my trip.

The ER doc was fantastic, and so was the oncologist (not the resident–this time I got the boss). They treated me like a veterinary professional in training, rather than a dumb student, but they also treated me with love and kindness as a client in a stressful situation. For that, I am eternally grateful. They even offered to get me out of my remaining exams for a while.

And my trip… my trip! I couldn’t leave now, when Mr. Tabby was sick, but it was a little bit late to be backing out four days before. What to do?

After his transfusion, Mr. Tabby surprised everyone by not only wolfing down his supper, but also grooming himself afterward. Always the proper gentleman, that one. His PCV had also returned to a less scary number. We would wait and see what the morning brought.

I lingered with him in critical care, and was again glad to be a student, glad to have access to the hospital’s inner sanctum, so I could sing Mr. Tabby a lullaby and snuggle with him a little before leaving him for the night.

Thank God I didn’t have a final the next day.

The ER doc called me at 7:30 and said I should probably get back to the hospital, since Mr. Tabby was anemic again. That meant his body was destroying the new cells.

“Could you take me through the list of things that could be causing that?” I asked.

She listed the possibilities one by one, giving me time to think about each item. I would think for a bit, declare “not fixable,” and then she’d move on to the next differential. Her ability to guide me through this horrible decision tree was incredible: her statements were simple enough that I could understand them with my freshman knowledge, but not so simple as to be condescending. She challenged me just enough to feel as though I was actually reasoning through the case.

She also provided the perfect amount of moral support, and was genuinely caring. When I think of this now, I tear up just thinking of how beautifully this woman handled this situation. That’s the kind of vet everyone wants to be, and she seemed to manage it effortlessly.

She had reached the end of the list, and I had declared “not fixable” after every one. It was time.

The vet discovered a mass in his abdomen, and gave the tentative diagnosis of GI lymphoma, a disease about which I knew nothing at the time. My options were to give him prednisone to keep him comfy until died, or to get a firm diagnosis and possibly initiate chemotherapy.

I chose the latter, partially because, with vet student perks, the treatment would almost be affordable for me, and partially because, if you’ll recall, Mr. Tabby only came out his closet 5 months before. FIVE MONTHS! This was not fair, and I wanted to give the little guy a fighting chance.

I took him to school, where they confirmed the diagnosis of GI lymphoma, and then determined that said lymphoma was a T cell lymphoma, which is to say the worse of two evil types of lymphoma. Even with treatment, most cats don’t live longer than a year. Well, I reasoned, that must mean a few lucky cats do live longer than a year, and you never know until you try… Also, unlike in humans, chemo often makes animals feel better. How could I withhold feeling better from him?

They kept him overnight and gave him his first treatments, and my crash course in feline oncology began. I also got a crash course in how-things-are-done-at-the-teaching-hospital. One thing that was lovely about the experience is that, as a student, I got to be with him through much of the process, even being the one to restrain him during his ultrasound. One of the less lovely parts of the experience was realizing how crappy that kind of experience must be for the average person, who wouldn’t get to stay with their pet and instead would be forced to trust a bunch of strangers.

Mr. Tabby did remarkably well with his first dose of chemo, and was sent home the next day with instructions to return in a week for his next treatment. Yeaaaaahhhhhh, about that.

I live an hour away from school, and I wasn’t about to force Mr. Tabby to make a two hour drive every week to get chemo that we could easily give in the clinic in town. (Despite the obvious emotional benefit to the patient with this approach, the oncology resident still tried to guilt me into dragging him there. “What if he needs a transfusion?” she said, incredulous.)

But in order to treat him ourselves, I’d have to figure out what we needed to do. Sure, I could have relied on my vet to do that, but seeing as how 1) I am supposed to be learning, and 2) my vet essentially sees my pets for free, it would probably be bad form not to be intimately involved in the planning process.

So, I read every study I could get my hands on about treatment protocols. I scoured VIN for every possible posting related to chemotherapy and lymphoma. I ordered up the drugs we’d need, and figured out the dose and schedule. I rearranged my schedule so I could get him there, and I drew up his drugs and held him through the process. As much as Mr. Tabby hated being put in the cat carrier, he always behaved like a perfect little gentleman for his treatments. How can you not love a cat like that?

The treatment worked, too. His appetite came back, and he became his chipper little self again. I was gaga in love with this cat, and I’m pretty sure he felt the same way. Every time he’d hop in my lap and bury his little head in the crook of my arm, I’d melt. Yes, this treatment was definitely worth it.

Oh, so sad, but true. This is one of the especially difficult parts about being a non-traditional student. I used to make decent money, and now… now I don’t even itemize deductions on my income taxes because my outflow is so much higher than my inflow, and I don’t want the IRS to flag my returns.

It’s been really difficult to break the habit of spending like I have a decent income. Even though I sometimes think to myself, “I just spent twenty dollars and now the world will end!”, I also often think things like, “Well, I’m going to be a couple hundred thou in debt anyway, so what’s another hundred?” Bad, bad, bad.

I’ve been trying to work more this year, partially because I want to have more disposable income and partially because I want to improve my school-life balance, but it’s really, really hard to get the motivation. It would probably help if the job I had was actually relevant to vet school in some way, but it’s not. I tend to just resent that it’s keeping me from studying, never mind that it’s allowing me to eat.

And so, here I am wishing someone could come up with a cure for vet school-induced bankaccountopenia.

I’ve got it! I just need a bank account transfusion from a healthy donor account!

Any takers?

This is what our toxicology professor asked us on day one.

**crickets**

“You really have to be thinking about the question,” he said.

And finally, someone got it:

A slaughter plant.

This monstrosity, the “Capstone,” was supposedly created in response to some former students’ complaints that they didn’t feel as though they had enough practice for the NAVLE (the national board exam).  Well, fie on you, former unnamed students!  Your crapstone was a seriously horrible pain in the patooti that did absolutely nothing positive for me.

First of all, how do you even begin to study an entire year’s worth of material?  By procrastinating until two days before because the task seems too overwhelming, that’s how!

Then, after cramming all of your crapstone stress into three days (two for studying, one for test taking), you get to start a brand new school year!  The picture of happiness and health!  Not burnt out at all!  Happy happy joy joy joy!

Yeah, it pretty much sucked.  The only positive was that it only took me five hours, not eight.  I felt a lot like this guy:

First of all, I had no idea that there are actually people out there who would pay upwards of $2,000 for a purebred cat.  Worse yet, I had no idea there were breeders out there who would try to sell a purebred cat WITH AN UPPER RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTION, for crying out loud, for upwards of $2,000.

The whole thing just made me sad… there are so many thousands of kitties out there who need homes, and here people are spending thousands upon thousands of dollars breeding and trading them.  I just don’t get it.  Well, I get the part about maintaining certain breeds.  But appreciating the finer characteristics of a breed is one thing, while purchasing a cat-shaped accessory is altogether different.  *sigh*

At the show, there were rows upon rows of cats in carriers.  Not your standard carriers, mind you, but carriers that allowed passersby to see the cats inside in all their glory.  The brand of choice seemed to be Sturdi Products, such as this one:

Interspersed among the carriers were elaborate grooming stations, full of an array of brushes, combs, and whatnots the likes of which I have never seen.

There were four small show rings, each of which featured a small platform atop a folding table, where the judges would examine each contestant.  Behind the judge was a row of steel cages, where contestants in a given round would await their turn.  The judge would remove the contestant from the wire cage, bring it to the platform, and wave a feather toy at it while examining the cat from head to toe.  He/she then disinfected the platform and moved on to the next cat.  After all the cats for that round, he/she would announce the results.

I have to say my favorite part was when one of the toms sprayed a judge.  That was amusing.  Other than that, watching a cat show, when you have no idea what it is that the judges are looking for, gets old pretty quickly.

I took to wandering the aisles, and did find it valuable to be able to see live specimens of breeds I’d only seen in books.  I don’t think I’ve seen that many un-neutered male cats in one place, though.  I have to admit they had me wondering whether I had a scalpel blade and a pair of hemostats in the car. 

So would I recommend going to see one?  Sure.  It was definitely interesting.  People watching always is.

And you thought it was a cat show.