An actual vet school post? Sure... ;)

I decided that I should probably make a post about vet school, rather than all the random dramas of my so-called life... :)

I sometimes find Micro Anatomy to be absolutely ridiculous. I am extremely OCD so when professors aren't organized, I get a little antsy. The syllabus is kind of all of the place, from liver cells to kidney cells, to skin cells and bone cells....it doesn't have much logic (though I will say it is starting to flow a little better now, thankfully!) Although I do enjoy looking at slides, I have an overwhelming amount of information to study for the exam which is in a few weeks.

We have begun our canine dissection in Anatomy lab. I have never dissected a dog before, but after teaching anatomy lab in undergrad, I would say that I'm pretty skilled at the art of skinning, cleaning fascia from muscles, and all of that fun stuff, so it has definitely come in handy! That lab is also really disorganized and frustrating. In undergrad, we learned muscles of the entire body, with one side of the cat showing superficial muscles and the other side deep muscles. Once we took that exam, we removed the muscles and learned the cardiovascular and nervous systems, as well as the organs. In this lab, we're doing limb by limb, and had to actually remove the forelimb from the body. I can't understand how severing muscles is going to help me learn them? Seeing everything connected together seems much more logical, so I'm having a really hard time adjusting. Despite that, I am enjoying learning about canine anatomy, especially since I can apply it to my own pet!

After my test I stopped by Walmart to pick up a few things, and decided to get my glasses adjusted at the vision center. Bad decision. They weren't fitting very well on my right ear, and now they're even worse! They're super crooked unless I rig them to sit a certain way, grr. Later I got my last rabies vaccine (which is definitely by far the worst in terms of how sore my arm is!). I am so glad that is over with! After class I rushed home to be there for the carpet cleaning person. He did a pretty dang good job on removing most of the old stains. I feel much better :) Once he was gone, the maintenance man finally came (after a week of no a/c) and fixed everything back to normal. My apartment is actually below 85 degrees now, something to celebrate I'd say.

Now that I feel like I'm in the groove of things, I can finally get a conductive schedule set. I need to start working out, going to church, planning activities for Rhyley, making time to go to the teaching hospital, and studying just a little more effectively because things are about to get real crazy!

I should probably be in bed...

Good news of the day: my rabies vaccines are covered 100% by my insurance! That will eventually put 720$ back in my pocket...thank God! :]

So I'm also thankful that today was relatively easy. Got out of class early so I had a 2 and a half hour lunch break, and then got out of lab early. This is good because tomorrow is going to be a really long day...I have class from 8-9, a class officer meeting at 9, class 10-12, a mentor luncheon with a mixed animal clinician, lab from 1-350, studying until 5, and then going back to campus for the Christian Veterinary Fellowship meeting. Phew! That basically means that I need to go to bed....now.

I leave you with a video of Rhyley targeting! I am so proud of her :] She holds it up to 15 seconds now (which is quite some time considering her breed, haha). I'm working on training her to sit at the door before we go out (instead of jumping everywhere) and targeting helps her to focus! It's working pretty good so far, she's a smarty pants. I love my baby :]

One Week Down...

I made it through the first week! The days are really long, but I don't dread studying like I used to. Most of the material (except for Phsyio) is stuff that I actually want to learn, so that makes it a little easier to hit the books.

Thursday felt like it would never end...3 hour lab in the morning, hour lecture, lunch, another hour lecture followed by another 3 hour lab! Integration was pretty cool though, during each lecture we have a case presented to us that allows us to apply information that we're learning in our other courses. The topic was "complications associated with lateral fabellotibial suture surgery for cranial cruciate ligament injury in dogs"...I loved it! After school I went to dinner with my sophomore buddy and a few other freshman-sophomore pairs at So Long Saloon. The food there is delicious, and it was fun getting to know everyone!

Friday morning I headed over to the teaching hospital, originally hoping to go to internal medicine rounds. However, everyone was in surgery so I went to endoscopy to get a peak at the procedure. It was awesome! I don't think I'm allowed to post the details on here, so I won't...just to be safe. After that I saw an x-ray of a dentigerous cyst in a dogs mouth, watched a dog in underwater treadmill therapy, and had yet another tour of the hospital. It's so big that it will probably take months to finally know where everything is...haha. All in all I had a good time :) My elective on Friday (cognates), however, was NOT at all fascinating. I was so restless because of how bored I was - I kept shifting my sitting position, stretching, trying to find things to occupy my mind otherwise I would have fallen asleep! It was literally torture :( I also had to get my 2nd rabies vaccine, which I think may have also made me a little sleepy. It also killed my arm...it hurts so bad to move or lift it! Only one more to go, thank the Lord.

Random side note of the day...there were these morons racing their motorcycles in the parking lot of the stadium (which is pretty much across the street from my apartment), so all I could hear all afternoon was revving engines! So annoying...some people need to get a life.

Anyway, I've basically studied all day, reviewing information from each class from this week, focusing on the bones of course. I definitely need to get a head start on the skull...I don't even want to think about how many foramina there are!