I got an A...

in Orgo! Super exciting :) With a 94% on the final, I am quite pleased. Now if I can only conquer physics with a similar prowess, I will be quite happy.

Speaking of physics, I went in to get my lab notebook today and was talking to my lab professor about how worried I was about the exam. She was in the middle of grading exams, and I had only bothered her to see if she could unlock the lab for me to get my notebook... She ended up putting her exams to the side, pulling out a dry erase marker and white board, and going over concepts that were confusing me. I didn't even ask her (I could see she was busy), and kept offering to leave, but she was insistent on helping me.  This is a professor I have only seen once every other week for lab, and she doesn't even teach a section of my class (she teaches calc-based), but she really truly cared about my comfort with the material and wanted to help me to succeed. This is why I love Gettysburg.

~Melissa

Cats on a Couch

I have no real updates. All I have been doing is sitting around and studying for physics. Oh how I hate that class. I also have been debating over which labs and lectures I want to attend for APVMA Symposium this year, and having everyone else in my group submit theirs to me (since I have to register everyone... compliments of living 20 minutes from the school and being able to get the credit card).  Besides that, I have truly been a bum. Eating junk food like it's my business.

BUT I do have cute photos for you...

This is Taz and Simian. They obviously could not lay anywhere else on my giant couch except on the itty bitty bit of folded up blanket. :)

And, for all you horse lovers, this is a great shot I just took of my mom's horse, Blossom.

Hope everyone else's finals/classes/lives are going well! Is anyone reading this planning on going to Symposium?

~Melissa

The Exam

I feel like I rocked my 22-page orgo exam last night. I finished it in 2-hours flat and was the first of 77 done. The rest of my group of 5 girls finished an hour- 2 hours after I did, which is kinda scary...

Chesapeake Bay Ecology is tomorrow.

Very excitingly, my good friend Jenn is flying home from her semester abroad in Australia as I type this. I am very much hoping to see her in the next couple of days!

~Melissa

Chicken Problems

Oh the things that would only happen to me...

Since I would be around pretty much all day on Thursday, I let the chickens out to free roam the property. I have to be home to do this, as the neighbor's dog will take full advantage of my absence to eat them if I am not careful. So I let them out and they had a grand ole time chasing each other around, digging in the flowerbeds and the mulch, scratching and dusting themselves. I went out around 4:30 to get them in before it got dark, called to my chickens and they came running. Tossed some bread into the coop and easy as pie, I closed the gate. And then I counted. There were 7 chickens in the coop. We have 9. Oh. Shit.

I looked in all the window wells, under the porch, in the trees, and found no chickens. I then grabbed a flashlight and really thoroughly checked everywhere they could hide... nothing. So I looked for feathers, fearing the worst. And again, came up with nothing. Not a sign of my two missing hens.

I went back out to where the chicken coop was, and, realizing how close to the woodpile it was, wondered if perhaps a hen had been messing around near it and some wood had fallen off and trapped it (I have pretty awful wood-stacking skills). So I start pulling up the tarp and looking under the logs. I walk around to the other side, and there, low and behold is a fuzzy, red, rhode-island hen's butt sticking out of the wood pile. She wasn't stuck. In fact, it appeared as if she had been digging for bugs, stuck her head under the black tarp, thought that night had fallen, and decided to take a nap then and there. She was happily snoozing until I grabbed her and tossed her back in the chicken coop. My estimation of chicken intelligence level decreased quite greatly in that moment

Well I'm still a chicken down and dark is falling fast. The chicken coop is right next to my shed, and some wildlife had dug under the shed this Summer to whelp their young, so there were some significant gaps on the backside. Before I even laid down on my side and shined my flashlight in, I knew what I would see. Sure enough, I could see a black creature that looked very much like a chicken in the light of my dim flashlight. I went to the other side of the shed and dug out the hole on that side, giving the chicken a forward escape route. I then went inside to grab some bread bait and, lo and behold, there was a chicken standing outside of my coop squawking to be let in. No digging necessary. Just to be sure, I recounted my chickens. And came up with 8.

So I look back under the shed, and sure enough, there is still a creature under it. I bang my boots on the side, trying to scare it out, hollering and calling for it. I peek back under the shed, lying amidst the dirt, wood debris and ashes, and what do I see in a much better view now that it had moved away from the noisy wall, but a rabbit, scared to high heaven at all the noise I was making and very unhappy about it's choice of a resting spot.

Well, I recounted again. I had 9 chickens.

I suppose this is why I'm not a math major.

Hit By Cars, Goats and Squirrels

My day started off with finding a drowned squirrel in my water tub. This was a new one for me. How a squirrel got in my water tub in the first place, and how it drowned in two inches of water makes no sense to me. My best guess is that it somehow got electrocuted by the nearby powerlines and fell in. I was already running late, and I then had to scrub out the water tub and give them enough water for the day. I got to school right as the bell tower rang 10 o'clock. Somehow the forces were with me and I avoided seeing any police officers on my way... I definitely pushed it. I had a presentation that was worth 20% of my grade, so I wanted to make sure it was decent and I was there to give it!

I got a whole bunch of progress reports and such back in the last couple of days. I calculated it out and to get an A- in physics I have to get about a 73, to get an A and 84 on the final. So that is not too bad at all. In orgo I have similar numbers, though I believe it may be an 84 to get an A-. They curve introductory physics here, which is very strange to me. It is the only class I have ever seen at G-burg that does that. I still have no idea what I have in my English class (though I should have a better idea on Thursday when I am getting all of my papers and work back from the entire semester). ES I am pretty much guaranteed an A. So it looks like I might have my first shot at an all-A semester (I'm being hopeful about English) since last fall, which would be awesome! My gpa would really love that.

Today I went in and shadowed for 7.5 hours, and had a really good time, as usual. I saw a ton of really interesting things today, from hygromas (cysts on the ends of the elbows) to mass cell tumors, to two hit by cars, to dog toe splints and rabbit urethra issues. And the goat again.
 It was really fascinating and I love how comfortable all the docs and techs are getting with me. They have started to accept me almost as one of their own, and I love being utilized and being taught. I now get to hold and walk animals, restrain, help with the initial exams (temps, weights, etc.), trim toenails on cats and dogs, clean kennels, check out incisions and post ops, help scrub things, assist in some small ways with minor surgeries, see all the x-rays, etc. The doctors have even started saving x-rays from earlier in the day to show to me if they think it is interesting. I have been there long enough to have seen many of the clients more than once and to have them recognize and interact with me, and I really love that as well. Since Dr. G. also has an equine practice, he loves to tell me about his equine cases, since he knows I have experience with that and am really interested in it.

Anyway, the highlight from the day was definitely the two hit by cars. The cases were bizarre and came in within  5 minutes of each other. Both were new clients. The one was a English chocolate lab who had been being humped by his brother in the driveway, and the daughter had been backing up and he couldn't get out of the way quick enough due to the... humpage. The other was a small schnauzer mix that was in heat and being chased by a chocolate lab and ran under the tires. Both were hit by their owners... and both were run over in the abdomen. And both did not break a single thing. They had bruising and road burn, and neither of their bladders showed up on x-ray (which could possibly mean they had burst, or that they were just empty), and both of them walked out the door for further monitoring by the family.

 I really enjoy the emergency stuff for some reason, and I definitely want to make sure I call in to the emergency hospital I had got permission to volunteer at and do that over break. I wish I had more time to shadow all the places I want to shadow! Sometimes I wish I had realized that I wanted to be a vet (seriously) before my freshman year of college.

~Melissa

Forgot to Mention...

Last night I ate squirrel! Jared decided it was time to try it, so he shot one, butchered it and brought it home. We then boiled it and fried it. Would you believe, it tasted just like chicken (if not better!).

Shadowing!

I really need to come up with some better titles.

Yesterday I was going to shadow, but a high schooler was in, so I instead headed up to the SPCA for a couple of hours to play with cats and dogs. In the evening we went to "my" hospital for the doctors to give the pre-vet club a tour and talk to them a little bit about the vet profession. Between the two of them they have done small animal, cattle, horse, exotics and research, so they are just really awesome people to talk to. I really hope the club enjoyed it- we got seven people out, so that was a good number at least.

Today I went in at 8 am and am glad I did! It was certainly a very busy day and I'm very happy I was around to give a hand. The very first appointment was a beagle for vaccines and a nail trim, and he was quite possibly the worst dog I have ever seen in terms of acting up. You would have thought we were cutting off his entire toes, not just trimming him. We got one foot finished and a snagged, bloody  nail (that did, I'm sure, actually hurt), before it was just no longer worth it. We returned the dog to the woman with a suggestion that she work with him on it.

That started the bad nails for the day... we had a chihuahua with a wrenched toe and toenail that couldn't come off because it wasn't loose enough, but was causing a heck of a lot of pain; a big bug-eyed pit whose owner wanted the nails "show-short" and kept sending the techs to take off more, regardless of whether or not they bled; and, strangely, a cat with ingrown toenails. The cat never shed it's nails, clawed on anything or chewed them off, and they continued to grow around and into it's paws. It wasn't too badly infected, but I'm sure that poor cat was hurting. The worst part was that she was so good for us to clip her nails... it literally would only take the woman bringing her in once every two months and getting them clipped to have this never be a problem.

We also did three euthanasias today, quite sadly. One of them was a six week old kitten that these people had brought in from the barn or somewhere outdoors. It had been at the hospital but was doing horribly due to whatever had happened to it- I'm not sure if it had gotten hit by a car or was just deathly anemic due to the fleas. It's breathing was erratic and it's eyes were goopy, it's gums a stark white. I held it for awhile while they talked to the owners, and I am sure it was a relief for that poor baby to go to heaven.

The second euthanasia was a older golden retriever who had a humongous tumor that extended all the way from her vulva down about halfway through her abdomen. It had grown quickly, and was a very hard, almost bone-like mass, that yesterday had begun seeping huge amounts of blood and puss out the dog's vulva. She was happy and  bright, but had stopped eating and drinking and was very much fighting with the cancer (or so I assume it was). There was nothing that could have been done with that extensive of a mass however, and so she as well was sent to doggy heaven.

The third one was much scarier. The dog came in and was shaking, had a low temp and had had bloody diarrhea for a day. We took him to the back and he vomited up yellow fluid, and then about a minute later squirted about half a gallon of blood out of his back end. The most solid thing in it was blood clots. They did a CBC on him, and his white blood cell count was astronomically low. Amongst all the other symptoms, it was a no-brainer that he had parvo. The official test came back positive. Amazingly, this was the second dog in two days that had come in with parvo, both from different rescues, and both which had to have come in to the rescue with the disease. So sad that such a bad disease, which can be stopped with only two fairly inexpensive vaccines given as a puppy, can be so prevalent...We then had to bleach down the entire hospital to make sure there was no contamination. As soon as I got home, I stripped and washed all my clothes and shoes with extremely hot water.

And then of course once I got home the dog peed on the carpet (not like I hadn't cleaned up enough bodily fluids today), the sink was leaking, the dishes had piled up, the carpet was covered in hair (the Rem-monster is shedding), and I still have an essay to finish writing before Monday. Oh yeah, and a lab report, and a quiz and starting to study for finals. And to think just two days ago I was thinking about how badly I need a job... I forgot about the fact that I have no time! I guess it's just one of those days where everything piles up on you.

Hope your weekend is going better than mine!

~Melissa