Heather: a~journal~of~my~adventures

Things are getting pretty crazy. Arm deep in cow poop and all. This week I have my large animal rotation SO…today my day consisted of…6am feed, clean hooves, physical exam and charts for Sugar (horse), and Gloria and her baby donkey, then physical exam for our surgery animal (a sheep named Jager and a donkey named Tiny Tim, who is sweet as pie unlike many other students’), an exam at 8am, class til 11am, rounds to discuss our horses medical history and such with our professor, therio (repro) lab to rectal palpate multiple cows. I’m now off to play volley ball for my intermeurals team and then back to school at 4:30 to feed, clean hooves of my horse again and do physicals and medical records for my 2 surgery animals again…then FINALLY a stop at the British pub!! Fun although very exhausting! Now that’s a day in the life of a REAL vet student haha. I would elaborate more, but this is my chance to finally take an hour nap and/or eat. I think I’ll just sleep actually. I have another exam monday and still have to take care of the horses on top of everything twice a day until monday afternoon when I start my emergency rotation (yeah, no sleep there either I presume). So I will try to update again sometime soon.

Here’s some pictures from our surgery this past friday. I did anesthesia this time.
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So I’ve been extremely busy with school since last semester. And anytime I’m not studying or at school, I’m trying to enjoy the little time I have left on the island. Recently, I found out that I passed the PAVE exam. This exam is necessary to be able to work in a lot of US states since Ross if a semi-international school. It’s a 6 hour exam that tested me on everything I should know before starting my clinical work. Also, I did my first real surgery a couple weeks ago. I assisted with a spay and did a cystotomy. I just received a very exciting 90 on that today. This friday is our second surgery and I will be doing anesthesia, induction, medication, monitoring, etc. Its actually even more scary for me than the surgery, so I hope I do well. This past weekend was our midsemester break (the one monday we get off) and a wonderful Halloween party. Sorry its not more detailed but need to go to bed

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Last night was my first time in surgery. Ok. Some of you may be like my mom and not be very excited to hear about it but its a HUGE deal for me. So the semester ahead of me had to do their surgeries on dogs all day long. After this the dogs would be put down but instead we get to practice procedures. Anyway, I’ll spare the details. We got to do arterial and venous blood draws, place catheters, jugular catheters, CPR resuscitation with EKG and epi/lidocaine/atropine, lymph node aspirates, skin biopsy, bone marrow aspirates, tracheal wash, nasal tube placement, suturing, thoracocentisis, chest tube, spinal CSF aspirate, joint tap, and otoscope exam. I got home at 11:30pm after being at school since 8am. Everyone, students and professors, was very helpful and really fun. We can’t take pictures on campus during procedures right now because various animal rights issues but my roommate took my picture when I got home.

There’s a new page with the pictures from my april break when Kim and Erin came to visit me.

On Easter Monday, St. Kitts has a holiday so most businesses are closed or have short hours. After finishing my classes, I called the gym to see what their hours are, and a man answers the phone. He tells me the gym closed at 12:30 (mind you it is now 1:45), but he does not work there he was locked in when everyone left. He asked me if I know where the owner lives or his number. No, of course. He sounded a little- not all there, so I called the police to tell them he was locked in. They tell me they can’t open it I need to call the fire dept. I said I don’t even know the man can they please just take care of it so I don’t have to use all my cell phone minutes…No, call the fire dept this is their number. I call, they gave me Nevis’s fire dept. #. She was really nice and gave me the St. Kitts number. The St.Kitts fire dept. doesn’t answer the phone. Our school phone book says to call 333 in case of a fire. That number doesn’t exist. I call the gym back to see if he has gotten help yet. He answers, I tell him I called the police and they told me to call the fire dept but they aren’t answering so you need to call 911 and tell them that. He says…well, I am a policeman too. Thanks for your help, bye. THE POLICEMAN IS LOCKED IN AND DOESN’T CALL 911 AND THE POLICE WON’T HELP HIM OUT!!
Hence…make sure you know when the gym closes before they lock up, you may be there a while.
And if there’s a fire, call me, I have a garden hose.
Don’t freak out. Ross pays more than the St. Kitts government so we have all the competent officers as our security and we are encouraged to call them BEFORE ever calling the police. Thank god!

Quick post to put up a picture of the goat herd on my road foraging in my side yard. They’ve been having a lot of babies this month.

For anyone who hasn’t heard, I just got back from my little caribbean cruise. There is a cruiseline at easycruise.com that runs really inexpensive cruises on different routes for a few months. Until April they are circling around St.Kitts, Nevis, St.Martin, St.Barts, Anguilla and Antigua. I had a great time and have wonderful pictures. Have a look at the new page I made on the right for Easy Cruise!

So I ended up having my best Valentine’s day I have ever had. I made reservations for me, my roommate, Alison, and Amy at the nicest restraunt on the island that I was waiting to go to until Jay came. The whole restraunt was decked out with balloons, streamers, confettti on the tables, decorated chocolate kiss favors at each seat and a steel drum band. The waitress brought a red rose to each girl. It was so nice. The dinner was very expensive from a preplanned menu with seafood chowder, surf and turf with steak shrimp veggies and mashed potatoes and cheesecake with strawberries for dessert. It was all good and the best meal I’ve had in a while. MMmm…

http://www.myspace.com/petdoch ~visit me on myspace.com

Thank you everyone for helping me deal with this past week. I’m still very sad and I’d love to get emails so something is actually in my inbox when I’ve checked it for the 100th time of the day.

Yet another horrible Valentine’s day to come…I’m trying to brace myself.