For Jeremy

Jeremy was demanding a post, since apparently it's upsetting him to not know what I'm up to. The reason I haven't posted is because there really hasn't been anything too exciting to post about. Each day we get 1-2 cases each...maybe. And the majority of them are itchy dogs. Some have infections, a few have food allergies, and others have atopic dermatitis. I've been doing a lot of skin scrapes and cytology and looking under the microscope. Over the weekend I moved Rusty to his summer home (yes, even horses can have summer homes) and went riding with some good friends. Even though it was hot and humid, it was so much fun to get to ride my little buddy! I did not have clinics on Memorial Day and spent the day working at the hog barn and catching up on random chores around the apartment. The other day I was watching a Discover Channel-esque show and they talked about a place called the Valley of the Geysers on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. It has geysers similar to Yellowstone and you have to get there by helicopter or a 3 day hike. Talk about stunning!

Rewind

Ok, so last Friday on my pathology rotation we had a 47 year old gorilla from the Columbus Zoo! Mumbah was massive and smelled like twenty teenage boys after a basketball game. Nasty. But the necropsy was cool and I got to hold hands with a gorilla! (Yes, I know he was dead but still, how many of you can say you’ve held hands with a gorilla!!!)

I spent Saturday and Sunday with my family since David was in town for the weekend. We all went to watch Nathan and the TFC ministry team Sunday morning in Wapak. On the way back to Columbus, I stopped to see Rusty again for a little bit. It was blazing hot outside and luckily he was close to the barn so I just hopped on in my shorts and no shoes and rode for a little bit. We went crowhopping through fields together. I’m convinced that having a group of mares all to himself has given him an ego trip and he thinks he doesn’t have to listen anymore, but I digress. It was good just to be with him for a little bit, even if we couldn’t agree on what should be happening.

I’m now on my Dermatology rotation. Yesterday I had (surprise, surprise) two itchy dogs. Overall it’s looking to be an interesting rotation and I’m excited to see what we do tomorrow.

Consistent, Persistent, and Irritating

I haven’t been ignoring you all, I promise. There just hasn’t been anything to write about. We only had two cases today and one case the day before. Things are a little slow in the necropsy department, but hopefully that just means that things are going well in the hospital! So because I have nothing to say in regards to school, I thought I’d leave a short (well I intended it to be short…) note about something that has been on my mind this week. I feel like every day at school my mind is constantly being shaken up like a snow globe and little details of information randomly fall here and there. Sometimes that means I get the question right (Yay!) And sometimes that means that I’m rambling about a disease in horse’s stomach when in fact the faculty member is talking about a cat’s foot. Seems like it’s often more the latter than the former. But all that to say that I often feel like my priorities get shaken up every day. Some of you know I have an incessant need to make lists and write things down in a calendar. There are so many things going and I worry that I’ll forget to do something important. But then there are those things that are in our constant thoughts that our mind reminds us of without any outside prompting. Things like a sick friend, a loved one making wrong choices, a bad decision we made, or, strangely enough, ice cream. Yes, I admit, over the past three weeks I have had a ridiculous craving for ice cream. Usually cravings like that pass after a few days, but after three weeks of staring into an ice cream-free freezer, I finally got some. And I don’t regret it one bit. But I wanted to write this note not about ice cream, but about something else that has been on my mind this week. I have to be honest and say that with all that my brain goes through at school each day, by the time Tuesday rolls around, I often only have a foggy memory of what the pastor talked about on Sunday. Maybe I could spit out a quick summary or a catch phrase or two. By the end of the week, I have to stop and remember whether I spent the previous Sunday at the vet hospital or church. So the fact that it’s Wednesday evening and I still remember with sharp precision what we talked about on Sunday means it’s something significant. It’s something to hold onto. It’s something to share.

Luke 18:1-8
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

So herein lies the title for this blog: Consistent, Persistent, and Irritating. This was how the pastor described the widow in this story. Of course, I don’t think that God gets irritated with our prayers and requests. If anything I think He would be irritated when we give up so easily. But it was a good reminder for me that just because I continually pray for things in my life and get no answer, it doesn’t mean to stop praying. It doesn’t mean to stop seeking. After all, how unrewarding would it be for the child at Easter to give up before finding any candy-filled eggs. How fruitless would it be for the hunter to sit in the tree stand for ten minutes and then leave. Or the rancher to give up looking for a lost calf after only a day of searching. “Consistent, Persistent, and Irritating” has constantly been going through my mind this week, reminding me to fight for the things that are worth fighting for. I hope it does the same for you.

I won't be joining the circus...

The rest of my school week was pretty unexciting. Saturday we did have a sad case where a pit bull had been shot by police officers when they arrived at a house for a domestic dispute. What made it even sadder is that the dispatcher had given the officers the wrong address so they weren’t even at the correct house. There was likely to be a legal case over this dog, so the students on the case had to document everything. There was a little bit of animal forensics going on.

Friday night I went to the circus in town with Clare. Neither one of us had ever been to a circus before, so it was interesting, to say the least. It was cool to see the animal acts and I was pretty impressed with their “light a man on fire and slingshot him across the arena” act—no worries, he was in a fire-retardant suit—but I’m not sure I would go again. It was a fun one-time thing for me, I think. Clowns running around hitting each other doesn’t rank very high on my amusement radar. But it was worth it to see everything else, and Clare was ecstatic that the circus had Fjords—her favorite breed of horse. Saturday after I was finished with school, Clare and I drove out to see Chris and ride. The weather was perfect to be outside and I was glad I got to see Rusty. It was nice to have a relaxing weekend for a change.  

Laminitic horse and a mysterious bull

Today was AWESOME! Wasn’t sure I would ever say that about pathology. I had a horse with severe laminitis and we did cross sections of the legs to look at the bones and it was really cool. Here is a picture of what a normal cross section should look like on the right: http://www.equinepainmatters.com/my-horse/laminitis.php and here is a picture of what my poor horse looked like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Founder_severe_rotation.JPG The last bone in the hoof (P3) has rotated away from the hoof wall and is close to perforating the sole of the hoof. This is an excruciatingly painful disease and is the reason this horse was euthanized. She is in a better place now.

Another student had a really cool case with a massive shorthorn bull that had been diagnosed with a stricture in his intestine. On necropsy we found that the cecum had mysteriously wrapped itself around a piece of intestine and adhered itself to the outside. Everyone was baffled over this and as far as the clinicians are aware, this has never before been documented. Kind of a mystery case but it was still cool to see!

Napoleon, sugar, and alpaca fever

Today was a fairly unremarkable first day of the rotation cloaked in all the typical awkward first day moments. Not knowing what is going on has never been a favorite past time of mine, but I digress. Knowing that many of you would rather be spared the details of anything I do in the necropsy lab, I’ll suffice it to say that my first case was a rather large and furry alpaca appropriately named Napoleon Dynamite. And top on the differential list for causes of death for Napoleon was “alpaca fever”, something that I had never heard of. Nor my classmates. Nor the resident. Nor the faculty member. So being a diligent student I spent my evening researching the elusive disease. I won’t bore you with details; it isn’t very exciting anyway.

But overall the day was a good one. We got out at a decent time and I was actually able to eat dinner at dinnertime, something that didn’t happen at all the last rotation. The sour note to my meal, or should I say the bland note, was realizing that my roommate had mistakenly bought “no sugar added” applesauce…an error that I had made last year. Of course I didn’t realize the problem until after I had already dumped a large serving onto my plate and taken a big bite. If you’ve ever had “no sugar added” applesauce you know what I mean. It doesn’t even resemble the normal stuff. The last time we had this problem, we tried to compensate by adding copious amounts of sugar to our servings. It doesn’t help much. If you’ve never had “no sugar added” applesauce, trust me, you don’t want to. There are few food items in this world that I classify as nasty and that is one of them. Just don’t do it.

As if I have nothing else to do...

So you're probably wondering how I have time to blog when many of you have heard me say on numerous occasions "I can't; I'm busy; I have school." But after finishing my third rotation of clinics, I realized that many people that I love are often sitting in the dark wondering what has been going on in my life and I thought doing a blog would maybe help keep people informed and maybe I wouldn't feel so guilty when I realize that it's been over a week and I haven't talked to my mother. No worries Mom, I promise I'll still call :) For me it's a lot simpler to sit down at the end of a day and type out a few words regarding what I've been up to rather than try to remember a week's worth of details in one phone call. I also thought that this would be a great way to remember all the craziness that goes on during my clinical year and to document my descent (why do people say descent, wouldn't it be ascent?) into adulthood and the real world. And just maybe a small part of me misses journaling and writing...

So on that note, I start my 4th rotation tomorrow: Applied Pathology. For those of you who don't know what that means (which included me, until I read the 18 page syllabus) I will basically be doing necropsy for two weeks. While this is a necessary part of education and should prove to be informative and educational, I will definitely be missing the live animals. But, I'll stick with our clinical year quotation: You can survive anything for two weeks.