Vet School Series: UP, obstetrics and Kalamazoo; living it up on the farm!

I can only write a quick email;

I am eating very well, lamb, lamb hot dogs, this isn't as strange as it might seem because we work with lambs all day (we just think of the really irritating ones that injured us or were reaaaally bad mothers); I've had much wrestling practice, and the comment was once made, if Jesus is our Shepherd, as sheep that means we are really stupid.  They can be very stupid, but also very loving and sweet.  I am developing muscles in places I didn't know existed.  I'm also developing skills in sprinting, wrestling and lunging, not to mention hurdling.

We get to do a lot of vet med, but also a lot of plain old framework (re-filling waters, rebedding hay, etc.. We've done more castrations than I care to remember, and now I feel like a mini pharmacy; we use about 2 drugs, a pain medication (I'm a big fan of this one) and an antibiotic.  We use garbage bags as our surgical field.  Okay, some interesting stories, certainly can't write 'em all up.  In the U.P. (for those of you not from Michigan, this is slang for Upper Peninsula, which could also mean "back woods") in the horizontal rain, about 12:00 AM; there are two of us outside, after a 17 hour day of wrangling, pulling lambs etc. there was another vet student and myself, she's about my size and we are alone.  We saw a light in the sky; a red light/glow like a city.  I said, "oh isn't that a pretty sight, it must be Sault Ste. Marie.  Then we see a light swinging around  and say, "maybe that's the lighthouse, that's cool" then when the woman came to do the midnight to 6 shift, we told her of our neat discovery; she laughs and says that's the maximum security prison about 3 miles away; but don't worry, the escaped prisoners wouldn't want to walk through the swamp.

Procedure-wise, I straightened out a dystocia which had 2 lambs trying to come out at the same time with their heads twisted and mom and the twins are doing fine : ). We have also tried to repair broken legs; done tons of bottle feeding (we now have lambs that think we are mom and call for us and follow us around); fixed a prolapsed uterus (uterus that was inside out) pulled and tried to fix multiple dystopias.  The prolapsed uterus called us to dig back into our minds for something about a wine bottle our professor told us.  We weren't sure if you were supposed to drink wine if you were fixing it, or the wine bottle was somehow involved in the fix.  Times like these inform you as to what you pay attention to in class...

We pulled and worked with many dystocia, humanely euthanized some animals and just made some more comfortable.  After I was trying to work out a difficult dystocia yesterday (Mother's Day), I got a whole new appreciation for natural childbirth; my first response after pulling my wrist and arm of what seemed like a high pressure chamber was, "wow, if that hurts my wrist, how must that feel for her."  I have a whole new appreciation for the crushing pressure and what our mom's went through for us.  Well, we've done a lot more, but I gotta go....meg

Approaching the Easter Season

I'm not sure who to attribute this to, but I think it is appropriate to share; let me know if you know who the author is:

The first Easter didn't happen at a church.  It happened outside an empty tomb, while all the disciples were sequestered in a home, grief stricken, and wondering what was going on.  So we're all going to be keeping things pretty Biblical this Easter.


Yep, this Lenten season has been different.  It has been challenging.  I relaxed some of my dietary restrictions I was going to give myself because having difficulty getting groceries was real.  Going dairy free and being restrictive when supplies are restrictive just was not what I felt called to do.  Having patience with our families, pets and all those around us, that was what I tried to focus more on.  Telling people who keep the groceries coming, "Thank you and you are essential."  Remembering the difference between needs and wants.  That was not what I had started my pre-Lenten journey wanting to focus on, but that's where I ended up.

Watching Tenebrae and Holy Thursday Mass online is just not the same.  As Catholics, we are "tactile" we need touch, smell, the incorporation of the senses.  Yes, there is a sorrow for what we are longing for, but in that, I can unite myself to the disciples.  The uncertainty, the sorrow, the anxiety.  I can unite myself with them in hope as well.  Without having to book a babysitter and the ability to "pause" services, I'm not spending half of the service trying to get my son to pay attention.  I have access through the internet to a Tenebrae service in Singapore and one in a beautiful cathedral in Chicago.  I can attend virtually a service at St. Patrick's cathedral and expose my son and family to more than I would be able to in normal circumstances with the realization that when the new "normal" returns, my whole family will have a greater appreciation for what we have missed.  While we can't experience the presence of the Eucharist in it's physical form, we may in the biblical- give thanks.

Let us all give thanks.  No matter if there's job loss, illness, financial woes or parental meltdowns that children are not going back to school this year, we all have the best thing to give thanks for- Jesus.

Have a Blessed Easter Season!

There are some silver linings...

The times have been changing for everyone.  We have all been forced to be adaptable.  We veterinarians are a fairly adaptable specimen, but we also like things the way we like them (like everybody).  The ongoing joke is that seeing pets, but not the people is every veterinarian's dream!

That's not quite true and I really do miss the one on one I get with pet owners.  It also makes certain aspects of my job downright difficult to impossible.  I can't demonstrate how to do things over the phone, I can't read body language or express empathy very well over the phone.  Everyone's going through challenges right now and even though veterinarians are considered essential workers and are fortunate enough to be able to work and get pay, there's stress for everyone.  There's the stress of small business owners, the stress of uncertainty and the stress of shortages.  We know that we share most of our equipment and supplies with human medicine.  We know that they are a greater priority than we are.  We also know that an important component of human health is the companionship and relationship they have with their pets.

There are worries that pets are going to suffer just like the rest of us.  Unfortunately, decisions such as, "I'm going to do everything I can to avoid the human hospitals," means that we are going to have a harder time treating animals who are riskier to handle, like anxious or mean dogs and cats.  We do the best we can, but our paradigm has changed.

To the silver lining... now, with so many people home, more people are adopting pets, older cats and dogs, and especially puppies are becoming new members of households, helping during this time of isolation.

People are just nicer now.  I'm sorry to say we aren't always that nice during normal times, but overall I've noticed everyone seems to be more patient and have more of a "can do" attitude.  Maybe it's because our expectations have been totally dropped.  I don't know.  Obviously I hope this pandemic goes away soon, but I hope the silver linings stay with us for a while.

Vet School Series- Gen Med and Fear

These are only a few tales; many I am forced to leave out for confidentiality reasons...

So I was giving my vaccine spiel to a woman who hadn't had a pet for 15 years, talking about the diseases that vaccines protected from, and misspoke, talking about the feline equivalent of canine distemper vaccine.  The woman looked at me with wide eyes and said, "there's a vaccine for bad behavior?  Why don't they have that in humans yet?"

Fear:

Our professor has a reputation for scaring everybody, to the point that grown men are nauseous and can't get to sleep at night and the consensus of the student body is that she's bi-polar.  As she's telling me we are going to meet up to go work at a shelter )and it's just me and her), the first thought that popped into my mind was, "yay though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil."  I turned to our ex-Army intern and shared this thought with him and asked, "Is this normal?"  He said not only was it normal, it was called for.  Later on, when we were at the shelter, looking at animals, we looked at the kittens first.  If you didn't know already, it's VERY hard to determine the sex of small kittens.  She asked me to sex a kitten.  I wasn't right of course.  Next we looked at a full grown dog.  I immediately said, "female" which was the right answer, but then looked at her face and terror came over me, it was a terror that one wouldn't even face on the witness stand if it was a mafia murder case, "well, maybe it's a boy, I don't know."  My face lights up cherry red and then I am told, "she is most definitely a female who recently had puppies."  Case closed.  Still haven't gotten my grade back on that rotation yet.



2020 Update- I did get a great grade in that class.  Apparently because we were all frightened of her most of us students were equally awkward.  She typically picked a student she didn't like and failed them, there didn't really seem to be rhyme or reason to it.  I said the St. Michael The Archangel prayer every day I went into clinics and I got a 3.5.