Friday, September 21, 2007

it's over

my first trip through necropsy has come to a close. i wish i had something wise to say, but really - i'm just grateful to be moving on to something else. even if that something else is radiology.

things i'm excited about in late september and october:

the avett brothers concert next weekend
the football game tomorrow night and having seats on the 50 yard line
my next block (after radiology) has med I = small animal medicine = YAY
band of horses has a new album out in october
my favorite chinese restaurant reopens oct 3rd after being bought out

my life is full of small excitements. i did a cheetah today in necropsy, by the way. it came in from the zoo. raging carcinomatosis. that means raging diffuse malignant cancer. this cat was filled from diaphragm to colon with hard white nodules of cancer. the liver was obscured by bumps. the spleen had undergone osseous metaplasia - which means that the cancer cells, for whatever odd reasons cancer cells have, decided to become bone. the spleen was so hard you could bang it on the table. it was quite dramatic. unfortunately, said cheetah showed up at 5pm, when we were finished with all the day's work. so we had to stay and do the cheetah. i didn't get home till 7ish. ah well. that's vet school, eh?

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

theme of the week

today was a vast improvement over both monday and tuesday. despite the fact that since i missed parasit, i have to make up ALL eight of the cases, instead of the one i would otherwise have been responsible for, i'm pretty mellow and happy right now. i had a chat with the pathologist - she said she knew i was being flippant when i said 'i hate necropsy' - and she wasn't aiming her comments at me...not really. also, her cat was euthanized yesterday, so she was in a rough place...and i - AS PER USUAL - took her comments totally personally. i'm such a freak.

i'm actually acclimated to the stench and gore now. i did a big horse today, with the help of a rotation-mate (usually takes 2-3 people per large animal). it was freshly dead but by no means pleasantly aromatic. no problems. no vomiting in my mouth. i'm finally ok. and i think i'll be ok next time i get down to path (which isn't till january or so). everything else is going smoothly too. i did a bearded dragon yesterday, which was interesting because it was very different than what i've been accustomed to doing.

i wish i could be a little more equilibrated...generally. i hit a small rough patch, and i just lost my cool. i felt so bad on monday and tuesday. but, it all turned out fine. and no one (besides ms bitchy) really seems to care about that patch. or even really noticed it. i always take everything too hard and too personally. even constructive criticism makes me feel like a failure. ah well. at least i've learned to pick myself up and move on, right?

i started this post with a point, but i've long since forgotten what it was. i have to give a presentation tomorrow for parasitology. i decided to do canine heartworm infection in people. yes, you can catch heartworms from dogs. well, really - you catch them from mosquitoes that caught them from dogs. but you catch my drift. it's really rather interesting. i'll spare you the gross details and pictures of my case report - which was a man with a filarial worm in his EYE. floating around in his vitreous humor (the jelly in the back of your eye). i kid you not. i know. repulsive.

but isn't repulsive the theme of the week?
today was a vast improvement over both monday and tuesday. despite the fact that since i missed parasit, i have to make up ALL eight of the cases, instead of the one i would otherwise have been responsible for, i'm pretty mellow and happy right now. i had a chat with the pathologist - she said she knew i was being flippant when i said 'i hate necropsy' - and she wasn't aiming her comments at me...not really. also, her cat was euthanized yesterday, so she was in a rough place...and i - AS PER USUAL - took her comments totally personally. i'm such a freak.

i'm actually acclimated to the stench and gore now. i did a big horse today, with the help of a rotation-mate (usually takes 2-3 people per large animal). it was freshly dead but by no means pleasantly aromatic. no problems. no vomiting in my mouth. i'm finally ok. and i think i'll be ok next time i get down to path (which isn't till january or so). everything else is going smoothly too. i did a bearded dragon yesterday, which was interesting because it was very different than what i've been accustomed to doing.

i wish i could be a little more equilibrated...generally. i hit a small rough patch, and i just lost my cool. i felt so bad on monday and tuesday. but, it all turned out fine. and no one (besides ms bitchy) really seems to care about that patch. or even really noticed it. i always take everything too hard and too personally. even constructive criticism makes me feel like a failure. ah well. at least i've learned to pick myself up and move on, right?

i started this post with a point, but i've long since forgotten what it was. i have to give a presentation tomorrow for parasitology. i decided to do canine heartworm infection in people. yes, you can catch heartworms from dogs. well, really - you catch them from mosquitoes that caught them from dogs. but you catch my drift. it's really rather interesting. i'll spare you the gross details and pictures of my case report - which was a man with a filarial worm in his EYE. floating around in his vitreous humor (the jelly in the back of your eye). i kid you not. i know. repulsive.

but isn't repulsive the theme of the week?

Monday, September 17, 2007

bad monday. bad, BAD monday.

you probably think i'm referring to some rotting carcass - deer, cow, horse, pig, whatever. but actually, necropsy itself was very low-key today. we only had a puppy (another acute death - but this time with actual history of disease) and a 7 year old cat. no, necropsy wasn't what made this monday absolute shite.

so, friday - our parasit professor says that he won't be here on monday. i think - yay, no parasit lab! then he says that the lab tech will teach. only i either didn't hear that remark or it was something i heard and mentally discarded - for whatever obscure reason my brain had. so, i woke up this morning, refreshed, relaxed. i didn't have to be at school until necropsy at 1pm. when i was ready to go, i went to grab my keys. but said keys were absent. i looked and looked. and looked. then i called jim, frantic to get to school for necropsy. luckily, he came home and got me, though the keys were not and have not been located. so, not a great start to the day. however, i still arrived early for necropsy and seated myself in the conference room, where we round every day before starting. in walks a classmate. **EDITED** looks at me, and says 'so..you're just not going to join us for parasitology lab anymore?' and i'm completely dumbfounded. so i stammered out, 'well, we didn't have parasit lab today.' she looks at me and say (and i quote) 'oh we had lab today' - again, i still wasn't catching on, so i repeated my stupid statement, only to receive the same answer. finally, one of my other rotation mates gently reminded me that the lab tech was teaching. a little light flickered on dimly in the back of my brain, and i thought ... 'shit!' so, obviously i felt BRILLIANT. i felt like absolute pond scum for letting my rotation mates down, they probably had to do extra work due to my absence.

oh but wait, it gets better. i might have mentioned before (here in my blog, mind you) that i hate necropsy. however, i've been keeping the whining about the smell and hard work to an absolute minimum on the necropsy floor. in fact, i've tried - while i'm there and working - to have a positive attitude and keep making jokes - even when the gore and stench is getting to me. but i slipped ONCE and said that 'i hate necropsy' in front of one of the pathologists. it was the day of the rotting pig, i was cramping badly and my back ached with that slow burn that only a menstrual cycle can inflict. this pathologist, i wasn't on with her last week, but she's on with us this week. and i love her. i think she's great. she's smart, funny, and her classes were some of my favorites throughout vet school. furthermore, she's always been super-friendly to me, even once bringing me into her office to ask my opinion about some slides she was using for the 2nd year's test. i thought she liked me. but she sits down at the conference table, centers me in her sites, and says 'to start with, i'd like to say that i don't want to hear anyone say that they hate necropsy. whining about it won't change anything, and we all don't want to hear it.' she says that while staring at me. i was humiliated and near tears at this point.

anyone who has read my blog knows how seriously i take clinics, how hard i work at it, how much i've been studying and trying to be diligent about whatever i'm doing, no matter how much i dislike it. i haven't been late or missed a single day of my clinical year. and then, all at once, i seem to make as many mistakes as possible in one day.

after that, necropsy was fine. the professor was fun, as usual - sunny and helpful, showing us the way she likes her necropsies done (which is different than last week's pathologist - by a lot!), making jokes, and offering constructive advice and praise. she was super-nice. it was just such a rough start to the week - when already i am struggling with what i'm doing. and i hate, hate, hate appearing irresponsible. i carry around a lot of guilt with me because i feel like i've always been irresponsible, to some degree. sure, in high school, i always worked - starting when i was 15. but i never took any of these jobs seriously. they were minimum wage - small points in my life marked merely by their unimportance. later, during college, i was the same way. i'd wait tables for a while, then just quit. and post-undergrad, i worked in a medical office. now, the circumstances were extenuating, it was a terrible place to work, but i walked out one day and just never went back. so i've always felt bad. that i don't have a good firm work ethic. that i've never learned to stick to something, if for nothing else than to be responsible. so i've taken clinics very, very seriously - always being early, always having everything completed on time, or well-ahead, being diligent about studying nightly, even when i'm exhausted. i've worked hard. i am working hard, every single day. but days like today make me feel irresponsible and childish all over again.

*sigh* i'm just glad today is over and i can refocus and actually get my head in the right place for tomorrow

Sunday, September 16, 2007

welcome back to alice's adventures in wonderland

and by that i mean welcome back to my 2 weeks in hell traipsing through the corpses of the dead and sometimes rotting.

i must hate necropsy more than even i realize. i've been uncharacteristically depressed all day, weeping for reasons that are a little obscure, even to me. i have been reading 'the memory keeper's daughter' - which, while beautifully written and amazingly vivid, is almost stunningly depressing. i also have been so busy with this rotation that i've seen very little of my close vet school buddy - who generally helps to keep me somewhat centered in all the madness. on top of that, my other closest friend in the world is in a deep state of depression and has pretty much isolated herself. so i'm feeling melancholy and lonely. couple that with dreams of losing my intestines through my body wall, and well...i'm not quite sane these days.

anyway, it probably doesn't help that tomorrow, i plunge back into (pun totally intended) necropsy for week 2. despite the fact that parasit rounds for tomorrow were cancelled, and i don't have to be at school until the late hour of 1pm, i am still dreading it. but it IS getting better, just so ya'll know. there's a certain rhythm one develops when dealing with something as dreadful as necropsy every day. and while i by no means like it, i can face the thought of next week without nearly the trepidation that last week brought upon me.

friday wasn't as bad as i thought. we were busy - we had an elk that was hit by a semi. why, you might ask, do we need to determine cause of death in an elk that was smeared by an 18 wheeler? shouldn't cause of death be fairly easy to identify? actually, we're looking for chronic wasting disease - which is found in elk and deer. it's caused by a prion, the same type of agent that causes mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy). we're also looking for meningeal worms...
besides the splattered elk (who actually looked pretty good for having come out on the losing end of the elk vs. semi encounter), we had a 10 week old female boxer puppy that was found inexplicably dead when the owners came home, and an 8 year old golden retriever with hypothyroidism that mysteriously died. we were actually all finished up at 3:59pm. 4pm is the cut-off for bringing new necropsies to us. guess what showed up at 3:59?? yeah, a recently deceased llama. so, we had to do it, too. but since we were all finished, it only took about 30 mins for all 6 of us to collect samples. i still got home by around 5:45.

now, i'm sitting here faced with the difficulty of writing a necropsy report on the previously mentioned boxer puppy. we opened her up with the expectation of finding a huge, obvious cause of death - ruptured stomach, electrocution, choking to death, something - anything - but it would be obvious. yeah, right. not happening. the pup was the picture of health. beautiful to cut up (although sad). so now, i'm sitting here trying to come up with differentials for an acutely dead but previously active, healthy appearing boxer puppy that doesn't involve the 10 roundworms i found in her small intestine. any ideas???

by the way, if you're ever overwhelmingly annoyed by your parrots you can give them gobstoppers. parrots produce very little saliva, so they don't really get up enough spit to get the sugar off - and none of mine are big enough to break them open and eat them. but man are they quiet for like 30 min spans! course, i wouldn't recommend this for you people with cockatoos and macaws -but for something timneh african grey or smaller, knock yourselves out!

Friday, September 14, 2007

andrew bird, half nelson, metronomes.

andrew bird, in concert, last monday. eclectic. electric.

half nelson, DVD, tonight. excellent.

doctors, metronomes, forever. elegaic.

i dreamt last night that i was disemboweled. in the dream, it was night. a blue, eerie half-light suffused everything. my jejunum and part of my large intestine were exposed. i needed help but was embarrassed, so i kept hiding them under my shirt. i would show them to selected people, but only because i was terrified that i couldn't find someone to fix me. i went to a hospital but was informed that it would be at least an hour before a doctor could treat me. i kept noticing that my intestine seemed to be tearing (although it looked like my pancreas).

i know it sounds funny, but it was exquisitely solitary. i felt so alone and frightened. at one point, i was in stands - at a football field. and there were people everywhere, but i felt so scared and alone. i was trying to avoid everyone and still find help.

trying to explain the intensity of feeling associated with dreams and nightmares to someone else is utterly impossible. it was the most profound feeling of loss - the loss of self (apparently via my jejunum), the loss of other people, the impending loss of life.

i awoke and laid in the darkness, afraid. i'm not sure of what. just afraid.

necropsy is seriously f*cking with my brain.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

i don't hate necropsy anymore

haha. made you look. i still hate it - more than i did last time i posted in a semi-hysterical state. wednesday was actually worse than tuesday. we had 3 cows and a goat to cut up. THREE COWS. do you know how much work cutting up 3 cows is? we can't just cut them up, peek inside, and be done. it involves removing every organ, as i've said before. and then - the cows must be dismembered into chunks that can be disposed of easily. god. it SUCKS. when i got home yesterday, my back ached terribly from sawing the goat's head off. and i couldn't expunge the smell of rotting and death from my mind's nostril (if you have a mind's eye, then why not a mind's nostril? i certainly seem to possess one...)

furthermore, the last 3 nights, i've gotten home at 6:30-7. now, if i were a) on a rotation i liked or b) on any other rotation - like neuro or ophtho or med then i would expect late nights - far in excess of merely 7pm. but necropsy?? keeping us at school till 6pm?? and i've had to write a necropsy report every night and do parasitology homework. when i come home from pathology, all i want to do is fall onto the couch and pass out. but i can't. it takes me - the WRITER - 3 hours or more to properly research and write my necropsy report.

but sometimes i believe in god, and that he is merciful. in the morning hours today, while doing parasitology rounds, we were informed that we had 2 horses, a cow, and a sugar glider to do this afternoon. again, 3 large animals. we were all near tears when we heard the news. the last 3 days have been so rough. and then we got to path rounds before going to the amphitheater, and it turns out that one horse was an optional necropsy and the other a disposal only. and the cow never showed up (it was an outside case). so, we had NOTHING but the sugar glider. you can imagine my intense elation.

i'm sure it will rapidly wane, as tomorrow is friday. and fridays are -- well, fridays. it's gonna be entertaining. to say the least.