A Vet Student's Diatribe

You know, at the beginning of the school year, I stupidly told my sister that I thought my classes were too easy and wanted them to get harder. Boy, was I naive. Now, I'm in way over my head. I'm behind in all my classes (despite the fact that I've been studying constantly since the first day of classes) and have quizzes and tests looming ahead of me in the next few days and weeks. My bacteriology teacher has been lecturing about a million unrelated things in class and when I asked her how to study for the test, she told me "This isn't undergrad anymore," like I was a little girl. In histology today, we flew through the whole nervous system in one day where the same cells have different names and functions depending on whether they are in the brain or not, and yesterday my anatomy professor told me that I would probably double my vocabulary by the end of this year. Have any of you ever been in anatomy before? Mom, I know you have. This stuff is RIDICULOUS! I not only have to know hundreds of names and parts of bones, muscles, and nerves, but I have to know how they all connect and what action they have on which parts of the body! I've been reading my 4 anatomy texts for days, and I really don't think I'm any farther along than when I started.
Before I sound like too much of a whiner, let me say that I really am learning a lot and liking vet school a lot. But, it's just started to get really really hard. I'm not surprised about this turn of events, actually. It's not like I didn't know I would have to learn all of this, it's just that they give us so little time to do it...plus I really want to learn the stuff well so I don't kill your dog or cat in a few years. Yikes! I think my brain is going to explode. We're going home (to Rock Hill) this weekend for Labor Day and hopefully my mom can give me some tips...she got an A in anatomy, if I remember correctly.

-Shirin

PS. I'll give a dollar to anyone who can identify what organ this is (below) and what those dark purple things are in the middle. Good luck! (an extra 50 cents if you can tell me what type of cell is lining the lumen of this structure).

The Big Score

You are looking at what is probably my greatest garage sale score in my lifetime. As most of you know, I used to go to garage sales fairly regularly to buy stuff and then sell it on eBay. I haven't been too much in the past year or so for many reasons. However, Shirin was notified of a big yard sale that another vet student was having and told me about it. We kind of need another computer chair so I went mainly to see if I could pick one up. I discovered shortly after arriving that the guy had the greatest collection of classic Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games I've ever been fortunate enough to encounter. He also didn't want very much for them so I snatched them up. I also grabbed some hard cover Harry Potter books (perennial ebay favorites), some classic pc games, a few electronics, and some stuff just for me (Die Fledermaus cds, a biology book, a lamp, and some classic sci-fi book). How much did I pay for this splendor? After some bargaining I handed the man 5 crisp $20 bills. "Oh no," you say. "Gabriel, you paid too much." No, no, calm down. The circa 1980 Dungeons and Dragons books will fetch at least $300 at auction (I think $500 is possible), not to mention the other solid sellers. I'm quite excited. I probably won't have this stuff up on eBay today, but you guys can check next week (we have link to our ebay auctions on the right side of this blog page) to see how they do. Garage sales are amazing, really the only good reason for waking up early on weekend mornings.

Gabriel

72 hours post surgery

Two days of rest have been amazingly cathartic. I'm operating at about 75% normal capacity, at least as far as moving around, putting my clothes on, etc. There has been surprisingly little pain. I took one pain pill the first night I was home and haven't needed one since. I still have a slightly bloated feeling (due to the air the surgeon filled my abdomen with) but nothing in my bowel area hurts. My only area of pain is my upper back, which I assume is hurting because I'm walking funny (because of my not using my ab muscles), and that pain isn't too bad anymore. Fortunately my job doesn't require any manual labor so I've been able to jump right back into it, so I've had plenty to do with all my time spent at home.

My experience in the hospital was pretty good. I think my respect for doctors and interest in medicine makes an emergency like I had more bearable. I got to have my first cat scan. I had to drink a bunch of barium. I also had to take a bunch of drugs. The pain was very intense on Monday, and it took a long time for them to give me any medicine, but it was sooooooo good when it went away (which was a few minutes after the nausea that the pain medicine induced went away).

I have an appointment with my surgeon on Tuesday, during which I'm planning on having Shirin do a hand-spring off of my abdomen (to prove how well I'm doing). I'll let everyone know how it goes. Cheers,

Gabriel

An Adventure, Of Sorts

Hi everyone. We have been away from the blog for a few days for good (or bad) reason...Gabriel just had to have emergency surgery to remove his appendix! The week started out normally with me going to class and him staying home on Mon morning, but when we spoke on the telephone during my lunch break, he said that he had had severe abdominal pain since breakfast and that I needed to take him to the doctor. I pedaled home on my bike as fast as possible and rushed him to the ER. It took several hours, a CT scan (with drinking lots of barium first, yum), some IV narcotics & antibiotics, an X-ray, and an overnight observation stay in the hospital for the doctors to diagnose him with appendicitis. Meanwhile, I slept the night in the most uncomfortable chair in the world and froze my butt off in the ER, but who's complaining? (I'm really not trying to sound negative; I would do it again if I had to, but the truth is that the hospital seems to try to make you as uncomfortable as possible). My sweet father-in-law drove up in the middle of the night (arriving at 4 AM Tues) to be with Gabriel during the day, allowing me to go to class. I even got a 100 on my first exam in histology! But, I digress...
Gabriel had his appendectomy on Tues afternoon and we spent the night in the hospital last night too. Gene (Gabriel's dad) and I brought him home today during one of my breaks, and he's happily recovering quite well. I took a lot of pictures, so I'll post some of them below.
Since I've never been a wife before, I've never had a sick husband, and I have to tell you, it's a very scary thing. Who would've thought I would be rushing my 28 year old, healthy hubby to the ER doubled over in pain? Not me...but, it turned out OK and we'll never have to do it again, hopefully...at least for his appendix.

Picture time:
Pics from the ER & surgery room:

Gabriel in pain

















Gabriel examining his IV catheter:
















He had to drink both of those bottles of white barium for his CT scan:

















Being wheeled from the ER to his room (doped up):
















Gabriel in his room drinking his clear liquid diet (I brought him strained veggie soup)
















Gabriel's daddy (tired after driving all night)

















My "bed"





















The incisions:
















Feeling good and on pain meds after surgery (eating a banana popsicle):


















So, he's doing well, and he's home, so life can get back to normal.
Thanks to EVERYONE that we've been in contact with over the last few days. Your support was priceless.
-Shirin

The Good Old Days

Here are some pictures that I just got from my dear friend Sarah from when we all went to Lake Eden Arts Festival in May, for a weekend full of nature, camping, music, dancing, and friends. (Poor Gabriel didn't get to hear any punk music, but he did learn how to swing dance!) I knew it was my last time going for a while, since I'd be starting school this Aug...I'm sure gonna miss it.







-Shirin

What Gabriel Does While I Study

Ha ha ha. I'm already laughing about this post. I just wanted to show everyone what Gabriel spent about 6 hours doing yesterday. He (the self-proclaimed online gamer) probably thinks this is totally normal, but I couldn't believe how long he spent blowing up bad guys yesterday.
(Notice his new wireless mouse...he can rest it on his belly so he doesn't even have to get a tired arm! Ha ha ha...sorry, I think everything about these pictures is funny, including his headphones!) I love you, Bubby.
-Shirin

Everyday Life

Hi everyone. Sorry it's been awhile since we've posted. I've been studying and going to class, and Gabriel's been TCB (taking care of business), as they say. He's finally got a couple of loans to work on in his new home office and is in charge of basically everything else too, like paying bills, doing laundry, and calling companies to sort things out. My life is pretty much totally centered on my schoolwork and meeting Gabriel throughout the day to eat at the cafeteria and go to the gym. We've been riding our bikes everywhere around campus and town and have decided to try not to drive at all, if we can help it. Last night, we went downtown to a bar where my new vet friend was having a party, and we were able to ride the bus to a few blocks within the place. It's a great system and we're loving it. We're so much more active than before, but we still haven't lost any weight (we bought a scale), which we think is because we are eating so much at the cafeteria. Oh well, maybe the pounds will drop slowly.
Last night we rode our bikes to the pool and swam laps. Here are some pictures:
This is me getting ready to ride to the pool:

Unfortunately, while trying to adjust my swim bag while on my bike, I fell and got injured (my dad always says I like to show everyone my injuries, so here it is):

Luckily, my sweet husband was able to carry both of our bags:

So, life is good and we're having fun. Back to studying.
-Shirin

Shirin gets a white coat.

Shirin has already written a bit on being officially inducted into the veterinary profession, but they had the "white coat" ceremony this weekend and I wanted to post some pictures of it.

Here is Shirin struggling to get her coat on:



Here are the proud parents and the future Dr. Modaresi:



And some more pictures (it's late, descriptions are hard):

A visit with the extended family

Shirin and I met up with her mom and dad in Lawrenceville, GA (about 40 minutes west of Athens) to spend the afternoon with Shirin's cousin (Dr. Modaresi's niece) and her husband. Her name is Tannaz and his name is Masih. I met them once before when we stopped off at their place on a trip to Atlanta. Masih is a podiatrist and Tannaz is training to become a chiropractor. I really have enjoyed spending time with them on both trips, they're very smart and funny. However, I must warn the non-Persian readers of this blog...If you are lucky enough to enjoy their hospitality you must know that the Persians surpass even my Italian relatives in the stuff-you-with-food category. You just can't get out of there without an 8 or 9 course meal and 3000+ calories. Being a big fan of eating though, I don't mind so much.

After dinner, Masih and Dr. Modaresi regaled us with impressions of genies and/or religious gurus. Fun fun.

-Gabriel

Now I'm Official

Hi everyone. I just got back from two long, hot days of vet school orientation. A lot lot lot of information was presented to us about what we were to expect (a 20 credit hour semester load), the books we really needed and didn't need (too bad they had already given us a long list of expensive books to buy over the summer...thanks a lot, people!), and how we were supposed to dress and behave as official reprentatives of the vet profession. Basically, I have to dress up for class, which I'm going to hate, and never get sloppy drunk in public, which I never do anyway, so I guess it evens out. We even took the veterinarians oath today, yikes!
The 95 other students are a varied group. The vast majority of us are white southern girls, but we do have 25 white guys, 2 African-American girls, 1 Chinese girl, 1 Puerto Rican guy (who used to be a dance instructor, ooo lah lah), 1 guy from Trinidad/Tobago, 1 lesbian, and 15 vegetarians. My instructors are much LESS southern and seem to be a very cool, funny group of VERY smart poeple. They all were very welcoming and helpful and, if I ever felt nervous before, all my fears were allayed.
The most fun part, by far, has been all the outdoor-get-to-know-each-other games we've played, including "Turkey Bump" where we all had to hold on to our own ankles and walk around pushing each other down...sort of a crazy wrestling match among 96 semi-athletic people. Needless to say, it was pretty much chaos from the beginning, but I am very proud to announce, that I outlasted all 71 of the girls and 22 of the guys to come in third place...what a proud moment in my veterinary career! (I'll have to incorporate this new game into the Beal/Geaslin/Modaresi family tradition...whatcha think, Sam, Rita, Casey, Janice, Cruz, Bren, Ashley, Nicole, & Mamaw?)
Anyway, enough about me, but I'm including two pictures of my tired, sweaty self with my large stack of textbooks (I have more coming). Ta ta.
-Shirin

Let the Big Dawg Eat.

The title of this post is the motto of UGA's cafeterias. These pics are from our dinner last night and our breakfast this morning. We're enjoying the wide selection of food. The worst part of it is that it takes me about 5 minutes to walk around and decide what to eat. The cafeterias are very veggie friendly. In the pictures you can see soy-hotdogs and soy-breakfast patties. You can also see that at UGA, even the waffles have school spirit.

-Gabriel

Book Mooch

To continue this blog's short tradition of bringing you coolest things from the internet I want everyone to go to Bookmooch.com and start swapping your unwanted books for desired ones. This is a great non profit web page that lets people list their library of unwanted books. Others can peruse your list or search for specific books across the whole organization. When someone wants one of your books they send a mooch request you can accept or reject it. There is a point system involved to keep your sent/received book ratios equitable.

I thought it was strange at first that you have to pay to send other people your books, but then I thought that it was the best way. It's great because no money has to exchange hands between people or the website and with the ability to always reject a request it's not like you could lose a bunch of money without receiving any books.

I've listed a bunch of my books and had two requested; I granted one and rejected the other guy because he lived in Tel Aviv (not out of Mel Gibson style anti-Semitism, I just didn't want to pay the extra shipping). I've also made one book request and had it granted. Start mooching now!

-Gabriel

Super Duper Computer

Just a quick note: do all of you know that Gabriel just built an awesome computer? It's really fast and has tons of memory, all measurements I don't want to bore you with, but it's basically able to handle as many tasks as you can give it without slowing down. It's also super cool with glowing fluorescent lights. Super cool! It would sell on the internet for over $1000, so if anyone wants to make an offer, we're all ears. :)
-Shirin

Pooped

This is a lovely photo of me after my first workout session at the local jiu-jitsu school. It's a pretty accomplished school; they've sent 2 of their fighters to the spike tv show "The Ultimate Fighter" (Forrest Griffin and Rory Singer for those of you that know the show) and have an active competition team. If you ignore the fact that I almost puked from the workout (I'm not in great shape)
I had a pretty good showing, beating everyone with whom I wrestled.

Despite their not-so-subtle name of "The Hardcore Gym" they seemed like fairly nice guys. I'll most likely join up. The head instructor told me, "Your grappling is awesome but your standup looks like crap." So, I get to train with the competition team on jiu-jitsu days and train with the second from the bottom guys on boxing/kickboxing days. I'm excited to be training again and getting back in shape.

-Gabriel

Two sharp looking celebrities

Okay, try and guess why we would post a picture of Joey Fatone and a picture of Alyssa Milano on our blog. Really, take a second and look at the pictures and see if you can figure it out...Well, the reason is that those are apparently the two celebrities that we most look like according to myheritage.com. The way it works is by you uploading a photo of yourself to their database and then their software analyzes it and compares it to a database of thousands of celebrity photos. It then shows you which celebrities you look like.

In our experience it was pretty accurate, though it does throw in a few strange ones every once and a while. It recommends trying out several photos and seeing which celebrities show up multiple times. For me Joey Fatone was on nearly every list (which matches what nearly a million people have told me). Shirin had more of a mix, but Ms. Milano showed up quite a bit. Rounding out hers and my list were Jake Gyllenhaal, David Arquette, and Jason Biggs for me and Scarlett Johansson, Grace Kelly, and Leelee Sobieski for her.

We had so much fun playing with this, you have to check it out. Here is the link:

Celebrity facial analysis

After you play with it post which celebrity comes up the most for you.

-Gabriel

To Charleston and Back

Hey ya'll! We just got back from Charleston (a long five hour drive)...my last trip to see friends and have fun before the big first day of school (in one week on Aug 14). My friend and college roommate Becca just got married in France last month and was having a party with her family and friends in the US, since so many of us couldn't make the wedding across the ocean. I got to see a lot of my best college friends and catch up a little before my life becomes inundated with bacteriology and biochemistry classes. Unfortunately, we only took a few pictures of me and Sarah right before we left and Gabriel driving the 10 hr round trip, so that's what I'm gonna post. There were a lot more people and a lot more fun activities going on that we didn't capture...for example, we went to the beach and played home-run derby and I won!!! Sarah and I trounced the boys, Gabriel and Barney. Too bad it's not on camera. Just take my word for it!
-Shirin

The promised pictures

I promised some more pictures of our place so here they are.

The front view of our apartment:



Our living room (Shirin's reading Foundation by Asimov):
















Our kitchen (hard to take a picture of without a
fisheye lens):



We're enjoying the comments and hearing from everyone. I made it so now you can post anonymously if you don't want to have to log in or create a username. But you should still sign your name so that we know who wrote what, unless you're feeling mischievous.

-Gabriel