My brush with heights...

Hey everyone. I just got some of the pictures back from the ropes course I did with my research program about 2 weeks ago. While I've never been afraid of heights, I found out that my older age has made it much harder for me to hurl myself off of platforms into empty air. So, it was more challenging than I expected. However, I made myself proud by doing all of the activities without chickening out and here are some pictures.
-Shirin

Not too happy about the uncomfortable harness we had to put on.

I've never scaled a climbing wall before...it's harder than it looks.

Sitting about 50 feet in the air...I had a hard time just flinging myself off of that platform, even though I was securely fastened to the zip line. Whew, that was hard!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Yay! I made it...now get me down!!!

A busy week ahead of me...

I just got back into Athens from Rock Hill and stopped by the wildlife ward to see what I was going to be treating next week. Apparently, my classmate was very busy last week, and tomorrow she will be passing me 4 patients: the head-tilt turtle from before, a new turtle with a broken shell due to a hit-by-car incident, a baby blue jay with a broken leg and mites, and a fawn without a mommy.
The fawn is supposed to be bottle-fed every 4 hours all day long and the baby bird is supposed to be fed every hour all day long. Not sure how I'm going to swing that when I have to work, but I might be able to get one of the exotics techs to pitch in a little.
I think it's because it's summer-time, but the wildlife crew has been getting a ton of baby birds and other wild animals...much more than I'm used to. It's always exciting, but it's also kind of scary to be in charge of so many animals at once. Hopefully, I can take the fawn and baby bird to a rehabber soon.
-Shirin

Bottle-feeding the baby.

We're not supposed to pet or talk to the fawn (to prevent acclimation to humans) but it's hard when he's soooooo cute!

This turtle was run over by a car and has a broken shell as well as a hole in her lung (leading out to the exterior of the shell). She laid an egg last week, but it was broken.

Isn't she cute? We had to balance her on top of the canister to prevent her strong legs and sharp nails from doing damage to our hands as we did her treatments.

Top 6 reasons that having a cat increases your happiness...

1. They hang out with you while you lounge.

2. They are really cute to come home to.

3. They let you rub their soft bellies.

4. You get to wake up with a cute, purry thing in the morning.

5. You get to kiss their soft tummies.

6. You get to make cute videos of you taunting them with pillow games.

My first day of research

Well, I started my research today, and I already love it. I am studying a feline parasite called cytauxzoon. It causes devastating disease and death of domestic cats in 95% of the cases seen. Lately, a few cats have started surviving this infection and are considered to be chronically "parasitemic." This means they shed the bug but aren't actually clinically sympomatic or sick from it. My job is to compare samples of symptomatic and non-symptomatic cats' blood samples to see if there are genetic differences between them to determine if there are two distinct strains of cytaux with one being more virulent than the other. This protozoan is fairly new on the scene, having first been discovered in 1973. It's endemic to the SE and we're getting samples from GA, AL, AK, TN, and FL. I'm also working on getting some samples sent from my connections in SC.
I've already started to feel like I might want to get a Ph.D when I'm done with my residency training (in 2014). I'm working with the grad student on this project, and I just love what she does in a typical day: looking at tissue samples to see if the cat is positive for the disease, speaking with veterinarians about treating cats with this disease, getting more samples to test asymptomatic cats that lived with symptomatic cats for the disease...it's a little bit like being a detective or a forensics expert. Also, there seems to be only one other group doing research on this topic, so she's more or less "the expert" on cytaux. Cool, no?
I might get sick of it by the end of the summer, but I doubt it. I'll keep you posted.
-Shirin

Red blood cells infected with the parasite.
A Western Blot (that we did today) showing which samples are positive and negative.

Our contraband

Well, we have finally smuggled in some kitties to our apartment, though it is forbidden. They are not ours to keep, however, but our niece and nephew kitties that needed a place to stay while their mommy went traveling to SC and then CA. We plan to only have them for about a month, and we're loving every minute of it. At the behest of my sister (see more info on Anahita's blog), I am posting a video and some pictures of her children enjoying life here with their auntie and uncle. No worries, Tita; they are happy! If you can't watch the embedded video below, go to You Tube and try to watch it there!
-Shirin

An adventure in the dark...

So, I was just hanging out with my friends after work last night. We went to a bar called Little Kings where you can sit outside in the cool evening and watch people playing a game called "Cornhole" where you throw little beany bags of corn at a box far away and try to get it into the hole. There was even a competition, and the Gabriel-Beth team (aka LemurWhistle) placed second for the most corn holes achieved. They got some T-shirts; whoo hoo!
Around 10 PM, I got the worst call a person on-call can get...from someone at the hospital. I had sort of been expecting it but had forgotten by then that a heron was supposed to be brought in. Well, someone had FINALLY brought him in...only he was a loon intead. And, by the way, I had been getting calls at the hospital about this loon that wasn't moving on a trail next to a lake all day, but not one of the good-hearted callers would actually get the bird and bring it in. It wasn't enough for them that a person was at the vet hospital on a Saturday waiting to treat the loon they had found at no charge, they also wanted us to come get it. Typical...
Luckily, the exotics intern had also been called in at the same time to treat a sick ferret (how serendipitous) and was able to give me advice as to how to treat this loon who appeared totally normal! We floated him in a tub of water and he was kicking his feet and dunking his head, looking for fishies to eat. Anyway, we tried to put chunks of cat food tuna in the water (Beth, actually, in her drunken braveness), but he didn't know what to do with dead chunks of fish...he wanted the live thing. We also learned that his long, sharp beak can take your eye out in a second, so we wore protective goggles and were careful not to provoke an attack.
Ultimately, we were advised that loons are very bad in captivity and often die just from the stress of it and that we should just try to take him back to his lake and see if he could swim away from us. Considering that the other option was to anesthetize and do x-rays on the little booger, we (me, Beth, and Denise) agreed with this advice and traipsed off into the dark to dump him back into his lake. I even drove my car off the road and over hills of grass til I was about 10 feet from the bank, so we could actually see the loon swimming off into the darkness of the lake. He seemed fine and wasn't even flustered by the large Canadian goose that seemed to chase him off a little bit from the bank where we left him.
It was a fun little adventure that confirms for me why I love the field I chose so much. I mean, how often do 3 female med students get to play with a wild water bird and release him back to his home? It was a great time.
-Shirin

Look at that sharp beak!

Dunking his head to look for fish...he was hungry!

Beth sticking her fingers in front of the sharp beak to try to feel him cat food.

Denise and Beth doing a neurological exam on our little loon.

Wildlife Treatment Crew, again, but this time as supervisor!!

So, besides attending the orientation for my research program this week, I've also been shadowing and filling in as Wildlife Treatment Crew supervisor. This, to me, is a scary position to be in, because I know almost nothing about wildlife, and I'm not sure I'm qualified to be making the kinds of decisions I have to make: prescribing medicines, administering fluids, bandaging wings, etc. Honestly, I'm better to take care of wildlife than the average Joe, and I'm not trying to be self-deprecating, but a step up in the level of responsibility one takes on is often daunting and this is no exception. I'm also on call 24-7, which really restricts my ability to go places and do things.
Interestingly, I've been enjoying it immensely and have actually been doing a decent job (waiver: I've had LOTS of help from others!!). I've also noticed a few things about being in the leadership position: 1. you do more work than anyone else, 2. you get to delegate, 3. your helpers don't always do what you ask them to, 4. people will complain about the job you are doing no matter how hard you try, 5. good help is invaluable.
A few firsts for me this week have been giving fluids to a turtle with a head tilt, hand-feeding a baby grackle watered-down dog food, dusting crickets in calcium powder to feed to bearded dragons, and making the decision to euthanize a bird attacked by a cat. None of these things have been incredibly simple or easy, but I've had help from lots of the exotics faculty & staff, and I've gotten through it OK. I also have learned a ton while doing this every day.
Another thing I got through today was the ropes course we did for orientation. The only other time I did one was about 15 years ago, and it didn't seem nearly as tough. Today, I climbed a very tall climbing wall only to launch myself into oblivion down a long zip line, as well as balanced on a tall, wobbling pole before jumping off it (again, into oblivion) to try to hit a cow bell and then swinging around through the air in my harness. It was fun, but much much scarier than I thought it would be. I almost had a break-down half-way up the wall and reminded myself of someone on Fear Factor. I'll try to get some pictures of it soon.
-Shirin
PS I need to go now b/c I'm going on a date with my hubby to the movies! :)

Hanging with the soft-shelled turtle, Trevor.

Poor little Trevor with his head tilt

The grades are in...

Good news. They were all as I expected. A smattering of As, A-s, and B+s. I can live with that.
In other news, I just started the orientation for my research job this summer. So far we're talking more about ethics and writing abstracts than anything specific to my own research. I'm looking forward to the actual research part, so more on that later.
I'm also training to become one of the Wildlife Treatment Crew supervisors over the summer, so I've been feeding a baby bird and giving a soft-shell turtle SQ fluids every day. It's been fun but a little time consuming.
I'm also determined to get back into some kind of fitness, after totally letting myself go over the school year. So, I'm trying to talk Gabriel into going swimming and jogging with me, and he's trying to convince me to go biking and boxing with him...I think they are all good!
-Shirin

Back before we got married when we were in better shape.

Gabriel training me to be a lethal weapon (before we got married as well).

Big high school graduate

I just got back from FL (yes, braving all that smoke drifting west from the fires) to go to Gabriel's cousin's high school graduation and have some family time before starting my research program on Monday. It was great to see Gabriel's mom, grandmom, uncle, aunt, and cousins in a calmer atmosphere than their normal family gatherings, which contain at least twice that number of people (don't get me wrong, I have fun there too; it's just a lot more hectic and less intimate). I should also mention that I went without Gabriel, b/c he had to work on Saturday, and I had already planned to go out of town without him when I got the invite to the ceremony.
The graduation was a unique one...with only 4 graduates. Ashley goes to a small private Christian school with only about 50 students total, K-12. It's an interesting atmosphere b/c everyone seemed to know everyone else very well, and it was a very intimate graduation--even more so than Bren's graduation: all four seniors had to make a speech! I liked how intimate it was and thought back to my high school graduation with 450 other people, some of whom I'd never even seen before!
Ashley is planning to enter the local community college this fall to pursue a degree in Elementary Education, a career that I think suits her well. She's gotten lots of practice with her little sister, Emily, who is 10 years younger and full of energy.
I made my parents nervous driving down to a town only one county away from the FL fires, but all we got was smoke and ash in the air and never were really in danger of getting burned up or anything. It was surreal, though, to enter town and suddenly be surrounded by foggy smoke with darkened skies in the middle of the day. I made it back to smokeless GA, though, in one piece.
Tomorrow I start my summer program, so I'm glad I got this little break and family time in beforehand.
-Shirin

The proud Geaslin/McAlister family: Nicole, Sam, Ashley, and Emily (and Chris=proud boyfriend)

Each graduate got a lot of attention from the audience (they all walked down the aisle separately)

Brother Roser handing over the coveted diploma

A happy Ashley talking to Aunt Rita (Gabriel's mom) after the ceremony

Think about it...

For the sake of those that feel and suffer, please watch this and think about it.

Rising sophomore!

Yep. It is finally here...the end of first year. I don't know how I survived, but I did and actually enjoyed a lot of it too. I can't wait for summer and then the end of second year! I guess that's a long year away. Plus, I'm really anxious to get all my grades back for this semester. I know I didn't fail anything, but I just can't relax til I see my final GPA. I know it shouldn't matter, but it's hard to kick old habits so quickly.
I just looked at my schedule for the upcoming fall semester and can't figure out if it looks better or worse than the semester I just finished. I think the classes seem more interesting (see below) for sure! I'm almost getting a little excited about the new school year. Don't worry, I'll enjoy my summer first.
-Shirin

Crs Num	Department	Course
209-VARB5212	Anatomy & Radiology	Behavior Problems in Cats (min: 5 stdnts)(elective)(0.5 cr hrs.)
209-VARB5214	Anatomy & Radiology	Behavior Problems of Dogs (min: 5)(elective)(1.0 cr hrs.)
209-VARB5240	Anatomy & Radiology	Veterinary Animal Behavior (core) (1.2 cr hrs.)
211-IDIS5200	Infectious Disease	Veterinary Parasitology (core) (3.7 cr hrs.)
211-IDIS5200L	Infectious Disease	Veterinary Parasitology Lab (core) (0 cr hrs.)
211-IDIS5220	Infectious Disease	SA Advanced Parasitology (elective) (1.0 cr hrs.)
211-IDIS5220L	Infectious Disease	SA Advanced Parasitology Lab (elective)(0 cr hrs.)
212-VPAT5200	Pathology	General Animal Pathology (core) (2.8 cr hrs.)
212-VPAT5200L	Pathology	General Animal Pathology Lab (core)(0 cr hrs.)
212-VPAT5205	Pathology	Dermatology and Integumentary Pathology (core) (1.0 cr hrs.)
212-VPAT5205L	Pathology	Dermatology and Integumentary Pathology Lab (core) (0 cr hrs.)
213-VPHY5200	Physiology & Pharmacology	Principles of Pharmacology (core) (3.1 cr hrs.)
188-POPH5240	Population Health	Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (core) (2.7 cr hrs.)
188-POPH5280	Population Health	Applied Health Management (core)(0.4 cr hrs.)
210-SAMS5201	SA Medicine	Small Animal Dermatology (elective)(2.0 cr hrs.)
210-SAMS5218	SA Medicine	Exotic An Med - Avian & Reptile (off. odd yrs)(elec)(1.5 cr hr.)

More family fun!

We spent last weekend in Rock Hill visiting with my parents and my aunt Martha (mom's sister) and uncle Ken; they were visiting on their way to see their very first NASCAR race in Darlington, SC on Friday night (they are lifelong adventurers...always up for a new cultural experience). Anyway, Tita and Prathap came too, along with Cha Cha of course, so we had a busy and fun weekend with all of them.
Below is a video on YouTube of our salsa dance lesson (given by Tita and Prathap). It was a lot of fun. We also took family portraits at the behest of Ken and Martha and they turned out great! They are all out of order chronologically, but I can't get them to move, so oh well.
Tomorrow's my last exam!!! YAY!
-Shirin

My mommy and her dearest sister Martha.

The fam.

Cute picture...my dad's not actually try to mess up the picture for once!

The Modaresi's.

Silly picture.

Little Cha Cha sitting in a chair and staring inside from the deck to make us feel guilty.

The typical family discussions about how to do the portrait.

David came over to help us eat all the huge feasts my mom prepared.

Our fantastic salsa dance lesson, courtesy of Tita and Prathap.

The youngin's at breakfast.

Martha and her favorite target for a tummy rub (Chapu).

Reminds me of third grade.

Playing at the campground where Martha and Ken were staying.

Martha and Ken in their RV's living room.

Five day count-down...

Only 5 days til the very last exam of my first year of vet school. The idea of freedom has never seemed so sweet. Of course, I start my research/summer job only a week later, but it doesn't matter. To come home in the evenings with nothing to do...I won't know how to fill the time! Acutally, yes I will...I'll do all the things I normally want to do: cook, ride my bike, read some books, do some artwork, repot plants, clean my messy apartment, etc...
Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement throughout the last year. Don't worry, I'll still need you when August comes around...I hear the second year is even harder than the first:(
-Shirin

Me and G at the vet school awards ceremony a few weeks ago. It was fun.