So, I'm almost done with this semester's core classes (which I will summarize in this e-mail to fulfill my promise to my mother) and couldn't be happier to put them behind me. I'm sure some of it has to do with having a baby, but school sure has been hard this year. I had heard it was more relaxed, but I feel like I'm scrambling as much as I ever did before, maybe even more! I just received my class rank and GPA from the vet school (which covers up til last year) and it's pretty good. I hate that it's going to be pulled down after I get all my grades back in December. Luckily, I'm not in outright competition with my classmates, like people are in law school. As a testament to the people in my class' brains, I have a 3.75 and am not even in the top 20%! (I'm in the 21%...ha ha). After a semester with all Bs, though, my GPA is going straight down the tube. Oh well. They keep telling us that GPA doesn't matter in medicine...just ability in the clinics. Hopefully, I'll have some of that, since we only have 125 more days til we never have to take another class again, and everything we do starts to really matter...eek!
OK, to satisfy the requests for details on my classes, here they are (better late than never:
OK, so we'd already had two semesters of pathology last year, which is the study of disease (aka pathology). This semester we did neurological and respiratory pathologies. There sure are a ton of them! I don't know how I'm ever going to remember that many diseases so that I will know how to diagnose them!
Actually, this class was for small and large animals and was collectively referred to as Musculoskeletal Diseases. It's mostly bone fractures or other orthopedic pathologies and how to repair them. It was taught by both large and small animal ortho surgeons, and I ended up liking it better than I thought I would. I really don't like bone-repair surgeries that much. All those pins, plates, and screws kind of gross me out (which isn't that easy to do!), but as a specialty, it's quite an interesting topic.
Actually, the small animal version of this was called Small Animal Digestive Diseases. It was taught by internists, and it involved anything gastrointestinal. So, that includes stomach, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, intestines, and colon. Oh yeah, and the mouth and esophagus too...don't forget those important guys! We had a surgery section of this for the first half and a medicine section for the last half. It was a pertinent topic, for sure.
OK, we had a large animal part of the digestive class too. It's all about diarrhea and more diarrhea (JK). There's more to it than that, but in large animals there seem to be a lot more infectious diseases than small...maybe not. It's my worst grade this year so far, but I liked the latest teacher a lot. She is a large animal internist, and she talked about equine livers, equine diarrhea, and how to give horses fluid therapy (they can need more than 25 liters IV per day!). That's what I'm supposed to be studying now for my last exam.
So...ya'll already know how I feel about trying to get a bunch of purebreds pregnant while thousands of dogs get euthanized in shelters. It makes me sad and angry. Plus,
most breeders are misguided people. I know one very good one, but that's about it. I loved the teacher for this class too...about the nicest guy ever, but I just didn't like the subject too much. Although, I do like the idea of doing c-sections on dogs and cats. Exciting! :)
Of course, we also had surgery this semester too. We did mostly small animal surgeries, although it was a class that was for both small and large animals. The two LA procedures we did were on an equine cadaver leg (wound repair) and a bandaging lab on live horses. I like surgery a lot, but I'm not feeling totally prepared for the world of cuttin' and sewin' anything that moves quite yet!
So, Radiology actually turned out to be a pretty good class. I'm glad I don't hate it as much anymore, b/c we've got it again next semester. There are just too many organs and diseases that can be diagnosed using radiographs, MRIs, CTs, and ultrasounds that they had to split it into two semesters. We got through bone diseases, the equine leg, the head, and the thorax. Guess we have the abdomen and pelvis left.
Whew! That was a lot of classes! No wonder I'm so worn out!
Another doggie family member has passed away. Gabriel's Uncle Sam had a beautiful white German Shepherd dog named Gal, who he rescued from abusive owners, where she was kept on a chain as a breeding dog. She was always a nervous girl, as is typical for a white Shepherd like her, but her disposition was incredibly sweet, and she loved her family members.
