Christmas break :)

Another semester of vet school complete! Just one more semester of classes and clinical things begin :) Not gonna lie, I am beyond ready to get out of class - mainly because I may go crazy if I have to listen to one more person complain about how unfair exams are or how hard vet school is (but I'll end my rant there..)
I just got home (London), wrote my last exam this morning and got outta there ASAP! We've been hit with quite a bit of snow which I'm happy about because 1. last year was a green Christmas and it was depressing, and 2. I don't care how much snow we get because I have no plans for the next 2 weeks other than sleeping and watching movies. Although I should catch up on some notes because my to-do list just keeps growing.
Not much has happened since my last post, I came home one weekend to go to Matt's work Christmas party and also saw Fantastic Beasts (loved it), and then December was just full of studying since I had 4 tests and 2 online quizzes and an assignment and labs - the usual! It's been tiring but the busier we are, the faster time seems to go, and we always survive it somehow :)

The end of Movember - thank God that's over with now

We've been doing more 4th year stuff, ranking elective rotations and such. It's crazy that in a month or 2 I'll have my tentative schedule for 4th year!
My group had a great Secret Santa/hangout and we took some festive group photos as we do every year. This time it included some horses :)

Other than sleeping I plan on seeing all my London friends over the next 2 weeks; we have a Christmas party tomorrow and I'm looking forward to dusting off my makeup and actually looking like a normal human for the first time in awhile :)

That's all for now!

Hello 2016! :)

Happy new year! Writing 2016 in the title was a little scary because my class graduates in 2018 and it's coming faster than I ever imagined. Eek!

Today was our first day back to class after a glorious 2 week break where I got at least 9 hours of sleep every night, saw the majority of my friends and family, and ate a disgusting amount of (unhealthy) food and a pretty good amount of alcohol too ;)
















Notable events included:

• A friend-filled Christmas party - I hadn't seen some of these girls since August so it was definitely long overdue! An excuse to dress up after looking like a hobo during exams was also great. You guys know my makeup obsession so I thoroughly enjoyed breaking out all of my glittery eyeshadows that were collecting dust while I studied.

• A relaxing Christmas eve and day with family - we basically stayed in PJs and that's my favourite way to spend Christmas day :)

• New year's eve party - another chance to see everyone for one last get together before I headed back to Guelph

• Early anniversary celebration in Toronto - Matt and I's (8 year!) anniversary is this upcoming Friday but with our crazy schedules we celebrated this past weekend with a trip to Toronto complete with a harbourfront hotel room, dinner at a French bistro and a night out. My favourite person to party with! (insert kissing face emoji here) (ok I'm done being mushy now)

I think I packed all I could into this break, although those events were interspersed with days where I did absolutely nothing but sleep in and binge watch Netflix (a season of The Affair, half a season of Scandal, and the whole Making a Murder documentary series. Thank god for unlimited internet).

Now we're back to the grind; today was exhausting but we ended the day with another anesthesia lab practicing IV catheters, intubation, checking our intubated "dogs" (see previous post) to make sure our endotracheal tube wasn't leaking, drawing up drug doses, and setting up the anesthetic machine. As tired as I was from waking up early for the first time in 2 weeks, I'll always gladly take all the hands-on experience I can get!

That's all for now, I'm going to go make dinner with the sad amount of groceries that I have left - an empty fridge is the worst part about coming back from vacation.

Bye!

Hands-on Learning and FREEDOM!

Helloooo lovely people,

Let me just take a deep breath before this post because it's going to be a long one. The past 2 weeks have been some of the busiest and most hands-on weeks I've had so far in vet school.

Surgery ward shadowing:

I completed my week of no sleep aka shadowing week! I got to follow a 4th year around during her rotation in the small animal surgery wards doing pre and post op treatments on patients. Due to confidentiality I can't explain exactly what I saw, but some of the reasons that our patients were at the hospital were: amputations, mammary tumors, septic peritonitis (2 different cases), and ectopic ureters. Although as Phase II students we aren't ready to be able to give medications yet, I got to practice plenty of physical exam skills (I'm now a pro at taking a rectal temp on a grumpy cat) as well as giving fluids, calculating drug doses, taking blood pressure, and getting to cuddle with dogs as I heated or iced their surgical sites. I also gained the title of magician because I was able to coax all of our not-so-hungry dogs to eat. It was a tiring week because I had to be there before class (started at 6:45 most mornings) and then from 7 pm til 9ish for evening treatments. But it was so worth it, I learned so much and my student was great - she taught me tricks about things here and there and gave me "homework" to prepare for the types of questions I will get asked during 4th year rounds. I'm super glad that this week was mandatory for our Clinical Medicine course, and seeing our patients go home to their owners was so rewarding.

My new stethoscope served me well :)

Labs:
We had a week of useful labs that it made it seem like we are actually learning real-life things! Class can obviously get a little monotonous. First we had a small mammal handling lab, aka bunnies (love) and rats (ew, sorry to the rat-lovers out there). I've had a little bit of rabbit experience at the clinic I volunteer at, but there were lots of people in my class who were shocked at their crazy fast heart rates (250-350 bpm - our prof described it as "if it's too fast to count that's a good thing). Next we had a surgery lab where we got to remove "tumors" (sponges) from cadavers and learn how to properly suture them up, depending on the incision size and shape. Finally there was an anesthesia lab where we got to practice intubation and catheter placement on simulation models. Yay for practical labs!!

The rabbits looked like this and they were the softest things ever <3

Intubation models because we're not quite ready for the real thing yet ;)

After that whirlwind of a week we had 3 back to back finals - Pharm/Anesthesia (trickiest one so far and it covered a TON of lectures which was annoying), Art of Vet Med (basically ethics and communication...needless to say I didn't study much for that one), and today we had Radiology which went better than expected and I'm slowly getting more confident in my ability to actually see things on radiographs.

My view in the library all day yesterday

And now I'm free for 2ish weeks! We're celebrating tonight and then I'm heading home tomorrow to see DAISY (and my friends and family...)! My girlfriends and I are going to a Christmas party on Saturday and then Matt and I are exchanging gifts and hanging out on Sunday and Monday because I havent seen him in 3 weeks!

Vet school work never ends and there are a few things I want to get done over the break, but the majority of my time will be spent sleeping and eating. Time to catch up on all of that lost sleep :)

Bye for now and Merry Christmas!

1/8th of a vet!

Woooooo I'm free! I am officially done one semester of vet school. I can't believe how fast it went... I know everyone probably says that about school, but seriously it flew. We finished exams 2 days ago with a 60 station anatomy bellringer which was tiring but not too bad :) other than exams, the only other things that happened in the last week were:
- jacket and Christmas photoshoots! We took a million pics of our new merch and also got some awesome ones of our anatomy skeleton and profs - group 9 clearly has the most Christmas spirit ;)
- secret Santa and group dinner - I love my group :) we did a secret Santa exchange (I got wine, so clearly people know my priorities) and dinner at kelseys last week to celebrate the end of our first semester. It's only been 2 days of break but it's already weird not seeing these people every day!
- I've been walking little Ambrosia from beagle program and it's doing nothing to help my beagle obsession.. Especially cause they're up for adoption! But it was a good exam study break to be able to walk her and she loved sniffing everything she possibly could. Typical hound :)

Anyway, I'm home for Christmas break now and am already taking advantage of all the food that I don't have to buy for myself. My best friend is coming down from Halifax this week, so after I work a few shifts (before my work closes for the break) I'll finally be able to enjoy some best friend time. We're gonna go to Toronto for the weekend to shop and gossip of course.
I won't be posting until I'm back at school, so merry Christmas to everyone and I'll talk to you all when I'm caught up on my sleep and 50 pounds heavier from Christmas food :)

Making daisy all festive on snapchat :) 

Anatomy lab love :) featuring reindeer cow

We got a pic with the Dean of OVC, no biggie!