Hibernation here I come....

Studying has definitely been at the forefront of my life right now. I had my 2^nd MCQ on Monday of this week in Cell & Molecular Biology, so all weekend was spent hitting the books. I felt like it went pretty well and I knew the material, so fingers crossed I get a good grade. Last week, we had our dissection project presentation so my group spent the beginning of the week preparing all of the materials for that. The grading on that ended up depending on which professor you got to present to, so it was not really a very fair evaluation of your work. Some of the professors grade much harder than others, so if you got an easy professor you were golden. My group still got an A, but I just would have like a higher percentage A. And I have an MCQ a week for the next few weeks, so there is no end in sight for my hardcore studying just yet. But that is what midterms are all about especially in vet school.

Up until this week the weather has been amazing here with sun and temperatures reaching 17°C (63°F). So this past weekend on Sunday I took a trip south to Enniskerry to Powerscourt Waterfall which is Ireland’s highest waterfall at 121m located at the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. The dogs came along for the trip and were beyond excited to get out and explore plus they made 2 new dog friends (owned by my friend Andrew who drove us there). We checked out the waterfall then walked the paths around the property with the dogs before heading home. It was cool to actually get out and see somewhere in Ireland outside of Dublin since I really haven’t been anywhere yet. I am planning on doing a lot more exploring in the future and hopefully since I have 5 years here I will get well acquainted with Ireland and maybe other parts of Europe as well. I do have to say though driving on back Irish roads is a bit scary as they are windy and there are only inches for the cars to pass each other (if that).

There has been a bit of a cold front that has moved in to Dublin and there is talk of the next few winters in Ireland being especially bad. I am worried I may be forced to hibernate. I am definitely going to have to work on my cold weather wardrobe as my clothes are beyond inadequate for the temperatures that are being dished out and what is about to come. I am freezing already and the worst is yet to come. The dogs are freezing too! Without a car, I have to walk everywhere, so I need to be able to withstand the temperatures being thrown at me or I might never make it to campus or the store. I would have to say the biggest adjustment for me in moving to Ireland is the weather and it is probably the thing I will struggle with the most because to be honest I got cold in LA in 70°F. So yeah…I probably should live in the tropics or something…but I’ll make it work somehow. =)

Blood and Guts...

I realize it has been almost 2 weeks since my last post and so much has happened in that time, but there is just no way I can cover it all. I know I need to make the effort to come on here and update more often, so that is my plan going forward. So for now you are stuck with updates about classes as an update on everything social that has gone on would take up too much space. =P

I have been getting progressively busier in my classes and studying is definitely taking up a lot of my time. I had my first MCQ exam on Monday of this week in histology and embryology which felt like it went alright, but ‘knock on wood’ who really knows. We have started up a problem based learning (PBL) class where we meet in small groups with a facilitator and are given a medical case in increments. And we have to decide based on the very little facts we are given what we think the diagnosis may be and research the potential ideas and “learning issues”. I am the only person in my group who has ever worked in a veterinary clinic, so I know the medical terminology being used and also what the results for the tests that have been run mean. So now whenever the facilitator asks the group if we know what something is she looks right at me. I can’t decide whether the rest of my group likes the fact that I am knowledgeable or hates my guts. The whole concept of the class is a bit frustrating as you would never treat/solve a case in this manner, but I guess it serves its purpose.

Today, I spent 3 hours in the lab dissecting a dog’s head for a group project. We were given a project a few weeks back and then pretty much told to figure out what our issue/topic was and how to dissect it and next week we then present everything. My group received the disease Strabismus which is a deviation of the globe of the eye. For example, a dog being cross-eyed or both eyes pointing outwards, but it can affect only one eye as well. Other groups were given broken bones, castration, and other illnesses or injuries. So when we walked into lab today each group had whatever body part that they needed to dissect on their bench and just that body part (meaning the rest of the dog was somewhere else). Very odd to see just a head on our bench and torsos or legs on other benches. And they were fresh, not preserved as they wanted us to know the difference between working on our preserved dogs and fresh specimens.

Dissecting a dog’s head is definitely a bizarre thing to do and it was not an easy task as we had a little furry dog. There are many muscles that you need to get through in order to make it down to the muscles that connect directly to the eye and there are some bones in the way as well ( I won’t get all technical on you). So it took a while. Our first eye was not very pretty and so we decided to go for the other eye to see if we could get a better display of the muscles. With the help of one of the lab techs we were able to get the eye out of the socket without even having to cut the dog’s head and we got a very nice looking eye with all 6 muscles attached and the optic nerve. I had to document the entire dissection with photos for our presentation next week, but I will spare you most of the blood and guts and only show you what the eye should look like. All I can say is thank goodness “Charlie” (as we named him) was not alive as we were not the most seasoned surgeons and he would have not looked so good coming out of that surgery.