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| Don't WannaFinally on break from school and finally on break. No clinical work to show up for, no house to decorate, no in-laws to entertain. Just one whole week of nothing to do, so I sit in my pajamas all day long, nibbling from left overs in the fridge because even cooking a meal would be too much effort. I feel as if I must conserve every precious bit of energy to keep my going on the next leg of this journey. 3 months till the next exam the another in 2 months. So many opportunities for th crippling stress to take hold.
Typically I'm anxious to get back to class. So many new things to learn and explore, but this term I'm not. Last semester took me to a very dark place in myself and I really don't want to go there again. I've been given all kinds of wonderful advice on how to not succumb to the panic attacks and crying fits that come about when I realize I've been staring at the same flash card for 45 minutes and still can't remember what's on the back. I know I'm not thick, I know the material isn't beyond comprehension. In fact I comprehend it just fine, I just can't commit all of the fine, tongue twisting words to memory. There's no room, it's all full. Yet, there is 2.5 years worth of material yet to be crammed. Time is helpful tool. When I sit with the information (after the exam) in time to seeps into my subconscious and further to the conscious. Unfortunately this is long past the time when I'm expected to know it. Little consolation.
Yes, there is always the opportunity to resit the exams in August. An experience I'm already familiar with and not fond of. The benefit of time is there, but the looming thought of failure as well. If the words don't come to me during the alloted 1.5 hour periods then I will have to repeat an entire year of course work. The last time I took the resits my hand shook so bad I had to steady it with the other to begin my essay. I've never been so anxious in my life. I passed then, which should give me some peace of mind for the future, but it doesn't.
I try to look at the positives of it all. If I do have to retake a year then I will be an expert at the material by the time I'm done. Yet, the $50,000 price tag for that year, as well as the extra time in Edinburgh weigh the scales to the side of pessimism. I'm trying to be optimistic, really trying, but the penetrating cold and persistent dark of Scotland are penetrating my spirit. I'm spent from fighting.
This all sounds as if I am hating my life right now, but I'm not. I love my life with Tim and the wonderful friends I've made here. I love the course work and the time I spend on farms and in clinics. If I didn't find some joy in all of this I would stop now and pursue another goal. I'm happy with everything except the paralyzing fear of failing that grips me. Last year it would take hold a week or two before an exam, but I could easily push it away and move on...this year it hit me in week 3 of lectures and hasn't left. Fear is exhausting and tormenting. I loathe fear. I forever strive to confront it, overcome it, move beyond it. For the first time in a long time, I am stuck in fear. The main difference is this time I know it. I know it and yet, feel powerless against it.
I'm on break now and can pretend that next term won't be the same. Have a new outlook, try again all of the meditation and relaxation techniques I've learned over the years. But I'm scared. I don't want to fall into the grip of fear again. I don't want to toss and turn and talk in my sleep. Wake up to the alarm clock only to realize I have really rested. While I "slept" my brain stayed active working, sprinting and now I'm more tapped then when I laid down the night before. I don't want to go to bed at night and suddenly feel my chest tighten up, breathing go short and shallow, muscles tense and throb with pain.
I want to sleep, to relax, to enjoy the life I have and the wonder and fascination of medicine. I want to live again, free of fear.
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| The no time to blog, blogCynthia Update 2007
January
- Came back to Edinburgh from spending the holidays with the Family in California.
- Started Year 1; Semester 2 of Vet School.
- Went on a long weekend to Italy with Tim. Florence and Pisa, quite nice.
February
- Study, Study & more study
- Froze a bit as this is quite the chilly month in Scotland
March
- Preparing for lambing season, by learning all of the horrible things that can go wrong, especially when the farmer is away. Confidence building for sure!
- More studying
- The daffodils and Crocus are popping up in the Meadows. Gorgeous! Gives me hope that warmth is near!
April
- Lambing in Oxfordshire. Not as scary as I thought it would be. Exhausting, but fun. Learned ton and lost 10lbs. It was warm the whole time. So nice to thaw out!
- Spent a day wandering around the town of Oxford. Cute & quaint.
- Bought super industrial lotion to mend my cracking hands. Il let you imagine where theye been.
May
- Exams....horrifying exams! Ie never been through anything so stressful and mentally debilitating as UK exam month. Week after week of timed essays and spot exams (you look into a microscope and tell them what you see. I want to say blue and purple blobs, but that won do).
- Bear in mind that many of these exams are your ENTIRE grade for the year. Fly or die, baby.
June
- Spent the first weekend in London visiting Chris.
- Went to see Daniel Radcliff in the play Equus. Amazing!
- Spend one week playing with Pigs and another week with Chickens. I don want to eat eggs for a very long time now. Most of the workers at the actory?don eat eggs anymore either. That not good. Please buy free range organic eggs!
- Flew to Newmarket to learn as much as I could about the horse racing industry...and horses for that matter.
- Spent a week working on a horse farm in Gloucestershire. My nearest neighbours were Prince Charles and Camilla. Unfortunately, when I tried to turn up for tea, they weren home. Pity.
July
- Tim and I moved into an adorable and spacious two bedroom flat. It is so nice to not have flatmates anymore. Let me know when you want to visit!!!
- Writing a research paper on West Nile Virus & the horse racing industry. Fingers crossed it will be published in a Scientific Journal by Jan 2008. Began studying for Resits. Resits are what you do in the Summer when you didn pass one of the gruelling exams in May. It basically a o-over.?So nice that that is available. However, when you know that failing a second time means re-doing and entire year of school...including paying the tuition again...it just a little bit of pressure.
August
- Passed Resits! It official I a Third Year Vet Student. (Just a reminder that UK vet school is 5 years, but I completed 2 years in one. Confusing, I know.)
- Tim & I visited New York, San Francisco and The OC all in two weeks. So much fun and so exhausting. Where I grew up scares him a bit ?even for a German it a bit too manicured and polished.
- Celebrated our 1-year anniversary in Los Osos and Tim 33rd birthday with my family. Tim played pin the tail on the donkey for the first time. Too funny!
September
- Tim Mama (Karen) came for a weeks visit. It nice to have her here and tp learn so much about Tim. Especially all the stuff he doesn tell me. 
- Year 2; Semester 1 ?already feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the amount of information we are being given. I feel confident about the concepts, but my brain is not dealing well with the route memorization of drug names, etc. Having to learn all new study techniques for this term. Yikes!
October
- I turned 34 and Miss Lenore turned 13. Yup, wee both getting up there. Didn do much, as Tim & I both have the flu. Ugh!
- Study, study, study
November
- Took a needed holiday in Milan, Italy. Had a great time and got a bunch of early Christmas shopping done for the nieces. Didn get to see the ast Supper?painting as it sold out for ages....something about the a Vinci Code?hype. Not sure, haven read it. Guess Il have to go back to Milan again, twist my arm.
- Study, stress, stress, study....not sleeping very well anymore., quite worried about December exams. I don feel close to being prepared and I not exaggerating.
December
- Exams have come and gone and I still never felt prepared. I think I may have just passed one, but there another that is seriously questionable. Won find out until January if Il be spending another August in Edinburgh taking exams. I really don want to. Who knows!
- Spending the week working the exotics ward at the school. Mostly dealing with Rabbits, but wee had one bearded dragon to play with. Plus I spent one day at the zoo assisting with Penguin surgery. Fun, crazy, but really fun.
- Cleaning house in preparation for Christmas. Having a big feast at our place. Tim Mama is coming to town for one week. Wee hoping to take her to Roslyn Chapel, a historic church and also another a Vinci code?thing...Perhaps I should read the book, go see the movie or something. Wel see if I can find the time.
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| Animal Handling Exams
Everything you never wanted to know about a gerbil
I returned from lambing in late April, 10 lbs. lighter and exhausted. 6 lbs. left me from all of the physical work and the remaining 4 lbs. from a bout of food poisoning. Ugh. An effective, but NOT recommended weight loss plan. Still feeling a bit weak from the whole experience I launching into the first set of exams ?Animal Husbandry Practicals.
This set of exam tests not only tests our knowledge of the care, feeding and issues related to specific animals, but also our ability and confidence in handling them. There are a total of five 15-minute exams over the period of one week ?Horses, Sheep, Cattle, Dog/Cat and Small animal, which can include anything from a hamster to a snake (hopefully not together though). The staff are kind enough to ask if you have any aversions to specific small animals before testing you. I don know if that is to avoid or ensure that youl get that animal??? I spoke before I thought and said, o.?I then immediately imagined being asked to pick up a tarantula and shivered. Fortunately I was given a box full of gerbils.
Here the gist of how my exam went:
Examiner - What is this?
Cynthia - A gerbil (some what questioning)
E- Great. Tell me about Gerbils.
C - Uh, well, uh, they are originally sand dwelling creature from Mongolia so they are adapted to low water conditions. Being social creatures they should never be kept alone.
E ?Is this an appropriate cage for a gerbil?
C ?I hope so, otherwise why would you put them in it?
E ?Let me rephrase. What makes this an appropriate cage?
C ?Oh. Well, it made of metal, not wood or plastic, which they can chew through.
E ?Good. What else can you tell me about gerbils?
C ?Uh, uh. They need lots of exercise so having a wheel in the cage is important. No wait, that hamsters, sorry. Uh, theye great for kids because they rarely bite! No wait, that also hamsters. Crap. I sorry I getting a bit jumbled.
E ?No problem. Why don you pick one up and tell me what sex it is.
(The next 5 minutes are spent with me unsuccessfully attempting to pick up one of the 6 gerbils in the cage. When Ie finally caught one I turn it over and start looking for its private bits. Some say, can see the forest for the trees. I say, can see the bits for the enormous testicles. In the most unprofessional way, I gasped.)
C- It's definitely a boy. Of that I certain.
E ?Great. You can put it down now. Wee done.
So I wasted most of exam time, trying to catch the bloody rodent and getting everything wrong, but I supposed I back peddled REALLY well, because I passed.
The rest of my handling exams followed the same vein.
E - How much does that horse weigh?
C - 700 kg.
E - Really?
C - Well perhaps it closer to 500 kg.
E ?(Eyebrows raised) What color is the horse?
C - Bay......or Brown.
E - Well, which is it, Bay or Brown?
C - Brown (with conviction).
E - Wrong, it Bay. Why is it Bay?
C ?Because you just said it was. (of course)
E ?Cynthia!
C ?Yes, professor? (sheepishly)
E ?Go trot your horse.
C ?Ok. (I attempt to trot the horse)
E ?You trotted better than the horse.
C ?Wouldn't you be sick of trotting if you had had silly students like me trying to make you trot 25 times a day for the past week?
E ?Raise her back leg for an exam.
C ?(After three attempts and her ears flying back) I don think she keen on this.
E ?Neither do I. You're done. Get out of here. I don want to see you again.
Yay, that means I passed!!!
I won't go through every exam this way, but I will note that I got into an argument with one examiner over what a tabby was. Lucky for me I argued my case well and won. I nailed all of my sheep and cattle breeds and types of horse and cattle feeds (Yup, we have to know that too) and passed all 5 exams.
At the end of the week we sat a 2 hour essay exam with questions ranging from, describe the husbandry of a parrot, to define "selection intensity" (a genetics principal in breeding) and give an example of this in practice. I loved the parrot question because I could use a personal story for that essay.
"As a veterinarian I would recommend that parrot owners kept their pets out of personal spaces, such as bedrooms and bathrooms, as parrots enjoy mimicing human sounds. Once the animal begins imitating a sound or word, it is very difficult to retrain them."
I won't name names, but if you own this parrot, you know I talking about you! Il just say thank you though, I ended up getting honors on that paper and I'm sure it was for the entertainment value of my essay.
The saying is "No rest for the wicked." I must be quite wicked. After a week of intense studying and examination we were launched into two more weeks of lectures and labs on neuroscience. One would think they would give us a light topic at this point. No chance. So much for sleep. I hear it highly over-rated.
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| Long time no blogAs many have reminded me it has been ages since I wrote a blog of my adventures in Vet School. That is true. The neglected is not intended, but more a function of exhaustion. An exhaustion on all levels ?physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, transcendental...
For months I have been in a race for time to learn, do, master, and overcome. I think I getting there. I hope.
Rewind to April ?Spring Break for many college students. Lambing and exam study time for Royal Dick Vet Students. In the UK, most exams are given at the end of the year. One big cumulative exam worth 80-90% of your mark. All exams occur during the month of May, so typically all of April is given off for revision. They call it revision because the assumption is that you have been religious about studying the material all year long, which might be the case if there were 48 hours in a day.
Since my program is the 2 for the price of 1 program ?Two years of study for one tuition price ?wee been doing double time with everything. This means that April was not just study, study, study. It was Lambing, study, study, lambing, study.
What is this lambing thing I speak of? When did a ee beastie?become a verb? And if it is a proper verb, what are we doing to the poor things????
Lambing is the time of year when all the little lambs are born. Cute and wobbly on their new found legs. Wide eyed, bushy tailed and clamoring for mothers milk. Stuck and twisted in the backside of a ewe. I sorry was that a bit graphic? Youe lucky Ie spa red you the visuals in my photo album.
Lambing was great fun. I spent three weeks on a proper English farm in Oxfordshire and by some stroke of amazing luck it was WARM and DRY and BRIGHT with sun shining all day long (not just for 5 hours in the middle of my lectures). It was a little piece of heaven. The first week I wandered the fields checking to see if any of the ewes were in labor or had given birth. Then there was the preparation of the sheepy maternity ward, making dozens of pens filled with soft straw, fitted with water and feed bowls and tasty flakes of hay. No, I didn try the hay, but it did smell fresh and sweet. In evenings I would pull out my notes on animal nutrition and the phrase umen digestible nitrogen?finally made sense, because when we first received the nutrition lectures we hadn had ruminant digestion. I did have a clue what a rumen was! I always knew in laymen terms that a cow had four stomachs, but I didn know that they each had their own name and functions.
I sure that those of you reading this who thought I might someday treat your pet, free of charge, are having second thoughts about that. Just remember, I still have 3 more years to figure out what I doing and at the current learning curve that means A LOT!
Week two of lambing: There are 320 ewes, each is marked with a different color of spray paint. Blue means she having one lamb, green means twins, red mean three or more. There are pros and cons to too many or too few lambs. Singles tend to be big and like to get stuck during birth. Triplets or quadruplets tend to be tiny, have a difficult time surviving and the mother can always produce enough milk for all of them. The ideal number is two ?two of equal size. However, nature has a sense of humor and although most of our ewes are painted green, it best not to take anything for granted.
It is a Monday and things have been busy yet relaxed up to now. I wandering through the field of happy sunning ewes when I notice something a bit odd. One ewe, separated from the group has two heads. One big one in the front and a little one in the back. This is a bad sign. When the head comes out without the legs our woolly mama needs help. I walk towards her, she walks away, I stop and slowly edge towards her, again she walks away. I run at her full speed, which isn all that fast considering I wearing wellies, she takes off a break neck speed. All I can see if the little lambs head bouncing behind and I wonder if I be able to run that fast while giving birth? The idea behind chasing her is to A) Catch her, B) flip her onto her side, C) hold her down with one arm, while D) manipulating the lamb inside her so that it can fit through the birth canal. This is a time sensitive procedure because once the placenta is broken the lamb needs to breath on it own.
On that first day I used my cell phone to call for back up. Antony, a fit 18-year old farm hand, performed the capture and hold, while Robert, the farmer, showed me the ins and outs of removing a stuck lamb. 300 ewes and three weeks later I was downing and pulling on my own. If you woulde told me that would happen in the beginning I would not have believed you.
The maternity ward I helped build was teeming with mommies and babies by the end of my stay. Being that this farm was started in the 1950 much of the processes were from that era as well. Water, feed and hay was hand carried to each pen. Fresh straw was placed in the pens twice a day to keep the newborns clean, dry and warm and any lamb that looked a hungry or unwell was tube fed 3-4 times a day. Ewes are quite head strong and can be rather demanding at times. On a few occasions I arrive in the morning and begin the feeding routine. A handful of the ewes would stand with their front hooves on the top of the pens tapping a hoof every now and again, as if to say, ervice! Service! Can I get some service here!?I was quickly reduced from a trained medical person to diner waitress in the tap of a hoof. The kicker was that I if I wasn quick enough for their taste they would leap the side of the pen and dig into the bag of feed on their own. In my stubbornness I would leave these rude customers for last, that is until the morning when five ewes leapt out of their pens and charged the feed bag. The challenge wasn getting them back into their pens, it was figuring out which mother matched the pen with her lambs. A mismatch could mean rejection of the lambs and they would go hungry. Too long a separation from the correct lambs would mean the ewe would forget her own children altogether. I won say that sheep fit the typical umb?stereo-type, but I almost won be recommending them to Mensa any time soon.
Il let you do the math here ?300 ewes * average 2 lambs/ewe * hot day (lots of water) * tube feeding 3-4x/day. That easily takes up 14-16 hours per day and then there still that studying thing <sigh>. The next time you think, TGIF, just remember that for farmers and Vet students a Friday is the same as a Monday.
Don think I didn get away with bring a little lamb home, because I did. Her name is ittle Black Lamb?and she was the cutest little thing when she was born. Unfortunately, her evil mother didn think so. She was one of two and although LBL was born first the ewe decided that she wasn hers. The ewe adored the second spotted lamb and showered her with attention, but every time LBL tried to feed the ewe would head-butt her into the side of the pen. LBL never gave up. She tried snuggling up against the ewe to keep warm at night and the ewe would push her away. The sad irony is that the ewe eventually ended up sitting on the spotted lamb and all her milk dried up, leaving LBL without a mom. Well, except for me. Four times a day I would feed LBL from a bottle and cradle her like a baby. She loved it! Most lambs aren too keen on being held, but LBL got to the point where she would take a running leap into my arms when I approached her pen. She immediately try and suckle my ear lobe, finger, anything she could. When she was big enough I would pull her out of her pen and let her follow me around the yard as I did my chores. She loved playing games with Jarrocks, the farmers Jack Russell Terrier. Eventually, a ewe gave birth to a large single, one the same size as my 2 weeks old orphan lamb, and we gave LBL to her as a foster child. It took a few days, but LBL learned how to suckle again and bonded with her foster-sister. It was a huge relief to see her cuddled up with another lamb at night and growing faster on mothers milk than she ever did on milk powder.
Robert still sends me emails and calls to give me updates on LBL. Her growth is a bit stunted, but she is the most social of all the lambs. Getting a bit too big though to jump up in my arms.
Upcoming blog installments:
- Animal Handling Exams ?everything you never wanted to know about a gerbil
- What UK exams have done to me
- Pigs and Chickens and Cages, Oh my!
- Heaven is a horse farm
- Settling into the new flat
- What summer holds for Cynthia
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| The Next LevelI realize it's been quite a while since I've blogged. Life has been non-stop for quite sometime. Honestly, I'm not seeing it slow down anytime soon so please don't expect too much. With that said....
Uni has been going well. The course content isn't impossible, it's just the volume that can overwhelm at times. This is the last week of term, which actually doesn't mean much in terms of down time. Next week I will be off to Oxford for three weeks of lambing. What is that you ask? We'll it involves me getting up quite early, being rather cold and on occasion inserting my arm into the reproductive canal of a ewe. Sound like fun to you? Compared to sitting in 7 hours of lectures a day and coming home to study for 4-5 more hours, it's sounds like a blast to me! All I ask is that the snow pleeeeeeasse go away. We've been having flurries all day and I'm not liking.
As you all know I have issues with cold weather. It's great for snowboarding and day trips because at anytime you can go inside to take a warm bath or sit by a fire. When you have to stand out in it listening to the gut sounds of horses and cattle, not so fun. Actually, it's quite draining.
So aside from being way to cold and mild seasonal depression due to lack of sunlight - I'm great! Once lambing is over I'll be catapulted into the throws of final exams. Four weeks worth! It's brutal. There are three sets of exams (oral, practical and written) and only one set is worth less than 80% of my final grade. No pressure. Right? Fortunately by May 31st it will all be over and the chips will fall where they may.
The super cheerful part of my life (beyond knowing that I get to rectal a cow on Thursday) is that my boyfriend Tim and I found a flat together this weekend. It was quite serendipitous as most great things in my life are. We had been having many deep conversations about what we were looking for in a home together, yet when we'd go look at something we couldn't quite find it. I was feeling the pressure of securing something before exams to get it off my mind and was willing to compromise on something, like having a garden or having to fix something up a bit, but we weren't finding anything that really inspired us. Until this weekend that is. My landlady, know I was moving out, suggested another flat she owned nearby. The current tenant, a vet student (shocking) is in her final year and leaving in August. The price was right and if we looked at it and like it, it was ours. Too good to be true right? Lucky for me, my life has been so so good over the past few years - when we walked in we both lit up. It was exactly what we'd been talking about, looking for, wanting to create. Completely furnished with great art deco wood, a garden in back, huge south facing windows, one bedroom with a study/guestroom and a modern kitchen. There are so many other little details that make it perfect which I can't describe so I guess you'll just have to come and see it.
Needless to say, I'm very excited. There is also a touch of trepidation there too. It's been a long time since I've lived with a significant other, but I adore Tim and am looking forward to taking things to the next level. He's another one of those too good to be true parts of my life that I appreciate immensely. With that said I believe dinner is ready and I'm starving.
Be well until I find a spare moment and breath to write again.
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