Clincal Work

I've spent the last two days seeing clinical practice here in Edinburgh and I'm loving it as much as expected. There has been a variety of cases so far, but nothing too much out of the ordinary yet. I have mainly discovered I'm not used to standing for 11 hours a day. Sore feet!

There have been several discussions about chemotherapy for dogs with lymphosarcoma. I was told the life expectancy for a case of lymphosarcoma is approximately 3 months, and with treatment this increases to 6-9 months. Is it really worth it? Some of the medications have pretty nasty side effects, can be expensive, and are dangerous. I don't know the full story, there are lectures next year where I expect to learn more about complete remission rates and other important factors.

I'm back again next week and hoping to see more cases and learn even more. It's great revision for pharmacology and anaesthesiology, plus I find myself going over pathology. I'll use the weekend to read over what I have learned so far.

More Tiger News

When building an enclosure for your tiger, please ensure your walls are over 5m high or else they will possibly escape and eat you. There are also reports that aggravating a tiger in an enclosure with 3.81m walls may be bad for your health. You have been warned. Obviously when I grown up and become a tiger (as is the plan) there will be no walls because I'm great. Plus the interchangeable hands/paws will make it easy for me to escape any cage. I'm not crazy, just planning for the future.

Bad Tiger

Endangered animals in zoos is generally a good idea, especially with the breeding programs these days to help increase numbers. This isn't so useful if one of them escapes and starts attacking people, forcing it to be shot. I suppose we will discover later how a known aggressive big cat managed to escape and maul people, but clearly something was wrong.

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone is having a good holiday, I seem to be so far. Edinburgh is fairly quiet now without all the students about, although there is a slight possibility I'm missing some of my classmates. And of course a certain puppy.

Christmas dinner is all planned and sorted. This year I shall be devouring lamb which is different from the traditional turkey, but I don't care. There is a plan to run up the seat whilst the food is cooking as well, should be fun.

After Christmas its EMS time with 5 days of really interesting work at Braid Vets here in Edinburgh. I'm really looking forward to it! Last time I was at a practice there was still so much that I didn't know. There will still be lots I don't know, but hopefully slightly less this time around.

Time Off

So post-exams has been quite good fun so far with just the right amount of sleeping in, climbing and of course, partying. The staff party was on Sunday night and mixed in with a bit of work, but ended up rather drunken. I didn't dance though.

I've also been giving tours of Summerhall to new potential undergrads. They all look so young! Either that or I'm getting too old. Not too old to climb though. Despite being away for a while I managed to get up some 6a and 6a+ climbs and nearly got up the 7a flake without using the features. More practice!

All Done!

Another exam period is over and everyone survived. I think it's all a cunning ploy by the vet school to get us used to stress for life in practice. Either that or they are just plain nasty.

I was expecting this exam to be the worst, but in fact it was the fairest of the bunch. There was a weird knowledge kind of thing going on where not every question scared the life out of me. In fact none of them did. I may have been learning.

So now I am exam-less and puppy-less with a couple days of free time before the next engagement. Sleep is called for.

3 down

So three whole exams down, two to go. The first one was ok, the second went great, but the exam today was nasty. Enough said. I'm going to play with a puppy instead.

Still working

I may not be at work, but I'm still on their phone list. Despite having a weekend off I was called in today to do a bit of fixing.....at 1am! I have just got home again. The lesson behind this story is to always check the power cord, humans lie. It's always the power cord. I never ever ever have to crawl in the roof spaces.

Practical Exams

First a little complaint - I have practical exams on Monday and Tuesday out at Easter Bush that only last 5-10 minutes each. Why can't we just have both of them on the same day? My round trip time to get there will be about 1 hour, and I could just as easily spend that revising at home.

I spent the past 2 hours doing suture practice. I think I got through everything. Hand ties, simple interrupted ties, simple continuous, surgeons knots, square knots to name but a few. Then I ran out of suture material, so I came home to do more work. Systems pathology or the physics behind ultrasound? It's a hard choice.

Things to do

1)Revise

That's about it for the next week. I may also need to work and I have various personal commitments like meeting humans and exercising the great BD but apart from that I shall be at home revising. Or at Summerhall revising. Or at Easter Bush revising. You get the idea. Revising. Sorry if no updates for a while. Maybe post-exams.