Waiting

The grant application for my summer work has finally been finished and sent off, so now we just have to wait and see. Hopefully we will get the funding requested as apparently some companies have already expressed some interest in seeing how it turn out. Scary!

Now that there is no "proper" work left to do (apart from reading/re-reading endocrinology and cardiology notes) the weather has obviously taken a turn for the worse meaning my well laid plans to climb and/or go for a run on the beach have been cancelled. Normally I'd go to the indoor climbing wall but I lack a partner and the station is over 2 miles away. Yes, I am a wimp! In my defence all my waterproofs are either in Edinburgh or at the vets. Didn't think that one through really.

Busy Still

You would have thought holidays were a time for not being busy, but no luck here. Today has been my first lazy day in a while.

Since I last wrote there has been a wedding (in a kilt!), long train journeys and lots of project research. The wedding all went OK despite snow on the morning. My Dad is now on his honeymoon and I am looking after the dog in Wales. She has changed a lot since I saw her last, or it possibly be my perception of her that has changed through the numerous lectures on the course.

Research goes slowly and painfully for the summer project. There are things I just don't understand which makes sense because I don't have a degree in computing. Nothing to do but crack on and get it done though. Deadline is looming!

Oh and go see the tiger cubs. They are great!

Been Busy

Lots of things to do, and very little time to do them in. We finished our teaching for this term on Friday and decided to celebrate with an exam tomorrow. On top of that I have to organise getting home, including packing everything for a wedding. And a project grant application for the summer. I've finally decided on a project and we are looking to apply for funding. The only problem is the deadline is March 31st, which leaves very little time to actually do much.

Back to revision for me.

Contact

For the past couple of days we have had hand-on practical with animals! It has been really nice to get down to what most of us hope to do in another few years and actually handle living creatures. This may seem a bit odd to some people, but as vet students we aren't really trusted with things that are actually alive until at least 4th year - we mainly see anatomy or pathology specimens. I for one was quite happy to sit in a 2 hour tutorial playing with a Labrador learning the ins and outs of a clinical examination and proper history taking.

More animals!

Man Down!

Some excitement in the bar tonight with a guy who just seemed to attract trouble. First he managed to slice his hand open on a Stanley knife whilst trying to remove wires from a tyre. Why? Who knows? I stuck the small amount of tissue poking out of his hand back in to the hole and left him with a bandage. No hospital as the lac was really small and not even worth a suture.

Same human male arrives back about an hour later, this time having inserted said knife in to his leg cutting the aforementioned tyre. Fool. This hole is slightly larger, deeper, and seems to be in the region that joint capsules could be. Or they would be if he were a dog, cat or a horse. Who knows with humans? This one could do with proper medical attention so he got a HUGE bandage on his leg, as well as the one on his hand, as well as a call for a taxi. His girlfriend decided it deserved an ambulance, but I was pretty sure he didn't plan to bleed out in the 3 minutes it took for the cab to arrive. Ruined a decent pair of socks though.

The downside to all this avoiding proper work is the stupid amount of paperwork I had to fill in. I pointed out that we lacked sterile wipes as well as decent sized gloves, bandages that actually fit the human body as opposed to a horse/cow and various other bits of kit. I mainly used my own kit, which means I need to restock.

Lessons learned: humans should not be allowed sharp objects.