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Janel's Place

Sometimes sparks of genius just have to be typed.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Heaven is in the livestock building 

The end of the story is how I bottle fed an orphaned alpaca baby. The beginning of the story is putting on a red suit and yellow boots. The middle of the story is how I stood behind three surgeons and kept smacking my own jaw shut because they were c-sectioning an alpaca before my very eyes. The fill-in parts of the story cannot be spoken tonight because spending 6.5 hours in the livestock barn has not magically filled my brain with all knowledge concerning muscles and bones of the thoracic limb.

Day 6 of being a vet student: thumbs up.

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Day #3: Humerus elephant day 

Wow. Holy ulna. I think I lived a lifetime in a day today, just got up and then ran around all day and it's past bedtime. Maybe this whole experience will be short.

If this is the case, in fact, then I simply must write a blog. I will write a blog about the ulna, because it is my favorite bone. The ulna does not look the same upsidedown or rightside up, unlike the humerus which looks just fine either way and can be memorized in the context of a leg (SCRATCH! A LIMB) in a very comfortable way until you accidentally put it together the other way and by golly it fits EVEN better. Yes folks, bring me your broken dogs and I will put them back together with their legs on upsidedown.

So today was day #3, and I will attempt to remember what happened in it. Although certainly interesting things happened on days 1 and 2, and even on pre-days 1-7, however I should actually be studying said bones instead of doing this therefore day 3 must receive a short amount of glory before the mantle of death strikes my eyeballs and I must sleep. I believe the first event of the day was waking up. Uneventful. I went to school and sorted some flies. But then, yes then I went to Immunology. Random pictures appeared on the board and I wrote them down and was glad I took that supernasty class long ago because I might be able to make sense of those pictures some fine day after I figure out what the heck all of the pink stuff is on histology slides and quit putting dogs together wrong. But alas there was a fire alarm and I don't know what happened after the cytokines appeared. All us smart little vet students filed out the door and then parked our smart little bodies RIGHT outside the door so that no fireman would ever be able to pass without magical powers. It occured to me once that someone should tell the peoples to move away from the door, however I chose to practice my fabulous leadership skills and remained on my butt. For which I was rewarded when Lise told me that Toto was a Cairn terrier. As I think all terriers look the same, this was a pearl of great price. Then there was intro to gross lab and I learned that wiping hair across embalmed dogs is why God invented hair-ties, and I believe we were warned that we would begin our lives as people who smell very bad but unfortunately are doomed to forget this very soon. Sorry everyone. After that I visited my page of bones and took my bone box to my little cube and listened to the swarms of people around me uttering words I have never heard with great amounts of familiarity. At this time I uttered the following words for the first time in the tone of doom and gloom rather than excitement: "I can't believe they let me into vet school." At this time I was rescued by an angel named Alison who started trying to make me believe it is actually possible for ME to memorize that many bones and muscles. Even all of those regions of bones and the imaginary tubercles and everything. I still don't believe in tubercles and I don't trust people who do. But anyway, after a very long time and another round of bones and playing with bulldog legs with Tessha I think that the horror has abated and it may be that I will survive. What's that little thing in my head right now that someone said after 150 people all sat on each other at Pingree Park... "you may think you can or you may think you can't... either way you are right." Motivational speeches are us. About 150 people sitting on each other... another time.

Post bone studies... ah yes. The surgery club elephant talk. I'm losing power right now and I don' t think I can accurately describe the many extremes of emotion that one vet student can visit while listening to a lecture about the successes and failures of vasectomizing bull elephants in Africa. The winning emotion turned out to be a building sadness as I envisioned baby Dumbo trying to stagger to his feet, hurt and in pain, doomed to a life of social rejection. It got so bad that when the bull elephant finally did make it to his feet, uncurled his crumpled knees, picked up his nearby rope and flung it into a nearby tree, the surrouding masses of cheering and laughing vet students blurred as I burst into tears. I then focused my brain back on the overpopulation problem as well as the fact that I had no clue about the pain levels or possibilities of social rejection, asked a couple of questions about these things, and discovered that as of now the bull elephants seem to have gone back to their herds and are most certainly not in pain. Look at what Dumbo has done to me. NEVERTHELESS, I remain dubious. I've seen the wild elephants program on Animal Planet, and these giants are senstive. I guess we'll have to see if it works. As much as it seems like a classical animal control problem that could be cured by culling, it hurts to think about that solution at the individual elephant level.

On that note, I think the rest of the night was spent listening to Samantha tour the dog breeds, for she knows all that could be known about dogs. If I can ever know half as much about anything as Samantha knows about dogs, I will have the ability to be useful in this world. She is a living example of what one can achieve with a little bit of genuine passion.

Nearing the end... I stopped in for two swing dances and got my cardio-work-out. A good fifteen minutes spent increasing my lifespan so that I can indeed learn all of the bones of a dog and maybe even put one or two back together again properly before falling over from malnutrition. This scenario has driven me to V8 juice. A truly vile substance.

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Important message 

Good afternoon.

Today at 3:43 p.m. Mountain time I put on my badge.

The End.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

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Eowyn

Eowyn

If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer.

In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto.

Who would you be?
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