Diary of a Dick Vet

I was at Summerhall to drop off some library books today, when I realized that the new class of GEPs are matriculating and having orientation this week. And then I realized that I’m halfway through my time at the Dick, and it’s been two years since I moved to Edinburgh. How time has flown, and yet can’t fly fast enough!

I think there are some Dicks-to-be who read my blog, so I thought I interrupt my scheduled knitting (heh) to offer a few works of advice. Maybe they’re the kind of lessons you learn on your own, but they’re hard learned, and I’d rather you skip the agony.

1. When it comes to studying, it’s quantity over quality. Don’t agonize that other people seem to be studying more than you, because you can sit in the library for hour upon hour after class, with no benefit, if it’s just time spent. Enjoy your evenings - you’ll be more productive during the day if you do.

2. It’s perhaps an overused epigram, but remember that the person who graduates last in class is still called a vet. It’s nice to be first - and if you’re like me you want to know everything because you want to be the best vet you can be when your qualify - but trust me, if you can learn just over 50% of the material they want you to learn, you’ll still be a good vet. And there’s more to being a vet than being book smart!

So, good luck, lads. If you want to meet for a coffee, or have any questions, email me at zutaloo at gmail.com. I’m going to go back to knitting: I’ve still got a month left before I start, and I intent to savor it.

‘The uterus is the only Y-shaped organ in the body. It’s also the only one with ovaries at either end of it.’

Spoke by someone who has obviously (patiently) helped many-a student with their first bitch spay.

For any vet school wannabes out there, here is a taste of what you’re in for:

On Friday, I’m going to sit an exam with a few dozen multiple choice questions and four essays, pulled from five months of lectures.

PS My GI and Neuro notes are in a separate folder.

I have an ‘assessment’ on food health and safety tomorrow (causing me to skip my knitting group tonight, boo!) I’m not particularly jazzed about the topic, which makes studying even more tedious.

Veterinarians play a crucial role in providing safe animal products for the consumer, acting as an early notification system for disease outbreaks and preventing sick animals from entering the food chain. Farm animal vets frequently work in close association with local health authorities, and slaughterhouses require veterinarians on-site to identify diseased animals and to assess any obvious disruptions in carcass quality. However, within the world of vet school, which is mostly populated by students interested solely in small animal medicine, the role of the vet and public health safety is a terribly unpopular subject. Students who express actual interest in the topic usually meet raised eyebrows from their peers. It’s certainly a very unglamorous department, although obviously vital component of our education. Unfortunately, the great expense of employing veterinarians by health agencies means there is a general movement toward non-vets taking on more and more of the work, possibly to the disadvantage of the animals involved.

I do find food health safety moderately interesting, not at the level of creating ‘control’ strategies for meat processing, but in basic surveillance of emerging disease trends by the compilation of data from a network of veterinarians. Unfortunately, nowadays the majority of food-borne disease agents in meat do not actually cause sickness in the carrier animal, meaning the veterinarian is unable to identify them on the farm. Food inspection and proper processing and storage are the most successful methods of identifying unsafe animal products. Still, veterinarians prevent those diseases that infect animals and humans from crossing the line to the consumer. Safe meat, dairy, and eggs: brought to you in part by veterinarians!

I’ll be glad when I finish my exam tomorrow, because my cat and dog course is nearing a close, and that exam will demand a lot of attention. The assessment tomorrow is worth only a fraction of my overall grade for the class, which runs throughout every year in school except for final year, so there is more wiggle room for a less-than-passing score. Still, I don’t want to plunge my running total in the gutter and not be able to climb out!

The other reason I’ll be glad to finish this exam? Since reading so much about food safety over the past few days, I’ve become more concerned than usual about whether or not my own food is safe! I can’t wait to stop reading about outbreaks from seemingly safe food. It just takes a few bugs in the right environment….

How on earth (a) did break end, and (b) am I almost finished with the first week back? Exams are in a few weeks time, and I don’t know how I’ll learn all the new material and review the old stuff in the meanwhile! The perennial problem for the student, of course.

When I last left you, I had nearly completed a stunning first week of EMS. The second week was great as well, especially since the vet who did most of the operations was back from vacation. I was able to watch a femoral head and neck excision arthroplasty on a Border Terrier and a splenectomy on a Rottweiler before I left, have a good chat with everyone about the realities of working in a small animal clinic, and enjoy some good cuddles with lots of interesting pets. Success!

Sadly my scheduled trip to Holland/Belgium/Luxembourg was cancelled due to an unfortunate cloud of ash from some Northern neighbors, but at least I spent an extra week ’stranded’ in Edinburgh, rather than stuck in a foreign country, with no certain way of getting home. I spent my last week of sweet, sweet freedom knitting and watching The Mighty Boosh on DVD. As you do.

Some FOs:

My o w l s! This was my first proper sweater, and I would say it’s a good beginner jumper. Perhaps it wasn’t as challenging as I had originally anticipated because I was already confident with circulars, cables, and short-rows, but I still think anyone who can knit and purl can make this! The pattern is written wonderfully and is hugely popular on ravelry, and I’m proud someone who wrote something so fantastic is also a current resident of Edinburgh! I want to knit all of her designs (Manu is going to be my next ‘big’ project.) I’ve gotten several compliments on this sweater, which illustrates how knitted garments can truly be trendy and fashionable.

In addition, I found a way to use some of the lovely 4-ply I bought from Scottish indie yarn dyer Ripples Crafts:

It’s a very simply little shawl/wrap - I didn’t want a complicated lace pattern to obscure the colors in the yarn. I genuinely enjoyed knitting the the stockinette stitch base and then simple lace section, before finishing with some good old-fashioned garter. Garter - it’s coming back in, man. I have purposely photographed this from a distance, because upon closer inspection, it’s very, very obvious that I was off on some of my stitch counts, leading to a disruption in the lace pattern. You’d only noticed if you looked closely, and I’m going to let my amazing shawl be spoiled by details.

And finally, my pretty green hat. My wardrobe is unintentionally skewed green but my accessories are not, so this was a way to fill the deficit. The colorway is ‘Light Olive’ but it makes me think of lichen or moss, of damp forests and mushroom hunts with my dad when I was a teen. I call it my ‘Angwin Tam,’ and the yarn is 50% angora, 50% wool - it’s super-soft! I think I might buy another skein and knit some simple mittens to match, for next winter.

In addition to knitting my fingers raw, I also took a semi-impromptu day-trip to Thirsk, where the famous vet, James Herriot, had his surgery. All Creatures Great And Small is practically the bible for aspiring vets, and I’d been wanting to visit ever since I learned his old surgery is now a museum. The three hours of train journeys made it just far enough away to be someplace very different, but close enough to enjoy a full afternoon, arriving home in the early evening.

It was a very overcast day, but for a gal who lives in Edinburgh, the absence of rain is enough cause for joy. So forgive me if my photos are a bit gloomy and gray.

Donald Sinclair, aka Siegfried Farnon, vetted the Thirsk Races every year. I could just see the track, as I made the 20 minute walk from the train station to the town center.

On the front of Skeldale House

I was practically alone on my tour of the house. The guide at the entrance insisted that I take loads of pictures, and filled me in on many of the little details of the house, such as which pieces are original to the house, and sights that were directly referenced in the books. Wight’s widow was involved in the curation of the museum, so the house is a fairly accurate picture of how it looked in the 1940s. I couldn’t help but find the place a bit romantic, full of old charm, and a reminder of what vetting used to be. My absolute favorite room was the old dispensary, where James and Siegfriend mixed any number of strange brews for the farmers.

A real potions cabinet, full of 'Placentula or Cleansing Drink' and 'Oxygas for Udder Ill' and other strange wares. I wonder how vets 50 years from now will find our current pharmacies?

The consultation room for small animals

The cheerful kitchen

I doubt this tea cozy was originally in the house, but I'm still in love with it!

The back portion of the property included a short video on Wight’s life, and the car used in the television series. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the show and wouldn’t call myself much of a fan, but I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to sit in that sweet car. Sadly, no one was around to take a photo of me in it, so I had to improvise:

It's me!

Upstairs was a totally brilliant museum of veterinary medicine. I majorly geeked out, looking at the old instruments and reading about all the wonky things early vets used to do. I recognize that non-vets probably couldn’t care less about this, and since my tiny readership consists of my immediate family, and people from my knitting group who openly stalk me (hi, Jez!), there’s no need to detail all the photos I took, but I will share this beauty:

An old probang - used to retrieve potatoes and turnips lodged in the throats of cattle. It looks remarkably similar to the modern version, although the favored material is no longer leather. On a side note, it's a bit...wrong...that an instrument made from cow hide was shoved down the throats of other cattle to retrieve potatoes. I suppose it's not unlike using catgut in sheep!

In addition to the potato-grabber’, calving aids and castration instruments appear to have changed little in the past 100 years, and why would they? Those were skills based on experience and knowledge of anatomy, along with a bit of strength. The most important contribution to veterinary medicine (human medicine, too) has undoubtedly been antibiotics, and anthelminthics have dramatically improved welfare and production systems for food animals, but these don’t retrieve a stuck lamb or geld a horse. This was represented on the poster boards that guided the tour of the museum, but I imagine only someone involved in the vet profession would realize how humbling it is, after having a good laugh at the often useless potions at a vet’s disposal, that so much of this field hasn’t actually changed since the introduction of antimicrobials.

Okay, one more geeky thing:

A cat castration box - use your imagination. (Anesthesia is such a wonder!)

I spent about two hours exploring the museum, and loved every minute. I bought myself a few souvenirs and walked down the street to St Mary’s Church, which is a gothic-period church in really good condition. Its original windows had been destroyed during the Blitz, but this appears standard for most British churches; what makes it unusual is that one of these windows had been restored to near perfection. The inside was lovely:

View from the alter

There are a few more pictures on my flickr, especially of the vet museum, if you’re interested. Now I’m back in classes, and trying to relight that fire that led me to this place, to complete this course…with exams so frighteningly close, let’s hope I find my spark!

When I started blogging about vet school, it was a project borne out of excitement. New country, new people, new course…there was a lot to say.

Now I’m in third year, and it feels like the mojo is gone. We spend all day in lecture, with the occasional practical sprinkled throughout. We haven’t seen any real cases, at least nothing to blog about (I don’t assume for one minute that you want to hear about every dog/cat submitted for diarrhea, especially if we don’t get details at this point about treatment.) There are no funny client or animal stories, we don’t get bussed anywhere interesting, and my weekend are dreadfully plain. As an example: I’m taking a beginner’s Dutch class, and our weekly assignment is to practice the past perfect tense by describing what we did this weekend. Every week I rack my brain for something beyond ‘I studied’ and ‘I knit’ and ‘I went to a cafe and drank coffee.’ Meanwhile my classmates talk about trips to Cogenhagen, concerts in Glasgow, dinner parties and museum exhibits. So that what a weekend is like!

I know it’s a good thing, study-wise, that my weekends are so mundane and structured. Still, I can’t say if I study more, or if I’ve just become more of a hermit. Knitting is a nice, soothing way to break from studying, that tucks in nicely throughout my schedule, filling study breaks and wrapping up the day as I enjoy some television in the lounge with a cup of coffee; yet, hoping on a bus or a train, or walking up to Princes St or George IV Bridge to pop into a free museum is clearly more exciting than the meticulous advancement of a project as it builds, knot-by-knot, from the germinal substance of a few balls of yarn, to a fully-fleshed wooly creature. Some days I can look at myself as a student, and see the same laborious progression from the raw materials of mind and will, hopefully someday to transform into a real, certified, vet. And adult and working citizen, who watches movies, and doesn’t knit to avoid another hour looking at a page describing each type of tumor to be found in the lymphoid system, and doesn’t have to blog about how guilty she feels that there is nothing to say.

But, there’s nothing to say. I could show you the dozen or so rows of the pullover vest I’ve started knitting, but why bother? I think it’s more interesting to wait another eighty rows or so, when I reach the sleeves, and what you look at isn’t just a large green rectangle, but the beginning of something useful. And interesting.

There are only a few meager weeks until we break for a week of studying and then sit a week of exams. On Thursday the course organisers gave us detailed information about exam formats, which made the end of the semester seem that much closer. It’s probably time to kick into super study mode, which is hard to do when we still have the same amount of classes as usual.

I do have Thanksgiving to look forward to. I made my first turkey last year, and I hope to do a better job this year! I’ve overheard the new class of GEPs making plans for their first American Thanksgiving In The UK. It’s a tradition that passes down the GEP generation: each year the new class has trouble finding canned pumpkin, calls home for their mom’s stuffing recipe, discovers that UK ovens are not suited for large turkeys, attempts to convince Canadians that American Thanksgiving is better and the British that Thanksgiving of any sort is awesome, and make a little family unit for the evening to celebrate what they’re thankful after the stress of leaving home and country. What a nice holiday.

Anyway, I look forward to turkey and a break from mad studying!

Ah yes, week 4. How much you feel like week 40! At this point, I feel like the amount of information they’ve given me to learn is enough for 10 exams, and yet I’m not even halfway through the semester. Worst of all, everything in our lectures seem relevant to actually being a vet, so unlike last year, when I would read an entire paragraph and (correctly) assume that I didn’t need to overload my brain with extra information, now I feel like I need to memorize each line of notes.

Today was fun, though. I had a practical on bandaging dog legs, and as the nurse demonstrated on one very cooperative springer spaniel (who had a certain Eeyore quality about him) two collies, a poodle, and a lab all chased each other around the room, nibbling and wrestling and generally playing like they were puppies. The terrier and lurcher couldn’t be bothered, but otherwise the room was a big raucous doggy pile of playfulness. After the demo we teamed up and each picked a dog to practice on. My partner and I picked the collie who was initiating all of the naughtiness, but he was really great to work with. He was curious about all the other dogs also being bandaged, and was a little sad when all of his buddies were finished and on the floor while he had to wait for my very, very poorly created Robert Jones bandage, but otherwise he seemed to enjoy the petting and cooing. I really wish I had thought to bring a camera!

Today we walked into lecture and there were free Royal Canin mugs, so woohoo!

Today was my first day as a 3rd year student*. Unlike last year, as a GEP, when I was chomping at the bit and ready to ace the year (little did I know!) this time around I’m not quite thrilled about starting another schlep of studies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still excited and honored to be in vet school, but I am all-too-aware of the pain I’m getting myself into: the thousands of pages of reading and notes to sort through, the hours of wringing my hands in frustration, the hundreds of stupid questions I will have, and doubt - O, The Doubt!

However, that’s the wrong attitude to take, as it won’t help me survive the year. I must brush my brain off and remind myself of the good things. There are many. Some of the more simple ones:

1. Name badges! They spelled my name correctly, and I now have a badge insisting that I am an official RDSVS ‘Veterinary Student.’
2. Pathology! Okay, I know that my Path Fridays will end up being lots of work in a relatively short amount of time, but looking at diseased organs is fun.
3. Surgery! I’ve performed a minor surgery before, and I could tell it would have gone much smoother if I was actually trained in surgery techniques. Here’s my chance.
4. The school’s Orchestra is back and we have a little concert scheduled, so that’s a nice extracurricular to appreciate.
5. I’m in my new flat, which is comfy and full of plenty of space to study.
6. No longer having to endure the smell of Summerhall. I mean, it’s a great building, but parts of it…ewww.

Another bonus: being a real, integrated student, and not a member of a bizarre, relatively new and under-developed program. I hope my fellow ex-GEPs won’t need to badger the administration so much, because we won’t be the strange new group of mostly whiny North Americans trying to insist that the prix fixe menu turns into a buffet. Every University has a push-pull system between the Staff and the Students, but there have been 3rd years far longer than there have been GEPs, and I am prayin’ that the machine is pretty well oiled by now.

Tomorrow’s schedule: pathology of nasal cavities and sinuses, intro to surgery techniques, intro to anaesthesia, and 3rd year photographs. We’re done by 3pm, so I can go and officially register, sign over my student loans, print my notes for the next few weeks, and buy a few more school supplies. I love free time.

By the way, to everyone I was lucky enough to visit while I was home for a few weeks, I had a fabulous time back in the States and look forward to seeing everyone again during Christmas break! Although, that also means I will be sitting exams around that time, so I don’t look forward to December too much right now.

* To clarify, vet school in the UK is usually 5 years and is started straight out of high school; however, the ‘GEP’ programme combines the first two years for students with previous undergraduate degrees in the sciences, and then the students join the traditional ‘3rd years.’ So my second year at the University is called 3rd year! Logically!

I passed all of my exams. Barring a few EMS forms to turn in throughout the summer, I’m officially a 3rd year. Holy cow! All the hard work paid off!

To future GEPers: it’s honestly gonna suck for about 9 months, but you’ll make it through, even if it means resitting in August - and you’ll be insanely proud of yourself. I feel more proud about surviving this last year than my entire four years for my last degree.