Back to kittens.

I have deprived you guys of fluffy adorableness in my anxiety over finals. I intend to remedy that.

Woooooo!!!

I passed! I am a second semester student! I dropped from an A in two classes to a B and a B+, and a B+ in one class to a B, but I maintained a 3.0, which is all I needed to remain lead researcher on my study.

I can enjoy my last day on the island free of nerves. :)

Nerves.

I had my last final yesterday morning. It went horribly. Any future Rossies reading this, you will love and hate Animal Nutrition. It's a really interesting and at times fun class, but the first and final exams have large sections written by a certain unmentioned professor that are comparable to learning the material in English and being tested on it in Greek. Be forewarned.

I went into finals with really good grades and confident, and now I'm on edge, honestly waiting for tomorrow when grades will be posted in a state of near-vomitous anxiety. We all are. My roommates and I had a potluck get together last night with friends, and it's all anyone could talk about. None of us are what you might consider bad students, party-ers or slackers, we all went in doing okay-to-good in all of our classes, and after those exams we ALL are convinced that we failed everything and are going home.

So, you want to be a vet?

Welcome to your first semester of vet school.

Sad news.

Little Andre has died. He took a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse over this past weekend. I tried supplementing him with KMR for the first two days but then on Monday night he was still looking terrible so I brought him in to the clinic. They gave him subcutaneous fluids, fed him via a stomach tube and put him on a heating pad and kept him overnight. Even with all of that the vet said that there was a 50/50 chance, and that it was likely aspiration pneumonia, which is common in 3-week-old kittens when they start eating a lot.The vet and I discussed it and I signed a euthanasia form giving them permission to use their best judgment.

After my exam this morning I stopped by the clinic to check on him and the vet informed me that they euthanized him early this morning. Apparently his body temperature just would not stay up, no matter what they tried.

So yes, it's sad, but there are still three happy, healthy kittens who are romping around my room in a hilariously ungainly fashion right now. I still have one final left to go and then nothing but to rest and relax until my flight on Sunday.

Crunch time.

Finals start on Monday. My first exam is in Gross Anatomy I, a three-hour-long exam consisting of a laboratory practical exam where they'll have cadavers and skeletons out with tags for identification or questions about clinical applications (i.e. "If I sever this tendon, how will the dog present?"), as well as a small animal and large animal palpation portion where structures on live animals will be tagged for identification or we could be asked to show where to take a pulse, do an IM injection, etc.

Today I woke up at 6:15am, got showered and dressed and headed to the anatomy lab around 7:10am. I studied in the lab with one of the cadaver dogs until 10am and then left to go to a LA palp tutor session (which was massively helpful because she told us specifically which questions ALWAYS get asked on the anatomy final, and to know them). After the tutor session I went home, ate lunch, reviewed my notes for 5 hours and then went back to the lab at 6:30pm for two more hours of review with the cadaver dog and buckets of equine and bovine guts. Now I'm going to make myself a rum and coke and study old material (because everything I've studied up until now is new material, but the final is cumulative) until I pass out.

Tomorrow, rinse and repeat. 13+ hour days? You're a vet student now, get used to it.

Playtime!

Mama's been neglected amongst all the kitten photos and videos. Which is a shame, because she's a great cat. She hopped up on the bed with me last night for the first time since the kittens were born, and it made me realize how much I'd missed having her all to myself.

You can really hear the coqui frogs in this video. And of course, here's one of all four of the kittens playing. Although Andre is being a big wuss and calling for his momma, don't let him fool you. He's usually right in the middle of the kitten dogpile.