My C Student

On my way out of todays pathology II exam I overheard Dr. Kainer talking to Dr. Miller about an old student of his. As he was holding up a research journal he said "this guy used to be one of my students", "he was a "C" student". I thought hey there's hope because guess what I'm a C student too!!

We took our first pharmacology exam last Friday and word on the street is that 1/3 of the class failed!! I even heard that the dean and our professor along with the academic assistant dean had a meeting on Friday, hmmm? Anyways I ended up with a 73% and I usually fall around the average give or take a percent or two. Regardless, I felt like superman coming out of that test and felt in complete control of calculating volume distributions, ionizations, dosages, plasma concentrations, and excretions. I should add that when I handed in my test there were still about 50 of the 120 students! Dr. Shokry called "time" and 40 students were still working on calculations, 20 were asked directly by the professor to "hand in the test NOW" or else. I was even told by many classmates that they were forced to straight out guess for the last 5 to 7 questions because time ran out!!!!

conclusion: too many calculations, too little time.

On to pathology exam 2 today and the frustration level is starting to get to broil. I made a few mistakes, but my quarrel is with the format. But before I start complaining I'd like to give credit to semester 3 professor Dr. Gyimah. He tested objectively, from page 1 through 99. Dr. Miller does the exact opposite: he weighs the majority of the test on some obscure disease process that wasn't even emphasized; buried somewhere below all the highlighted information. Oh well it's over for now, lets just hope I can turn this C thing around....or maybe I should just settle and someday be a "big shot" researcher that way Dr. Miller can say "hey this used to be my C student"!

California don't blink because here I come for four days: March 1st - 4th!

Oh, and Chump killed a poor ol' neighborhood chicken....shame on him!!

Indee

She's finally here!!! Little Indee graced us with her arrival on Friday, February 16th. Sharie called me around 1 pm my time and said she was on her way to the hospital. I thought for sure she'll be there till Saturday or Sunday. Thirty minutes later I got a call while in the canned food isle: "I'm 6 cm and having frequent contraction". EEEEKKKK, gotta go home so I can sit down and focus on welcoming Indee. Get in the check out and zip on home, but no luck I had to pull over half way home to hear the great news! It happened soooo FAST!

I've posted a short video clip that Dennis sent me, hopefully it will work so check it out!

http://www.savefile.com/files/498830

Last weekend was action packed: As an AAEP student officer I was helping organize details in preparation of our visiting lecturer Dr. Trotter. From planning out dinner details to taking care of accomodation and airfare expenses. Dr. Trotter is a well respected Equine surgeon with 2o years experience at Colorado State University. Recently he moved to TX and is now venturing into an area hardly explored by veterinarians: acupuncture and chiropractic work. The cool thing is that we had a large turnout and even a handful of professors showed up. What's funny is that Dr. Trotter is semi-retired now and Dr. Horowitz (his anatomy professor as well as mine) is STILL teaching! Dr. Trotter however went to school in Canada where Dr. Horowitz taught before. I enjoyed talking to Dr. Trotters wife Judy, she's was cool.

Dr. Trotter, his wife Judy and of course me.

The Dean even had something to say about AAEP officers:

I wanted to let each of you know that Dr Trotter and Judy where very impressed by each of you. They said you where the greatest bunch of students they had ever interacted with. Your hospitality was the best they had seen and they appreciated it. The water, snacks and drinks on arrival was fantastic ( I guess I better start doing that too when I pick people up at airport late at night) Thank you for representing RUSVM and yourselves so well.

Dave DeYoung

Good news is I rocked on Avian Medicine exam, Epidemiology, and Veterinary Public Health!!! Now if I can keep it going for Thursdays notoriously tough Pharmacology class! Then on Monday I get a go at Pathology exam #2, then two days later Cali here I come!!!

Lyle and Paul working the grill this weekend

broken, busted, bitten, and beaten

I guess I'm a proud owner of a 7'2" Isle surf board

Boy the B's sure did give me a beatin' today. I went out to coconut cliffs with the usual surf crowd (Art, Jon, Shauna, and Eric). Yesterday we barbecued on the beach, I took some USDA Costco certified beef cuts with my homemade teriyaki sauce....yummmy! However, back to today, I caught some nice fast, steep, waves (one foot overhead). After an 1 1\2 I said "laters" to the surf gang and paddled out. You have to understand getting to "coconut cliffs" takes about 15 minutes of careful, tactful walking across lava rocks, algae rocks, sand, scrambling up volkswagen size rocks, etc. So I'm on my way back to the car and BAAMMMM I slipped!! I put a big gash in my shin and a horrific dent in Jon's board. The feeling of frustration mixed with pain is unexplainable. Anyhow I'm going to talk to Jon tomorrow about how I just purchased his board for the price he was previously asking. Except now I have a jacked up shin and a defective board in desperate need of repairs of which I have no idea how to do.

ouch!

Before I loaded up the board this morning I got bitten by about 10 ants. I thought I was a fast learner until I unloaded the board (with gashed knee and defeated spirits) and got bitten AGAIN by probably the same ants!!!

On to todays soccer game:

Brian: boy Serg we're going to womp on this nerd team for sure!

Sergio: Brian don't get too confident now (speaking from experience)

later of course we suffered a humiliating defeat. We must of shot at their goal ten times more than they did to our goal. The only difference being that none of our shots were going in!!!

If you want a good burger round' here you gotta do it yourself!


Anyhow, when I got home I was cutting up vege's for dinner and poked myself with the sharp cutco knife!!! All in all not a good day at all, but I must put everything into perspective with my vet school motto: "It can ALWAYS be worse"

Hey good news: I got a B+ in avian medicine! Epidemiology is coming up on Friday so I started hitting the notes.

Three more weeks and I get to see my girls!!

Let's hope I have a better day tomorrow......one day at a time.

Goodnight

99%

St. Kitts

this is where i do my grocery shopping... no plasma screens here though!

Lab Animal Medicine is all finished! The course is offered in one month (crash course) so now we get out by 11am!!! This means maybe I can squeeze in a run or some surf time. I did my presentation on ECMO and it went really smooth. As usual I felt in control and confident at the front. I owe it all to my mother who as kids pretty much forced us to go do song service every sabbath morning for church service!! What gave my presentation some extra flare was Dr. Rojas input. Dr. Rojas is a human cardiac surgeon and he gave me some cutting edge, latest in technology, not approved by the FDA information. It was cool to talk to him because with my Respiratory Therapy background we were speaking the same language. On the other hand Dr. Bartlett also from Michigan State didn't pull through at all. This guy is the father of ECMO and is retired now but I imagine involved in some capacity. His email: "All the information you need is available from ELSO. Check thepublications on the internet". Well said Dr. Bartlett, oh and thanks very inspirational! Anyway it's the 99% like that ruin it for the 1% like Dr. Rojas. One of the many reasons I decided human medical school was definitely not for me. Why so I can develop "God's greatest gift to mankind" complex? uhh uhh.

I swear I saw these while surfing....Is that a cowphin??

Path results are back now. It looked very grim for the whole class, I usually score right on the average and my grade was 70%! On one hand I feel so bad for Dr. Miller, the class was not having any of this and they were very vocal. Dr. Miller I'm sure wanted to go home and cry because he sure looked like it.....very disrespectful on many of my classmates parts. As a class we've never behaved like this it was embarassing. On the other hand I want to learn pathology and it seems like Dr. Millers questions leave LOTS of room for interpretation and thats not good. This was only 25% of the grade, three more to go before the quarter is over so lets try harder next time around. I'm just glad he breaks it down to four test instead of having one big midterm and a final that would be really BAD!

Today I went surfing to "concretes" with Jon, Art, and Shauna. Waves were about chest high and it was a corral reef break...so very consistent. I caugt a few good waves on Jon's 7' 2" board but forgot my rash guard....OUCH, can you say chest wax job?

concrete's (because concrete company nearby)

Paul (5th semester) is my co-officer for AAEP (American Assoc. of Equine Practioners) student chapter. This last saturday he gave a demo on hoof trimming, I learned alot. Four point trims, 60/40 ratio for weight distribution, and many more.

Alright, I better get back to studying avian medicine because tomorrow we have exam #1. For the sake of Dr. McNeal lets just hope she's fair, otherwise protective gear might become standard issue I'm afraid.

dirty dog

Tomorrow I'll be doing my extra credit presentation in Lab Animal Medicine. The presentation will be on ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation). It was briefly mentioned in one of Dr. Hankensons lectures. I decided to talk about ECMO because I know a little bit about it since I have a Respiratory Therapy background. Originally I wanted to do something a bit more applicable to Lab Animal Medicine like canine tooth cutbacks in piglets, but I changed my mind.

a little off-roading was necessary to get to the surf

Yesterday I decided to take a study break and joined my classmate Jonathan and a spouse named Art. They had an extra board for me but when we got to this beach it was riddled with lava rock and urchins for sure! It took John and Art about 15 minutes to carefully step to waste level water! I decided it would be best not to break someone elses board and took a few pics from the shore, the waves were knee high anyways.

saw these crustaceans on rocks on the shore their a gazillion years old!

these little chinchillas like dust baths

Really though chinchillas require dust baths because apparently it reduces the oils on their fur = healthy, happy chinchilla. So I decided now it's o.k. for Chump to roll in the dirt two nanoseconds after I bath him. . . . he must have a good reason!

Just had my first Pathology II exam last monday. After talking to a few classmates I guess I'm not the only one that made mistakes. On one scenario: 4 month old feedlot calf had diarrhea for four days then suddenly died with a picture of the ileum and focal hemorrhagic necrosis. I should have put BVD (Bovine Viral Diarrhea) however, I put the second best answer: Salmonella! I hope he gives partial credit because that question was worth about 20% of the total exam grade. Afterall, I did list the pathogenesis for salmonella to the T so it goes to show I know the second best response very well. It was rather frustrating however, because I could recite everything about BVD in my sleep. Oh well, atleast I have three more opportunities to improve. I better hit the sack because it's almost 1 am!

Goodnight or is it goodmorning?

Sergio