Another week bites the dust

Another week bites the dust...

We've started sheep lectures, which are like cattle lectures, but with a few, slight changes. Included in the sheep course this week was what to do with sick sheep at lambing time, something I have a lot of experience with and so I found those lectures more enjoyable than the rest!

Sheep medicine is compounded by the fact that often, the first sign of disease is death. Which makes treating said disease quite difficult. This, coupled with the fact that most farmers will now treat their own sheep, means that vets don't see much sheep work outside of lambing time. It's a shame, because I quite like sheep work (I just find angry sheep less intimidating than angry cows) and would quite like to do it when I graduate - without having to go and work in Cumbria or other sheep-orientated places (no jokes about Aberdeen or Wales please).

In the companion animal course we're still on alimentary medicine (diarrhoea and gut surgery this week), which is more interesting than orthopaedics, but still not that exciting. Although I'm sure I'll change my mind when I'm in practice and get an emergency volvulus case at 3am, and would much rather have a simple fracture!

Practicals this week consisted of communication skills on Monday and prescription writing on Thursday. The comm skills class was very good - I didn't learn much from it because I've taken communication classes before, but we all spent three hours laughing at each other so it wasn't all that bad! The prescription practical was very short, but is something that it's important for us to do - when owners or vets get instructions mixed up the consequences can be dire!

Off home for the weekend, not looking forward to passing through the airport with the current state of affairs - those who know me know airports and RDX do not go together!

What are Saturdays for?

Saturdays are for sleeping...

Saturdays are for eating...

Saturdays are for playing...

Saturdays are for playing jokes on friends...

and Saturdays are for smiling...

Saturdays are not for working!!!!!

Stupid weather

Well, it reached freezing point last night but no snow yet :(

In Runescape I'm now on Level 10 in Mining, Level 5 in Smelting, Level 10 in Woodcutting and my Strength is at 5 (I'm a wuss, I know). I've scrounged lots of random items that I've no idea how to use so I've stored them all in the bank in the hope that some day I'll be able to use them.

Why does studying have to be so boring?

Temperature's dropping...

Had driving lesson number 9 this morning - today's lesson was reversing around a corner and driving in heavy traffic. Quite pleased as I didn't stall today, but not enjoying the start-stop-start-stop of rush hour driving. I also negotiated Anniesland Cross for the first time and managed to not end up halfway to Dumbarton (don't laugh, it's happened before). Had another nightmare last night about brakes not working (thanks Richard! :P) but thankfully the brakes were working fine on the little Corsa this morning!

After being introduced to it during the week, I finally decided to join RuneScape today and registered a new character at lunchtime. It's now 8pm and I've spent the entire afternoon learning how to chop down trees, catch shrimps, smelt iron ore and cook chicken. I'm quite proud of my Level 8 cooking ability and the QP I got for completing my first Quest. I'm not so proud of the fact that, once again, I've done bugger all work today.

Apparently it's snowing down in Ayr at the moment and the weather front is heading this way - now that driving's over for a few days I'm hoping we get at least a few flakes!

*yawn*

It's been an interesting week on the vet front, with lectures on vomiting and regurgitation in the small animal course, and neurology lectures in the large animal course. Also in the large animal course was a morning on Notifiable Diseases - diseases that, if you find in an animal, first you panic, then you go and tell the Government there's a problem. Scary stuff.

Practical-wise we had a class on Fine Needle Aspirates on Monday afternoon (poking holes in latex gloves and smearing bits of mush onto glass slides) and Reflexes (or How-To-Poke-A-Greyhound) yesterday afternoon. I enjoyed the reflex practical because we got to touch a real, live dog and because I actually had some idea of what the instructor was talking about. The FNA class was interesting too but I think I might need to revise my (non-existent) cytology knowledge before the exams!

We finally have all (I hope) the information we need for our pelvic fracture CLA assignment, and I assimilated it into a megatable during the week. We then had a megameeting trying to make some sense out of it this afternoon (of course, being Friday, not a lot of sense was made). We're hoping to get some comparisons made so we can continue with writing the rest of the report and get it over and done with, then start on the presentation.

This evening I visited the PM room (yes, again) and found a very impressive Staffie in an even more impressive body bag - which attracted some very curious looks as we lugged said dog down to the radiography department for x-raying. Also looked at a cat with a pelvic fracture - talk about coincidence! The staff very kindly excavated around the pelvis so we could actually see the fracture sites and took some really good photos that hopefully we can use in our presentation.

Off now for a DVD-fest at a friend's flat - procrastination is an art!