Balding, poisoned, stressed and generally wallowing in self pity

Have a clinical pharmacology midterm this thursday. I'm supposed to be able to say which drug to use when and in what species and in what formulation. I know, I know. Human doctors do it all the time and it seems easy right?

Well what if your human doctor had to treat a bazillion different species, all with different drug metabolism abilities, different dose requirements and different adverse reactions?

For example, you get a headache- doctor gives you a tylenol and you're on your merry way.

So a cat comes in and it's got a bad ache somewhere and you give it a tylenol too right?

WRONG!

TYLENOL KILLS CATS!

Cats can't conjugate it in their livers and it just keep cycling round and round their system till they go into liver failure and they DIE. How about aspirin? THAT'S EVEN WORSE!

Or lets say you get a sinus infection. Doctor gives you a hardcore antibiotic. You take them, get cured and go home happy.

What if your cow got a sinus infection? Shall we just give it that hardcore antibiotic too? Sure! why not?

Well I'll tell you why not. Cus that cow is like fifty times bigger than you and giving that amount of drug that is proportional to the dose you give yourself would cost the poor farmer several thousand dollars. And what if that cow died from its sinus infection? What about the drug residues left over in its meat? The CFIA would kick your ass faster than you can say "unsafe for human consumption" and you'd piss off both the slaughter plant and the poor farmer.

And lastly, what about that antibiotic? Did the drug companies label it for use in that cow? What if hte cow developed an adverse reaction? Who's gonna get sued? THE VET! Cus afterall, the drug company never labelled that drug for cow use . . . and who knows? You used it in a species it wasn't legally labelled for so you might even get charged with a criminal offence!

Yeah. So taking into account all this crap, I'm supposed to be able to figure out what species needs what and when and how much. It sucks.

Why can't all animals be the same?!! Why can't we just give everything penicillin and aspirin?

Why can't it all be for free?

Enough ranting.


So whilst I'm cramming for this exam, I've also been busy losing hair and generally coping with the whole arsenic thing. We're like celebrities at school now and I keep passing by ppl in the hallway who are talking about us. "have you heard about those poor students who got arsenic poisoning?"

It somehow even managed to get to the higher-ups in the college so today, I got a letter from the Academic Dean essentially saying he was sorry for our "condition" and that we should consult our physician immediately.

Translation: I realise you got poisoned on a shcool trip. Please don't sue our sorry asses.

Sarah's mom made her call the Poison control centre and they consulted Occupational health and safety and put us in touch with the only human medical toxicology person in Saskatchewan. We're supposed to do a 24 hour urine collection tomorrow (meaning I have to pee in cups and carry them around with me all day tomorrow. Oh goodie!) to test for our arsenic excretion levels in our urine.

If we aren't excreting any in our urine, that means that the arsenic is just floating around our system and could take months/years to be excreted and we'll have to go on chelation therapy. This involves injecting our muscles with an oily-mineral absorbing substance FOUR TIMES A DAY for goodness knows how long.

I hate even getting one shot a day into my muscles let alone FOUR TIMES. And it's supposed to cause nasty side effects like, oh, RENAL FAILURE! Plus the injection itself is supposed to make us super sore and cause big reactions at the injection site.

Lucky for me, I have two extra kidneys waiting for me over in England . . .

MWAHAHAHAHHAAHA.

I guess for the rest of my team without twins out there in the world, they're kind of SOL. The other girl in my class who's an identical twin was talking with me about it today and we were talking about how awesome it is that we have another set of organs out there in teh world should we need it.

And that's the update for now. My prof wants to publish our case in a toxicology magazine somewhere anonymously. "One of the individuals poisoned was V. Lau. No that's too obvious. Vivian L."

He also wants us to give a seminar to the school so that we can be a lesson to all international travellers who take it into their heads to drink tap water. To be fair, we had no choice. We were in too remote an area to get access to bottled water.

In the meantime, I've been eating lots of sulfur containing food (sulfur is supposed to bind the arsenic and keep it inactive) and drinking lots of black tea which is supposed to clear out the arsenic too.

My hair is still falling out like crazy and all of us have hair that is visibly thinning. Sarah used to be able to make four braids with her hair. She can only make two now. I tend to leave my hair down cus pulling it up and back make me look like I have a receding hairline.

I invested in a nice cashmere blend toque which I will be wearing daily if things get bad. It's a nice consolation prize.

Sarah's parents are freaking out. My parents are freaking out. Judy's dad just told her to "drink milk" and Ronalee has full out stopped washing her hair to stop the hair loss.

And yeah. Nothing else new. I am singing on Friday and I'm kind of nervous cus I have a solo bit where I keep forgetting the words. Whatever.

Well, take care everyone. Enjoy your full heads of hair. And if you want to get rid of your neighbor's pesky cat, just give it some advil.

I will post another update as soon as I get my results back.

Toodles!


-Viv

PS: Stupid Lola the kitten keeps sitting on my notes everytime I try to study. And hwen I shoo her off, she tries to attack my pen. If I fail, I'm blaming it on the cat. Damned feline spawn of Lucifer.