If I just breathe

"The Veterinarian" by Jose Perez

One moment, I'm cool as a cucumber and practically a ball of sunshine. The next, I'm running around like a headless chicken.

I guess that's life in veterinary medicine.

The last couple of weeks, aside from this whole Uganda draft business, has been a cake walk for me. I wake up on time, eat a healthy breakfast of soy milk, grapefruit and oatmeal. I walk my half hour to school and go running or climbing almost every day. I smile at everyone. Love everyone. I decide to make peace with the cat and even comment to someone that I thought it was cute when she hid my engagement ring under my bed where I didn't find it for a few hours.

But then, the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and all hell breaks loose.

That's what happened this week. Since sunday, I've eaten pizza no less than three times and gorged on icecream with sprinkles, butterscotch, rasberry sauce and, what's that? chocolate sauce you say? oh hell, why not. Bring it on.

Running at the gym is a distant memory to me and I woke up to late to walk to school and drove and illegally parked in the day lot instead. I nearly killed the cat yesterday when she jumped on my desk and started attacking my Hello Kitty calendar and my necklaces.

The problem is, I have three exams tomorrow morning. Not just any exams. My three practical medical excercise exams. It's the end of my third year here and apparently, they've taught me everything I'll ever need to know to do well in a clinical setting and now, it's time to test me.

Since first year, we've been working towards these exams. These are the tests where they figure out if you're just book smart, or if you can actually apply what you read into real every day life. This is where they sort of the mice from the men. The losers from the winners. The cool kids from the smelly kids. The Fords from the Mercedes. The green skittles from the red skittles. The donkeys from the unicorns. The . . . you catch my drift.

Some people have their small animal practical exam this week and then have their cow and horse exams two weeks later. Then there are those who are unlucky like me. Due to some freakish twist of scheduling fate, I am to have my small animal, horse and cow exam all on the same day.

I have to go downstairs to the clinics on tomorrow morning where there will be a sheet with my name on it and a room. I go into the room where either a cow, horse or dog will be waiting for me with a professor. And then they tell me to do a physical exam, ask me a sh*tload of questions like "what is the normal heart rate for this dog? What if it was a chihuahua? What if it was a pitbull (cus obviously, to make my life difficult, they don't have the same normals)? What is the normal blood pressure? Where do you normally take blood from this animal? Can you take blood from it for me? How do you do a cystocentesis? What are the indications for that? What are the contraindications? What structures are around there in the dog? the cat? blah blah blah blah"

and then *DING* I go into the next room and do it all over again with a horse

"do a physical exam. are the values normal? where are the major lymph nodes? which ones can you feel normally? Do a neurological exam on this horse. How do you know if it has a deficit in its proprioception? What nerves are you testing when you do this? what disease would cause a deficit in that nerve? what's the normal heart rate and blood pressure and temperature range? put on this halter on the horse for me. Restrain this horse for me like you would if you wanted to do an abdominocentesis. What are the landmarks for an epidural in the horse? What are the indications? What kind of needle do you use? What size? What breed and colour is this horse? What is the crazy-horse-people-term for the white spot on its legs and forehead? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

And then *DING!* And I go to the cow and have to do it all over again.

But in the cow, on top of all the fun stuff, I also have to demonstrate that I know how to tie specific knots (bowline, casting, quick-release, etc.) so that if the cow gets antsy, they won't tighten and I'll be able to let the cow go. And I also have to put a halter on the cow, put a mouth gag into it. Pass a nasogastric tube. Show where I would inject lidocaine to do a proper block on the cow, etc. etc. etc.

The problem is, you don't know which examiner you will get (some of them are much worse than others. Some of them have photographic memories and were the top of their graduating class and just plain neurotic. some of them are super judgemental of a little oriental city girl and will grill me extra on purpose. some of them will be writing my references for me when I apply for post-grad studies next year) or what questions they will ask you cus there are a TON of potential things they can ask me. I've only listed a few.

And I have to know it ALL by thursdsay morning or risk either failing my exam or looking like a complete and utter idiot three times. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *pant pant* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! So I'm not stressed. Not stressed at all.

And on top of it all, my draft for all my fourth year rotations happens this thursday right after my med-ex exams. We all sit there in the lecture hall at 1:o0pm sharp and they generate a random list of names and they start at the top and one by one we go up to the front of the classroom, ask for a specific rotation at a certain date and if we're lucky, it won't be taken yet and we can put it in our schedule. If it's taken, you have to scramble to rearrange your schedule to fit in all your mandatory rotations. And then we sit down and they flip the list over and we go up to the front of a the classroom starting from the bottom of the list and go up and choose our next rotation until our schedule is full.

We have to go up there ten times and everyone's fighting to get the good rotations and if I'm unlucky that day, I'll be stuck with the duds like micropathology and vaccine programs or something. Now that I have africa, my name automatically moves to the bottom of the list in rounds 5 and 6 so I'm probably going to get stuck with something crappy like Manitoba swine.

Oh, and did I mention I then have a written test on Friday for swine medicine where I have to memorise all the different strains and toxin genes of each different species of bacteria that causes diarrhea in pigs? STOOPID PIGS AND THEIR STOOPID DIARRHEA. And that I also have a group presentation for cardiology this Friday for which my group hasn't even met yet?!

*pant pant pant*

I can't breathe.

I wonder if it's too late to go out and get a triple fudge sundae with gobs of peanut butter and whipped cream all over it.

Oof.