Football heartbreak

2006-11-19

So I know y’all are going to think that I’m speaking about being all broken up about the Stamps yet again not making it to the Grey Cup… but to tell you the truth I’m getting kind of used to it. 😉

No, I’m talking about my final footie match, which went down yesterday… (my soccer match for those of you who insist on using the wrong terminology!). Playing our arch-nemesis we went 75 minutes of regular time and then 10 minutes of Golden Goal overtime… scoreless. It came down to penalty kicks and they won by one, on an unlucky bounce… We spent 60 out of the 75 minutes in their half, and just couldn’t find the net… I think we need to practice shooting – all summer. I almost vomited because I got stuck marking this girl with legs as long as I am tall – my teammates were joking that I should just scoot between them. We had no subs for midfield or defense (ie no one with a strong enough throw or kick) so the 5 of us (we play with 9 on the pitch) had to just rotate back and forth.

I know the burning question is why they are our arch-nemesis… we were playing the girls from Medicine. So… 1) they are the only team to beat us all year; 2) They get really physical (some would say – they know how to play dirty…) and the last game we played with them, they took out our goalie and the ref didn’t even penalise them! and 3) (the worst of all!) They don’t consider us real doctors, because we only work with ‘animals’ (and they SAY so…). Forget the fact that it’s much tougher to remember the internal workings of more than 1 species AND that you’re working with a patient who can’t tell you what’s wrong (and 90% of the time the owner can’t give a history – “yeah… I went to work and came home – poofball was lying in her own vomit”). Okay… enough ranting… so… we lost. But I got a hat! It’s too big for my head and really ugly, but I got a hat! 🙂

This week we have been studying birds. It culminated in killing birds. Wednesday we had 2 day old chicks… which were euthanized by manual cervical dislocation (ie breaking their necks). That wasn’t too bad – everyone managed to do it the first time around (that young their neck vertebrae are still flexible enough that it’s a simple twist of the wrist) and we were all capable of completing the lab.

Then we had adult chickens on Friday. They were dying by lethal injection. After examining all of the ‘living’ things (like blinking so you could see their 3rd eyelid – the nictitating membrane, etc), you were to find the brachial vein, have your partner stabilize the wing, and insert the needle and slowly release the barbiturate and anaesthetic cocktail. We did just fine, it was like our bird went to sleep – I ended up with half a syringe left of stuff. But some people had their birds so wound up before they even went looking for the vein, that they ended up blowing both brachials and they having to try and resort to breaking their necks (Maria and Jamie in our class both worked in a poultry barn last summer, so they tried to do that for them – and succeeded in most cases). I finally looked up, realised what was going on and went and slit some jugulars. Several of the girls are now traumatised and have decided that they never want to eat chicken aga
in… 🙂 They are quickly running out of food sources. ;p

I did a sheep necropsy last week too as part of a pathology club lab. It was the coolest! Our sheep (we worked in groups of two) had surgery the month before, so we could see where all the stitches were (they hadn’t turned fibrous yet) and so we pulled them out. And she had mastitis when we opened up her udder, and the pus was all green and milky – kind of like dyeing milk for St Patrick’s Day! And it didn’t even smell! There must have been a litre at least. Then we took out the eyeball – eyeballs are really cool… and they bounce! Ang dropped it by accident, and I had to chase it half way across the room! So now maybe I’ve crossed the line… if you want to hear more about my necropsy experiences, let me know – I’ve done swine, equine and bovine as well this semester. 🙂

I felt that I should honour the ovine necropsy though, because I just finished a genetics
 paper on sheep. F%$&a^R paper. That’s what I have to say. My original paper was on llamas… and I was really excited. Congenital deafness – cool topic eh? But my genetics prof doesn’t like camelids and when I went to hand in my paper I made the mistake of asking a wee question. She told me to rewrite on a new topic. So… lysosomal storage diseases in sheep… whooohooo… and yeehaw… eyeroll… if you’ve ever heard of Batten’s disease in people? That’s my topic. Which is really interesting in people. But there’s not a lot to find in sheep. It’s due tomorrow. 😡

But – I get to do an equine hock bandaging lab this week – yeah! SO I’ll be bandaging every horse I know over winter break to practise… 🙂

I have to go study for the 2 exams I have this week… have a great one guys!

love  j ox