My cousins are better at this than I am

Which is a good thing, cause I read their blogs all the time. I think that my New Year's resolution this year (see how I skipped right over Christmas?) will be to keep in touch with family more. To my family who reads this blog: don't worry. Just means I'll update more and call occasionally. And try to give people in California more than a week's notice when I come to visit.

The last time I updated it was June and I was just starting my internship in Florida. Lots lots lots has happened since then. As a veterinarian, I've gained a lot of confidence and skills. Bad things still happen and I still do fairly stupid things occasionally, but I'm getting better at dealing with it. Here are a couple of pics of the internship so far:

This poor horse has a 3 and a half foot laceration down his side. Yikes! Luckily it didn't go into his abdomen, and now you can hardly see the scar. The horse I'm kissing is a sweet little Appaloosa filly who had serious roundworms and was ridiculously immunocompromised. She got endotoxic, developed cellulitis in two of her limbs and got a very nasty thrombophlebitis. But she did really well and went home.

This is actually a veterinary procedure, I promise. Details upon request.

Obviously, a lot of horses don't do well and have to be euthanised. And that's very sad, especially when the owners just don't have the money to treat them.

As internships go, this one is fantastic. I take in my own emergencies and have lots of primary case responsibility. And my internmates are all fantastic-I really don't know what I'd do without them. And Adam, of course, has been wonderful at dealing with my stressed, sleep deprived self.

There are actually other things going on in my life. But I spend 40-80 hours a week at work, so most of it is work. I did manage to get home for Thanksgiving. It was great to see my parents and friends home for the holidays. A major change in my family occurred in June when my dad was diagnosed with ALS-aka Lou Gehrig's disease. I don't really know what to say about it other than it is very sad and that we all take our parents for granted. Now every minute counts. He's still my dad and I can still make him laugh, but he is becoming progressively weaker. I think my mom is dealing with it ok, but would enjoy people calling to chat more often. The clinic is great-they are giving me a week off in January so I can go home and spend some time with him. His doctors are expecting him to be in a wheelchair by February-March, and I think that's going to be very difficult for him. I am looking in to getting him a service dog, but there are so many organizations-anyone have any advice?

For any of you late holiday shoppers, here are a few of my favorite (and some of them green!) online shopping sites:

www.worldofgood.com

www.giftsthatgive.com

http://www.frugal-fashionistas.com/

I'll try and be better at updating. But no promises.

"workin hard for the money"

So the first week and a half-ish of my internship is done. It's been...challenging. Which is good, right? It's just kinda hard getting into the swing of things and learning how a new practice runs. Plus, with the exception of my last block I've been dealing with mostly pomeranians and boxers and such so my horsie skills/knowledge are a little rusty.

For those of you not familiar with how my internship runs, I rotate between medicine, surgery, repro/ambulatory, anesthesia, and nights (2 weeks each rotation). These first 2 weeks we've been overlapping with the old interns to kind of learn how things work. We've had some super busy days with 4 surgeries and some emergencies, so it's definitely been a learning experience. I'm currently on an overnight shift praying no one calls with an emergency. Is that bad? It has to happen sometime I guess, and I'm pretty sure I could handle it. But yikes.

My internmates are awesome. There are 5 of us and so far we've had a blast in and out of the clinic. Hope it stays that way-your group can really make or break your year.

Adam got a job! He's apprenticing with a farrier down here named Clint Trimble. This guy has a ton of work, and kept Adam out shoeing horses until 1 in the morning yesterday. Adam and I haven't had a ton of time to spend with each other awake, but hopefully once we get into the swing of things it will be better. And we spent a great weekend last weekend in Tampa. We went to the aquarium, which was tons of fun then walked around downtown and had lunch in Ybor City. I totally recomend it if you're ever in Tampa. It was kind of like the Italian/greek/spain quarter of tampa and had tons of atmosphere. I had the best pasta dish I've ever had in my life and a very large glass of red wine. It was a beautiful day.

Only 2 more hours until my day begins...again. Maybe I'll get to go home early this afternoon, but we have a couple of surgeries so we'll see.

"Goodbye to all the friends I've known, goodbye to the people I've trusted. Ive got to go on and make my own way...

...I might get rich you know, or I might get busted". -Steve Miller Band

SO…I graduated. Yeah. It was bittersweet. It was a beautiful day I shared with my family (at Chateau Morrisette, which is amazing-check it out: http://www.thedogs.com/), but I’m really really going to miss the wonderful people I spent the last four years with. This past year especially has brought me close to some people I thought I didn’t have anything in common with. Fourth year of vet school=blood, sweat and tears. And I’m not talking about the band.

In our “regalia”. As a really cool side note I have a vivid recollection of a picture of my grandfather in his regalia which also included a floppy hat.

At Chateau Morrisette wine tasting (aka getting drunk) with the Class of 2009

Adam and I are in Florida now! One of our best friends Chris helped us move in and now we’re unpacking and trying to enjoy my last weekish of freedom. I think we’re going to St. Augustine wed and then kayaking with some manatees (that’s right, I’m going again) this weekend.
So where is Krista exactly? I’m in Ocala, Florida. Marion County actually has the highest density of horses in America. Tons of thoroughbred racehorses as well as some very nice show horses that come down in the winter.

And here's where I'll be working:

Yikes! Wish me luck! the one week countdown begins...

Can I GRADUATE? Can I look at faces that I meet,can I get my punk ass off the street?

What a fantastic last few weeks. I finished up my block with Tom, which was awesome. I got to do so much cool stuff with him, and learned a lot. I was really sad to leave he and Jennifer (his wife). But time to move on, I guess.





So after Tom's I met Adam in MD and we drove up to Frostburg for Big Bubba Day/Donniepalooza. For those of you who don't know, I'm sorry, but you never will.



It was pretty great. I love my Frostburg boys. And though in the 50s at night, it didn't snow. Which for Frostbueg is unusual considering it snowed the first week of May in 2005 just before I graduated.



Speaking of graduating, I graduate today! My parents are coming today-which means clean clean clean till they get here. I (surprisingly) do not have much of a hangover, and am just waiting for Carmen to wake up since she crashed on the couch :)

PS-pictures to follow.

"The best thing you've ever done for me, is to help me take my life less seriously. It's only life after all."

So I've been busy!

I finished up my radiology block, which was actually useful and educational as we talked about a lot of horsie stuff. And I had fun in spite of really disliking a super huge kiss ass in my group.

Can you spot the brown noser?

I also had a fantastic Easter. Adam was in Kentucky and I didn't really have any plans. I got called in to take a few rads of some dogs and cats, and stopped by the large animal hospital on the way out. That's when I met this little cutie:

His mama died after giving birth. She actually died in a really horrible way. The foal tore her rectum on the way out and she prolapsed a lot of her small colon out of her rear end. Then the kind of retarded referring vet sent her in (which included a one hour trailer ride) with her intestines hanging out her arse. This is especially retarded cause he didn't bother to do a TPR before he sent her, so didn;t realize she was losing massive amounts of blood and was in shock. She reached the hospital just in time to be euthanized before she died of blood loss.

But back to the happy part. A nurse mare was found for the foal! One of my favorite clinicians asked me to help teach the baby to nurse since all the techs were really busy with other patients. He was a pretty quick study considering he was 3 days old and hadn't nursed a real mare ever. So yay! What a great Easter!

So where am I now? I'm currently here: http://www.littlehawkfarm.com/ This is a primarily repro practice. So that means lots of palpating mares, and lots of cute little foals! Tom has also let me do a ton on my own-like laceration repairs and foal medicine and all kinds of stuff. What an amazing block to have before an internship. Pictures of this block will follow!

Another milestone in my life: turning in the on call pager. And yes, it says "your mom"

So...one more week, then I'm done!

"And I think it's gonna be a long long time till touch down brings me round again to find, I'm not the man they think I am at home"

So, it's been a while, to say the least. In my defense, it's been an eventful year, and I've never been good at keeping a journal.


A quick synopsis: I have (helped) save some lives, taken them away when there was no hope, stayed up late, never went to bed, found some hope, spent 33/52 weeks away from Adam, been helped by friends I didn't even know I had, and visited every coast in america.

A picture is worth a thousand words; here are several.

My favorite place to be at 3 AM: colic surgery

I helped out on the Horse Ambulance at the Potomac Timber Races

California for the AAEP Convention and some vacation.

Florida kayaking without the manatees, unfortunately. Only 45 min from Ocala!

No promises, but I'll work on updating more frequently for my (3) readers.

"There comes a time for each of us when we must be more than what we are" --Lloyd Alexander

...and for me, that time starts at 8:31 this Monday morning. Yikes! Though I was on a fantastic, wonderful, corona-in-the-hot-tub vacation, the world did not go on vacation too. I came home to 7 gillion loads of laundry, monthly bills, and 249 new emails some of which were crap, but many which were super important and included scary things like my rounds and on call schedule at EMC.

Holy crap! I know I've been in school for 3 years, but I don't know if I'm prepared...I guess we'll see at about 8:32, or better yet on Monday night since I am on call. Tomorrow will be a super crazy day of un and then re packing. I know I'm going to forget something important--it's really just a part of who I am. For example, I forgot to pack all of my white bras for vacation. As many of the tops I was planning on wearing were white/light colored, poor Adam had to take me to Belk in Kitty Hawk and wait while I shuffled through about 6,000 38DD bras to find anything close to my size.

Which brings me to our vacation, which was awesome!! We had a cute little house with a hot tub on the deck just a few steps away from a fridge stocked with beer. We spent a day on Ocracoke Island, which was a really neat little place with lots of artsy shops. We also went trail riding on the beach, and though Adam's horse was barn sour and mulish I got a cute little ex-reining horse and we got to high tail it down the beach into the ocean. Two of the days were really pretty hot and on Friday Adam and I actually swam in the ocean! And I mean swam--we were out past the breakers. It was cold as balls but definitely worth it. How can you go all the way to the beach with out getting in the ocean? For anyone going to the Outer Banks area (Algiers!) Mulligan's in Nags Head was incredible. The crab cakes were unbelievable. And if you're wondering about the Adam picture, he's pretending to be a pirate--pretty dangerous considering Blackbeard was killed off the shores of Ocracoke.

I'm really glad we took Pickles--she LOVED the beach, but was not too interested in the water. At low tide we took her out pretty far and though only her paws got wet she wasn't really into it. As you can tell by the worried look on her face.

Well, the siren from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (that's right-the Ammunition Plant makes the earth shake, and we hear the siren for shift changes) tells me it's midnight. Tons more to do tomorrow, and a drive up to MD, so I'm off to bed.