Good Stuff

Alright.
It has come to my attention that Kim will be visiting me in only a few days, and if I haven't updated my blog before then, I'm not sure what she'll do to me. So here we go. When did I last update? Oh my...that long ago, huh? I'm really awesome at this blogging thing. Lets see....

I did end up getting H1N1 this fall, just in time for my second set of midterms. I had to take two of them late, and the 3rd is such a blur I'm amazed I passed it (90% in fact! wow). I can confidently say that having that flu was one of the worst experiences of my life. After 3 days of fever, muscle aches, sore throat and coughing I finally worked up the energy to have a shower, and after 15 minutes had to get out and lie on the bathroom floor because I was too exhausted to stand anymore. Charming, huh? Anyway, I lived, passed my midterms, and managed to be nice and healthy for American thanksgiving. Which was good, because Mom was visiting me!

We had a great time while she was here, eating out at yummy restaurants with my friends, shopping, walking school dogs, playing with the KittyBunny (who is growing up so fast!), and having long chats. It was great to have her all to myself for a week, and I loved being able to introduce her to my friends and show her what my life here in Portland looks like. I've been so happy here, and I love being able to share that with her.

Final exams were this past week, and while I have one mark back (92.3% in pharmacology), I'm still waiting for the others. I'm not sure how I did, since those finals were probably two of the hardest tests I've ever taken in my life. Most of the class seemed to feel the same as I did about them, so we'll see how they get graded.

So, that brings me up to this weekend! I gamed Friday night (KT managed to not kill us all. Thanks KT!), and spent Saturday making tourtiere and lemon bars. Shad came over last night and we ate said tourtiere and lemon bars, watched White Christmas, decorated my Christmas tree (with help from the cats), and drank hot buttered rum. I'd say it was one of the better weekends I've had in a very long time, and as a bonus - I'm still on vacation tomorrow!


Kim arrives Wednesday, and I can't wait!

Stew and tea and viruses!

Despite my fervent wishing, I didn't manage to dodge the multitude of germs flying around school lately. I think I'm lucky in that this only seems to be a cold (and not the dreaded pig death!) but it still means staying home today. I actually don't feel too badly but I didn't want to risk getting lynched by classmates for showing up sick. We're all just a leetle bit paranoid right now.

Anyway, I'm sure this is mostly my own fault for staying up til 3:30am on Friday, but a combination of hot wing veggie bites with bleu cheese sauce, french fries and deep fried oreos (oh yes, I did!) kept us all up til midnight and then BP pulled out the Oolong. If you've never had oolong brewed the right way, you don't know what you're missing. No way was I going to bed before that was done. I think we got about six pours out of ours, and after all that caffeine..well..yeah. I regret nothing.

I think I forgot to mention that we got more Chanterelles this Tuesday?


Well, anyway....on Saturday I cooked them up and made a yummy veggie stew. The mushrooms were just gorgeous, and the end result made me very happy. Now that I'm sick, having a big container of it leftover in my fridge is making me even happier.
So, have a recipe!

Chanterelle and Vegetable Stew

2 cups sliced chanterelles
1 small onion
1 tbsp diced fresh thyme
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

All purpose flour
1 tetra pack veggie stock (too lazy to make my own!)
1 cup half & half

4 small potatoes, skin on, cubed
1 sweet potato, cubed
3 large carrots, chopped (or equivalent baby carrots)
1/2 cups peas

If chanterelles are dry, skip the dry sautee part. If chanterelles are wet -
Dry sautee first set of ingredients (minus the olive oil) over medium heat until chanterelles are wilted and most of the liquid has been cooked out of them. Drain off liquid and set aside, then add a little bit of olive oil and sautee another minute or two. Add flour, 1 tbsp at a time until you have a roux then add drained off mushroom broth slowly, stirring as you go. Next, add veggie broth slowly, then half and half.

Add in veggies, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour or more. Don't let it reach a boil.

Serve with crusty bread (or, if you're Shad, pour over leftover tourtiere and then proceed to die a little bit from happiness)

Happiness

I think I might have previously mentioned that I enjoy fall. That everything about it - the way it smells, feels, looks - makes me happy. I've finally closed all of my windows and turned my heat on (the cats are grateful), I'm eyeing root vegetables at the store, daydreaming about baking things with pumpkin, and I'm going through tea so fast it's a wonder I'm capable of sleep. Love it! Adore it!

This Sunday I had a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner for my friends here in Portland. I made Tourtiere from Aunt Lynda's recipe (and everyone loved it!) and spiced apple cider, which was complemented nicely by the roasted squash and baked apples stuffed with figs (yum!) brought by one of my friends. Oh, and I can't forget the pink wine. We are a classy establishment, after all.

Monday was my first set of midterms, and while I'm cautious of sounding too optimistic, I really felt like I rocked them. Granted, I don't know yet how this instructor marks, but I certainly felt good about them when I walked out. We'll see!

Yesterday was my weekly Kitty Bunny fix, and since she was doing her usual NotTired!™ performance, we loaded her into the car and drove out to Crown Point. Where the wind appeared to be going about 60mph. Have I mentioned that whole loving fall thing?

This photo is amazingly clear, given that I got knocked off the sidewalk twice while trying to take it. Anyway, the round trip provided Kitty Bunny with enough car time to get a good nap in, and I was just happy to see the gorge on such a lovely day.

Last night was a repeat of Tourtiere leftovers, good movie and great company. It poured rain all night, and today was a beautiful sunny fall day with just enough bite in the air to keep me happy. How could life be any more perfect?

Well, maybe if I didn't have to be researching questions like "How do phenothiazine derivative tranquilizers induce hypothermia?" and "What does it mean when an opioid is described as a mixed agonist/antagonist?" for tomorrow. Yuck. On the upside, this means I will be sticking animals with needles tomorrow to give said "phenothiazine derivatives" and "agonist/antagonist opioids". Yay! Acepromazine and Butorphanol for everyone!


(1: By causing peripheral vasodilation. 2: Because they block one type of opioid receptor while stimulating another)

BP turns 65

So, all those tasty mushrooms we've been gathering over the past few weeks? Yes, we got to eat them last night! BP's annual birthday bash is the event of the year, and to miss it is practically criminal. Friday night he started simmering the fresh picked tomatoes from the garden into a sauce, and on Saturday a horde of us converged on their kitchen to chop wild mushrooms, work pizza dough, mince thyme from the garden, and then gorge ourselves on the best pizza in the universe.

Just look at that! Isn't it beautiful?

Of course, while the food was amazing, it was really the people that made the night.





So, Happy Birthday B! Strange, you don't look a day over 39.....

Mushrooms never get boring, right?

Once more into the woods!

We ventured out again yesterday in search of tasty fungus, but I'm a little lower on photographic evidence. A combination of rough hiking (lots of blow downs in our way, and I'm not the most graceful of people even on flat surfaces), cold (numb fingers!), and rain (generally bad for cameras) meant that I really only took pictures before and after our trek.


And what am I going to take pictures of? Why, the cutest thing around, of course. In fact, she was so cute I completely forgot to take photos of the amazing mushrooms we gathered. I think our final estimate was around 8lbs, and while it was mostly chanterelles there were a couple chicken of the woods and lobster mushrooms in there too. Yum.

Aside from wild edible gathering I've been busy studying my butt off for school. The assigned reading this term is intense, and I'm still having a tough time adjusting. My brain seems to want to stay on vacation, so I'll read 10 pages of anesthesiology and then suddenly wonder what in the world it said. Good job, brain. Thanks.

Mushrooms

Well, we had a highly successful outing yesterday! I found and picked my very first chanterelles, and we ended up coming home with two basketfulls of the yummy fungus. BP cooked some up for pasta (with thyme, pepper, blue cheese and tomatoes...mmmm) and the rest will be frozen and saved for eventual chanterelle pizza. My mouth is watering just thinking of it!

And of course we had the Kitty Bunny with us. She was a real trooper - smiling and giggling and just generally enjoying being outdoors. We were taking shifts staying on the logging road with her while the other two people went into the woods to hunt, and my turn just happened to land when she was ready for a nap.

It's a tough job, I'm telling you....but I took one for the team! Can't you just feel those nap waves rolling off of her? Dangerous stuff.

Anyway, not having class on Tuesdays this term means (hopefully) more of this sort of fun in my future. Hard to beat tromping around the woods on a beautiful day, snuggling the world's most adorable baby, and gathering yummy food.

Home for a rest

I was going to post something long and involved, but Twitters gave me permission to post "cop out" posts tonight. So, instead, look at the pretty water.

Kicking

It's 6am, it's Sunday, I have no reason to get up - and here I am, wide awake and can't fall back asleep. Actually, the can't fall back asleep part might have something to do with Minnow's chattering (she is so very excited that I am awake and can't understand why I'm not petting her or feeding her). I think most of it is just being too accustomed to waking up at 5am for my internship, which is highly annoying. I value my sleep-in time, and I find this whole situation extremely unfair.

I've done a lot this past month, and I just haven't been capable of blogging about it. I was trying to figure out why I had no urge to post on here, and the best I can come up with is that I've been working on processing everything through my own mind, and there hasn't been much room left to translate it into a post. My little paper diary has been getting a serious work-out as I try to sort through how I feel about everything, but I'd never intended for this blog to become a public version of that diary (or to contain really much of anything private or personal) so I've been avoiding it. Suffice to say, I've been spending some serious time figuring out who I am, who I want to be, and then just trying to make it happen. Self confidence and self awareness - good stuff!

In other news, I've added to my modest menagerie. Ophelia (and isn't that a rocking name?) is a snobby and snooty corn snake who is trying to decide if she will tolerate having me breathe the same air as her. We're working on the whole "people are good" thing, but it's slow going. I try to take her out and handle her every day, and I've discovered that she likes wrapping herself around my hair and just hanging out. Works for me!
Gorgeous, isn't she?


So, perhaps now that my internship is winding down (only 2 days left!) I'll have more inclination to update the blog. Perhaps not, and I refuse to feel guilty about it! So there, Kim!

Critters and Bugs

Started really looking at bacteria today and I got a few pictures. I'm too tired to type, so photos will have to suffice!

Lab. I love all the different colours of stain we get to play with (the tie-dyed effect on my hands, not so much)

Dirt! We cultured some dirt and this is what we found. The pink are gram negative bacteria, the purple gram positive. Most of the pink are cocci, and the purple baccilli, but the small purple bacteria next to the pointer (if you zoom in) looks like a clostridium. Makes sense since dirt is considered a pretty good source for it, especially Clostridium tetani.

Capsule stains. We were trying to determine if the bacteria had organized glycocalyces (also called capsules). These are viscous coats of proteins and sugars that protect certain bacteria. I was kind of excited to be working with K. pneumoniae because it shares my initials!

Murphy is not a nice man

Remember what I said yesterday about hoping for anything but cat cephalics?
Yeah, guess what I drew out of the hat?
Took me two tries, but I got it. Take that, Murphy.

Procrasti-Kate

I could argue that I've been too busy studying to post, but really, I just haven't bothered. Sorry!

Finals are almost upon me again, and I've been feeling the study pressure. This term has been far less demanding than the previous two, but that doesn't tend to make finals week any less painful. Tomorrow I will be drawing a slip of paper from a hat, and this slip of paper will tell me what vein I have to poke, and on which animal. I'm praying for anything but cat cephalics, but expecting the worst.

In other news, I've been spending more time in the garden. This is the first time I've had a patch of dirt to call my own, and the sheer possibilities involved with planning what I will grow has me giddy. I'm limited by funds (hooray for Bi-Mart's sale rack!) and lack of proper soil nutrients, but I've still managed to create something that makes me happy.


I know most people consider eating your own produce to be the height of gardening, but while that certainly gives me a thrill, I can't find anything more satisfying than seeing my flowers blooming and growing to form a patchwork of colour. Yes, my snow peas were delicious, but I've put far more effort and attention into my clematis and irises, just because they're pretty. Can't help it!

There is still so much I want to do with it, but this is a good start. Hopefully by next year I'll have managed to fill in the bare patches.

So, photos!

I am addicted to snapdragons.

This iris had bloomed once already, but as you can see from the sheered off stem, someone stole the flower the day after it bloomed. This is the one remaining flower, and I am highly protective of it.
One of the roses that was here when I moved in. My nextdoor neighbour tells me it was rescued from the garbage bin at the grocery store by the tenant who lived here 15 years ago. Nice to see something so pretty get a second chance.

Rocking the medial saphenous stick

Yeah, I'm a rock star. I hit it first try. Uh huh. I'm cool.


......now let's see if I can do it on an awake cat.

Ugly Blood

We've been doing WBC differentials in class this past week, and we got to look at toxic blood on Friday. There was a lot of singing in class, but also a lot of "Oh wow!" and "Is that even a seg?!"

Those are, in fact, segmented neutrophils, and they really are showing toxic changes. The cell on the left has prominent Dohle Bodies, and the one on the right has some basophilia and foaminess, which is caused by vacuolization of the cytoplasm. The red blood cells are showing rouleaux, crenation, and some Howell-Jolly bodies (the name of those lead to more singing).

So, what does that all mean? Really, the cat that this blood came from is so sick that her cells are degrading. The Dohle bodies aren't especially noteworthy in a cat (say "BOO" to a cat and it'll produce them), but the rest are signs of extreme inflammation. The toxicity still seems subtle to me because I'm learning, but apparently this is the type of smear that would, as my instructor puts it, "make the vet poop his pants" in real practice. Good to know.

Tell me, how does your garden grow?

No silver bells or cockleshells, but I'm pretty pleased with how things are looking outside my door anyway.

When I moved into this apartment, there was a rather ugly patch of dirt next to my little patio that looked as though it had been intended to contain plants. There were sad little rose bushes in it that looked like they had given up trying to fill the space, and if anything they really just made the whole thing look more pathetic, not less.
I have no really good pictures of the spot, simply because I saw no reason to photograph the ugliness. I wish had now, just so I'd have a better sense of before and after, but it's a little late!



It's still quite sparse, but I'm much happier with how it looks anyway. I'm especially pleased with the daffodils I put in...they turned out beautifully!

VAMPIRE!!!

I don't think I fully realised just how deranged I would look when I made that face.

Anyway, 3 for 3 on my canine blood draws (as evidenced by the blood-filled needles in the photo). It took me 3 tries to hit the lateral saphenous, but I'm not too upset about it. I was working with Brynn and she tends to shriek and squirm when you touch her with a needle, so not being able to hit the smallest and squirmiest vein on the first try isn't grounds for a freak-out.

I did, however, hit the cephalic and jugular on my first try, and man did that ever feel good. Dr. Henson was right, this whole blood drawing thing is both cathartic and addictive. I've caught myself staring at veins on animals, people, whatever...and just thinking "I could hit that...". This is bad.

After lab, Perri, Cat and I went out to the stable and gave Dave a bath. He's so furry that it was more like bathing a giant dog, and we pulled what seemed like 50lbs of hair off of him. He was very good about the whole thing and seemed to quite enjoy the attention.

Doesn't he look pretty?

Fever when you hold me tight...

I know, I know....slacker.

In other news, Merlin finally managed to ring a positive on one of the seeming billions of diagnostics I've had run on him, and he is the proud carrier of Bartonella henselae, otherwise known as Feline Bartonella in cats, or Cat Scratch Fever in humans. Granted, the seroprevalence of Bartonella can be up to 93% in some states, so Merlin testing positive shouldn't be all that shocking, but I've grown accustomed to his mastery of the "normal bloodwork, normal PE, barf all over the house" style of presentation, so this is a little exciting.

Bartonella is a bloodborne bacteria that is transmitted to cats by fleas. Areas with high flea population also have a lot of Bartonella, and up until recently it was assumed that while cats carried the bacteria and potentially passed it onto people, they didn't actually suffer any ill effects from it. This has recently been called into dispute, and while there is no hard data to support it, a lot of vets are beginning to think that Bartonella may influence diseases like stomatitis, diabetes, and cause chronic upper respiratory symptoms.

The problem with this, of course, is that when you have a population of cats of whom 93% could potentially be positive for Bartonella, you could link just about anything to it. Broken tails? Sure, 22 out of 25 cats with broken tails have Bartonella, that must be it! So, while I'm excited that we've finally found something clinically abnormal and treatable in Merlin's bloodwork, I'm not sure the treatment will ultimately make a difference. I'm certainly going to treat, I just won't hold my breath for a miraculous recovery.

Oh, and for those suddenly panicking at the idea that I'm living with a disease vector, relax. Merlin has almost certainly been carrying Bartonella since long before I adopted him, plenty of cats carry it without most people ever knowing (up to 93%, remember?), and Cat Scratch Fever affects less than 200,000 people in the US. Not exactly terrifying. I'm far more worried about Minnow's poorly disguised plots to kill me and take over the household.

As for school, it's been going well. Last week we went off into the woods, tracked down a Sasquatch, wrestled it to the ground, chopped it's arm off, and used it to practice blood draws on.





See? And you didn't believe me.....

Cow Tippi.....er, Cow stabbing

No, we didn't tip cows today, we just stabbed them in the neck. And only to get their blood.

Yeah, I know. That doesn't make it sound any better.


Anyway, I did a jugular stick on cow today and hit it first try. I'm proud of myself, but I couldn't get too puffed up about it given that the vein is about an inch and a half across. I mean, really. I also hit the tail vein on the third try, which I was pretty pleased about. Actually, the hardest part about the cow lab was getting the cows into the chute in the first place. Most beef cattle are slightly nervous of people, so it is very easy to drive them. Ours are handled more than usual, so they don't fear us, and as a result, we have to use somewhat unorthodox methods to get them to move where we want them. This may seem like a scene from some bizarre horror movie (when vet techs attack?) but it was really just us trying (and failing) to drive the cattle. Honestly, if I were a cow, I would have been scared!


But apparently the cows couldn't care less, cause they sure didn't move.

Ah well, blood was eventually achieved anyway.

lolcat in the making

Minnow: "BIRDS! I see BIRDS! Look!!"

Merlin: Oh, get over it.

Garden + Camera =

I have a macro setting on my camera. I also have plants in bloom. That's really all there is to this post.

Blood!!

Yeah, I know, slacking again.

Anyway, this week was back to class, and we spent a large portion of our time handling blood. On Tuesday, I did my very first venipuncture, and managed a successful jugular stick on our sheep, along with a slightly less successful cephalic stick. I got a flash in the hub of the needle on the cephalic, but couldn't draw blood to save my life. My teammates couldn't get blood from the cephalic either though, so I think our sheep was just faulty. The jugular more than made up for it though and I easily pulled a full 3cc's. Took me about 7 tries to hit the vein, but I got blood, didn't blow the vein, and got the blood into the purple top with no spillage, so I call it a victory.

Thursday and Friday were spent analyzing said blood, which was highly entertaining. Thursday was all about learning how to do good blood smears, and let me tell you....it is WAY harder than it looks.

Dolores gave us 2 demos, and then did a demo using her left hand (and it still came out perfectly), so I was starting to think I wouldn't have too much trouble. I mean, really....place a drop of blood on the bottom slide, touch the edge of the top slide to it so the blood wicks along the edge, and then push the blood into a smear. Easy.



Yeah, so. About that easy bit....

To be fair, that pile of rejects isn't just mine. Alona and I pooled our spoil pile to save on cleanup, so at least half of them are hers. Still, we went through almost 2 boxes of slides in search of....



The perfect smear! See the pretty rainbow? The feathered edge and distinct lack of streaking? The way the blood doesn't run over the edges of the slide? Oh yeah. It's beautiful.

Friday was spent learning how to do hematocrit readings, total proteins, and fibrinogen levels. I learned that Dave is nicely within normal ranges on all of these, and that I am a total wimp when it comes to the necessary snapping of capillary tubes. Breaking glass on purpose just freaks me out, ok?

Both days were also spent being total dorks with classmates. Have I mentioned how much they rock?