Catching Up

It has been a crazy transition from leaving AQUAVET to coming home and starting my next rotation, anesthesia. My last week of AQUAVET was mainly marine mammals! It was super interesting and fun to learn about them since I have been primarily studying fish the last two years. Here is the class photo that we took with our marine mammal instructors with the cetacean skeleton in the background.

After a couple days of marine mammal lectures we got in our vans and cars and headed to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to do necropsies on seals and dolphins that had been stranded in Cape Cod. Our job was to do a full necropsy and present the findings to class. We had our awesome pathologists helping us. My case was a young seal that had been entangled in fishing line that had cut almost completely through its neck. It was very sad. It was a good case to have to really show how we need to start finding alternative ways to help fishermen do there job but also protect the wildlife that they interact with. It was an incredible experience to be able to learn from these animals. I was very thankful that I couldn't smell though. My classmates said it was very smelly. After our necropsies, we all got cleaned up and settled in for an afternoon of marine mammal stranding and conservation lectures. It was amazing to meet our lectures who I have been citing their papers for various projects in college. The rest of the afternoon we got a tour of the WHOI research animal facilities! We got to meet so many amazing little critters!

A lighthouse that we passed on the way to WHOI

What we saw underneath the dock!! So many cool inverts!

After our tour it was time for dinner!! But first we had to get our class picture.

Me with the Rachel Carson statue. She was, dare I say, the most influential female toxicologist. She led the charge on getting rid of DDT in the USA and saving many species from extinction. 

We walked down the street to a restaurant right on the water. This is what I had for dinner.

And no dinner is complete without have lobster ice cream afterwards.Yes, you read that correctly lobster ice cream. It tastes like butter pecan, but instead of the crunchy pecans you have lobster bits. It sounds terrible but it was really good!

The last two days of AQUAVET were all pet fish medicine. We learned about the common diseases you will see in pet fish and koi. On the last day, we got to do a fish surgery!!!

Performing a gonadectomy on an anesthetized fish patient

itty bitty gonads

Best fish surgery group ever! Thanks. Dr. Sanders!

After 4 whole weeks together, we had our final dinner together. We went to downtown Bristol for some local lobster and clams. It was a bitter sweet night filled with lots of laughs and goodbyes. It was one heck of a dinner.

The next morning Lindsey and I were up at 4:15 getting our things loaded in the car and we were off to the airport. I was so tired and still battling my cold, but we got there and I was off on a jet plane again headed home.

I flew right over Roger Williams. Pretty sure all the other AQUAVET students were still sleeping.

It was sad to be leaving the ocean, but I was excited to see my friends and family at home. My parents picked me up from the airport and made me lunch. It was great to be home to see them and of course the kitties!

Sweetie missed me!

I picked up Drew on the way back to Madison. Shelby, my roommate, had planned a little get together to welcome me home and to see everyone before she left for a month for her externship. She made and awesome dinner, and I got to catch up with Emil, Ashley and her before I crashed in bed. I was exhausted. I was also really nervous because my next rotation was anesthesia. I got to sleep in Sunday morning! Most of Sunday Drew and I cleaned the apartment and I unpacked. We went over to Tara's to watch Chernobyl with my classmate and then I came back a studied before bed.

My first week of anesthesia has been very stressful, but I have been learning a lot. Drew has stayed with me in Madison and been cleaning my apartment and cooking for me! It has been awesome to come home to dinner and not have to worry about cleaning. I have been able to just focus on being prepared for rounds and getting as much sleep as I can especially since I have so many on call shifts. This weekend has been filled with catching up on emails, doing some more cleaning, and spending some time with my friends that I haven't seen for a month. Tonight is another Chernobyl night and studying! 

More Field Trips!

The day after we got back from the New England Aquarium it was all about sea turtles! Well, almost. Dr. Charles Innis came to lecture and lead us through sea turtle and reptile necropsies. It was one of those surreal moments in life where you meet a star in your field. I have cited quite a few of Dr. Innis' papers for different projects. Everyone in the class learned and ton and had some fun along the way.

On Thursday, we left for our field trip to Long Island! It was cold and rainy when we arrived at the ferry dock. A few of us spent a brief amount of time up on deck but otherwise we sat inside and enjoyed our hot coffee, breakfast and company. We arrived in Riverhead and our hotel was right next to the aquarium! We had a jam packed day at the Atlantis Marine World Aquarium and Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation. I started off with the group that got to practice giving physical exams on penguins!!! It was an amazing experience to learn more about these amazing birds and get some practice.

We then got to meet with the head of the seal exhibit and learn about their seals and their rescue stories. It was raining pretty hard at that point in time so it was a pretty brief talk before lunch. After lunch we all got a tiny bit of time to go exploring around the aquarium before getting to go behind the scene to meet really awesome bugs!!

The last part of the afternoon we worked with the Marine Research team giving some rescued grey seals physical exams. The seals that we examined are to be released when their injuries have healed. The veterinarian and vet tech took blood samples from them to make sure that they are on the road to recovery. It was an amazing experience to work with wild seals. Then it was time to get cleaned up before we had our coral lecture!! Joe Yaiullo (co-founder of the aquarium) gave us some history about the aquarium, how he got into corals, and how to raise corals. At the end of it we got to make our own coral babies!! Some species of corals we can frag them (fragment or break off) a small piece to have it grow up and become a new colony. It was so much fun and all of us were very proud, new coral parents. Joe needed to frag them anyway so we did him a favor. Now we are all excited to come back and see them all grown up.

I don't remember the last time I ate sooo much food for dinner. We went to a restaurant on the other side our hotel to eat, and we got some incredible sea food and beer. Joe sat at our table, so we got to pick his brain and talk about corals some more. He invited us back to the hotel after to watch the coral reef tank go to sleep as the lights turned off. It was great to be in the aquarium with no one else around and see all the fish get tucked into their corals and rocks for the night and see the sharks and rays begin to perk up. There were 3 of us and Laurie (one of our directors) that stayed until the very end when all the lights were out. Joe walked us the 100 feet back to our hotel and was ready to grab another beer and keep talking corals with all of us but we had to get some sleep because we had another big day at Mystic Aquarium.

We were up bright and early again to drive to the ferry. Xanth (one of my classmates) got our car bumping with some music for the drive to the dock. It was a beautiful sunny day and we drove past at least a dozen vineyards. We got there a bit early so we hung out on the beach until we could board the ferry!

Mystic Aquarium was amazing. We got more behind the scenes tours and spoke to a bunch of the animal health and training staff. We also got quizzed on knowing our blood types. Mystic Aquarium has the largest beluga whale exhibit in the Northern hemisphere, so we got to learn about some of the research they were doing and see how they train their whales (and seals and sea lions) how to voluntarily open their mouths for exams, present their fluke for blood draws, and other husbandry behaviors. This is really important for reducing the stress of the animals and keeping everyone safe when a vet does need to examine the animal.

The rest of the day we got to explore before heading home. When we got home, I took a desperately needed nap after some dinner and before practicing my seminar. Drew sat and listened to my entire talk that ran almost 20 minutes too long. We brainstormed a bit about the things I could cut out. Just about the time I finished Anna called to tell me she was almost to Bristol!! Anna is my vet school sister. She just moved out to New Jersey in September so I haven't seen her since then. When she got here we did a night tour of campus. It was low tide so we went down to the beach to look at all the critters that were up and about. We found crabs of all sizes, blennies, and a few tiny mussels. IT was a fun adventure before bed.

Saturday was mostly filled with student seminars. Anna got to sit in with us in class all day! We had aquatic ophthalmology in the morning and then I presented my seminar after lunch. Everyone's seminar was great! I have been learning so much from all my classmates. We were all happy to get out at 4:30pm too! A bunch of us sat in the grass, in the sun and just relaxed. Anna, Alexis (another classmate) and I went to the oyster bar with Bob and Laurie for dinner. We spent a good 3 hours there enjoying, you guessed it, oysters. I also tried monk fish (poor man's lobster) for the first time. I don't think there was a moment of silence until we were all eating. The food, drinks, and company were unbeatable!

Sunday Funday!! Anna, Lindsey, Sungbin and I were off to Block Island for a day excursion. I unfortunately woke up with the dreaded AQUAVET head cold. Almost everyone in the class had had it so it was finally my time to contract it. With some cold medicine on board, I was still able to have a great day with my friends. We got breakfast on the island before we headed down to the water. The hotel that was supposed to be renting snorkeling gear was closed and no other place on the island rented gear so I was the only one able to get in and snorkel.

I didn't stay in the water too long. I didn't see many fish but the algae was absolutely beautiful!! Afterwards, we all walked together through a bit of a hiking trail and planted ourselves on the beach in the sun to relax and take a nap. We timed it perfectly so that we were exploring the shops when it started to drizzle. The most important shop we visited was the fudge shop!!! Then it was time to leave to head back to Bristol. I said goodbye to Anna at the ferry because she had to get back home. All in all, it was a really great day even being a bit sick.

Monday we started our marine mammal unit that continues until Wednesday!! The whole day was a crash course of everything marine mammal. It was a lot to take in but it was great hearing from experts in the field!