Canadian Vet Student Trying to Survive Vet School: POD and October

It got cold here in South Western Ontario very fast. September and October have been blustery, rainy, and cold. But who even has time to think about weather with how busy we have been recently.

POD:
- Might be the death of me
- So far we have covered cancer, tissue repair, inflammation, granulomatous inflammation, necrosis and apoptosis, hypertrophy and hyperplasia, basic terminology, and in gross pathology, how to make a morphological diagnosis
- Every other day there is a module quiz and every other week there are unit tests. All must be passed with a 70% or higher... failure means you take the test again. yay...
- There has been a surprising amount of histology - that means to you first years, learn histo the first time, because relearning it in conjunction to learning all this has been a major headache.
- It is kind of cool to actually start seeing "medical" stuff - there is an obvious, clinical problem and what is going on in the body to make it happen

Therio
- We have started our cow palpations
- This is a learned skill, it takes practice to master
- By "palpation" I mean rectal palpation of the reproduction tract
- Once we are comfortable and can start actually feeling and identifying structures we can move to mares! They are more challenging because they are less tolerant and have smaller tracts

Euchre Tournament
- I ran a fundraising euchre tourny last week with the help of my fellow SoCos!
- $120 raised for our class (goes towards running events, our fourth year play, and our grad/prom) and had a $50 cash prize for the winners
- 64 people on 32 teams - 3 games of round robin then quarter finals lead to single eliminations
- I was so happy to have members of each phase (Caracals, Stags, Elephants, Pheonixes) come out, to see friends, housemates, and significant others participate, and even an enthusiastic prof show up!

Winners "Trumper Thumpers" getting their Certificate of Trumping

Halloween
- Frat party is this Friday!!!
- My costume is done thanks to my Mom, but the buyf still needs his pants to be sewn and my housemate still needs help with her dress
- We are going to Trick-or-Eat (www.trickoreat.ca) again this year! So far we have a team of 10 but I hope that I can rally a few more in the final week! We had a blast last year and I know this year will be the same. It is such an easy way to give back to the community
- Pictures to come

Other things of note:

- New Ink

- My family got a new puppy in May, Winnie, she is 9 months now and so full of life! Her and Pippa "get along" - Winnie pretty much just chases Pip around the house while Pippa plots world domination and naps in the window sill.

- Hockey this year is going really well. I feel like I have come leaps and bounds since last year! I even got an assist last week!

- Weight loss has seemed to plateau since September so I am working hard this week to get back on track and reach my goal by Christmas!

- I am still very much in love <3

- Movember is coming....