What did I get myself into?

So, first week is complete...well sort of. I'm still working on catching up all weekend but it's technically done. It went ok. There were definitely lots of instances where I was completely overwhelmed because of PBL (problem based learning), I explained how we do this a little in the orientation post below. This week was sort of a continuation of what they gave us last week as a warm up. Each week is a new case. Monday they give us a little bit of information and we come up with ideas and a plan, along with learning issues for anything we don't understand or need to look into. So this week our female Great Dane "Sue Bee Doo" was 7 months old and presenting with bilaterally swollen elbows and the owner noticed her having a strange gait. That plus her diet, vaccines etc. were what we got Monday so we came up with proposed problems and learning issues. We had to go down to how bone develops, the anatomy and histology (cells of the bone) and then possible pathologies or diseases that could be causing this. Very overwhelming for someone who basically knows nothing.
Wednesday we got x-rays of Sue Bee Doo's elbows. She had bilateral ununited anconeal processes and degenerative joint disease, a type of elbow dysplasia and she's in the early stages of osteoarthritis. From there we had to know everything about elbow dysplasia (there are 5-6 different kinds), everything about radiographs, inflammation, all of the terms used in the radiology report, the genetics of elbow dysplasia and if the owner of Sue Bee Doo should still breed her etc. etc. Still, overwhelming.
It's getting a little bit better based on the knowledge and terminology we're building. When I look back at all I've learned this week, and actually learned not just heard about or was lectured about, it's amazing. This coming Monday we will get a brand new case so we basically have to put this one behind us and just remember everything for midterms in 7 weeks. This whole block (8 weeks) is supposed to be mainly musculoskeletal system though. Next block will be another system.
Overall I really liked PBL, our group works well together and everyone summarizes their learning issue and makes a notes sheet and then we set up a dropbox to share them in. I never knew about dropbox before, it's awesome and so much easier than emailing things or using a flash drive, it automatically syncs online so it's all backed up right away too! Some groups had their first clinical rotations this week, I have my first at Hill's clinic next Tuesday. We also have little labs for clinical skills too, and I had one this week called "small animal restraint". This was one of the more disappointing aspects of the week for me. They had emailed us asking to come prepared with what all to do on a physical exam so I looked up a surprisingly long list of things and then they just gave us a sheet to look at and there were 4 random dogs and 2 cats for us in the room. I was all excited for them to show us how to properly restrain the animals, even though I've done it before I wanted to make sure I was doing it their way since we have to do it on rotations. But they just had the awesome demo dogs (the faculty's pets) standing for us and we to figure things out/ask questions. I did body conditions scores, tried to feel lymph nodes, and listened to heart/lungs with my stethoscope but they really were unhelpful. I would have liked them to tell us more about our stethoscopes as well. Oh well I guess.
We had anatomy on Thursday as well. It will usually be every Tuesday and Thursday but this Tuesday was an intro for safety etc. I was kind of frustrated that they didn't do all of the extra intro stuff they did this week during our 1 week orientation. We wasted way too much time doing "team building" exercises last week. It was hard for me not having anatomy earlier in the week since we were supposed to learn anatomy but didn't have any models or cadavers. Once we got in the lab it was better though. Western does reverence for life so all of our dog and cat cadavers are donated pets. I really admire this since animals aren't being raised and killed for the purpose of our learning. We save all of the animal's tissue so that they can be cremated for the owner once we're done as well. Our group got one of the biggest dogs, she looks like a rottie mix. It's sort of sad but we all respect the animals a lot, and their owners for donating them. One of my group members worked in an anatomy lab before so I think our group got the farthest on dissecting the first day.
We also have 2 normal lecture like classes a week, vet issues and MCB (molecular and cellular bio). Vet issues is a class about ethics and law which will be super interesting and the main professor is a really nice Canadian lady. MCB seems a little harder, we have to read a research article (pertaining to our case) each week and have a quiz.
So, this may be my longest post for a while but I wanted to explain everything and give everyone some insight on what I'll be doing. This program is so intense but awesome at the same time. I feel like I'm always as stressed as I was before an exam in undergrad but it's not like I dread the studying because it is all centered around the case and there is a direct incentive to learn. I usually come home from class and study/make notes until I am tired. It's not like I feel pressure to stay up and get less sleep than I need though since it's self directed, so that's good. I just hope that we are focusing on the right things and that there won't be too many surprises come midterms.

Our learning issues board and initials for how we divided them up among the 7 of us

Sue Bee Doo's ununited anconeal process at 7mo

White coat ceremony went well, and got us focused on our responsibilities as future veterinarians. Pictures are coming of more of the ceremony but sadly my camera died after the trip out :( (I just have my phone camera) so Christian took some and needs to e-mail them to me. Driving to LAX wasn't so terrible other than a little bit of stopped dead traffic and the multiple lanes at the airport terminals. It only took me about an hour to get there though, then Christian and I ate and went to the coast until rush hour was over. I'm really glad he could come and see everything and be apart of my initiation to this crazy 4 years.