The good news is that my fellow first years know who I am. The bad news is that this is because I had a seizure after the first class of my vet school career. AHHH! Yeah, pretty embarrassing/annoying/not cool. Now that I have your attention, I'll back up. Matt and I scurried around all weekend getting stuff for the duplex, unpacking and whatnot. Mid-day on Sunday Mom and Leslie rolled into town for the day, arms full of BBQ. We had a lunch of Peggy Sue goodness and fresh veggies, and then Matt had to get back to Dallas. We puttered around, talking about curtains and decor, and then Mom altered some of my clothes for school (hemming, darting, etc). Then all of a sudden it was time to go to bed - it was a school night!
Monday dawned bright and clear and Emily drove me to school. I had anatomy first thing at 9am. We have almost all of our lectures in the same room (201) and Monday they were all there - anatomy, then physiology, then microbiology. After anatomy, which was just going over the syllabus, we had a 10 minute break before the next class. So...one minute I'm sitting there waiting for the next lecture, the next...I feel really tired and can't keep my eyes open. The next thing I hear is words I'm beginning to really hate "Cameron, do you know what happened? You had a seizure." My response: "aw crap." So yeah, there were four paramedics/EMTs kneeling in the aisle next to me (convenient I sat on the aisle). I get to answer the fun questions like "what day is it," "what year is it," "how old are you" <-- I couldn't answer that last one, while my classmates are pretending to not watch and I'm about ready to climb under my seat cushion and hide. So yeah, I got helped down the stairs in between two paramedics, their hands under my arms, and out the door into the ambulence. Oh, and I made class start 10 minutes late. I have maybe 10-15 minutes of unaccounted time while I guess I was either seizing or totally out of it.
So I got taken to College Station Medical Center...and unlike my seizures in Colorado, I don't have Matt riding shotgun with me. When I get there, I get transferred into a room and I call Susie to ask if she can get ahold of Johnny or Cindy to come to the hospital. That pretty much activated the network so eventually Matt, Emily, my parents, Johnny and Cindy, etc all knew. Johnny was able to come up to the hospital right away which made me feel a lot better. There's just something about having a dad with you, even if it isn't your dad, that is very comforting. Eventually Emily came up too - the College Station hospital was way slower than the one in Colorado. All they ended up doing was giving me fluids and rechecking my blood work, which didn't really show anything remarkable, with one exception to be mentioned later. I called Dr. Z while I was waiting too, to tell her, and she was equally displeased about the whole thing. So we made a game-plan and I eventually got released. Emily took me home and we watched TV ("50 First Dates," to be exact, which was actually kind of good). In the meantime, Dad was driving down to College Station to be with me. :) That afternoon I worked on finding out what all I had missed in my classes (I missed two lectures, histology lab, and anatomy lab). Mostly it was going over the syllabus, so it was actually a good day to miss content-wise. I started by e-mailing Dr. Hoffman, my faculty mentor and anatomy prof, not to mention the guy who called 911 =P I told him the extremely short version of my recent medical excitement; he passed it on to the profs and then I e-mailed them myself.
On Tuesday I was rather reluctant to show my face because I was "that first year who had the seizure." I went to the Dean's office and they were extremely nice...said there was no need to do anything more, that the absence was already taken care of. So that was good. After my two lectures (histology, physiology) I took my three hour break before labs to meet with my microbiology professor and Dr. Hoffman. Yet again I was struck by how *nice* all the faculty and administration are. There were a few more times that I met people who sort of had that "ah-ha" moment when I introduced myself, but generally it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. I also had a nice card from some person I don't even know in my box (a fellow 1VM). In the afternoon I had histo lab, which was hard having not had a lecture yet. But, I shared a double-headed scope with Christy and tried to catch up. Histology seems not hard but not interesting and it is a pretty new subject for me. So I don't know how it'll go. The next and final class of the day was "Clinical Correlates." In this class we will do a lot of hands-on stuff, including "husbandry" of two animals for a week each over the course of a year. I have a cow and horse along with my group. It's going to be an interesting class I think. We will also learn to take histories and do case study-type things, which will be neat but probably also a lot of work. So finally at 5 the day was over - Dad came to pick me up and we went to an early dinner at Ozona Grill. Our food sucked. Then I had to get back to study.
Yesterday was a LOOONG day. It started at 8 with Professional Development. The teacher was the acting president of A&M a while back and sounds like the elder George Bush. It was really boring and I think most of it will be. Luckily it won't be too much work. Then anatomy, physiology, and microbiology lectures, followed by our one hour lunch break. The afternoon labs were microbiology (we tested samples for Brucellosis and Equine Infectious Anemia) and anatomy. I met my anatomy group - two guys! - Justin and Brandon. They are two West Texas boys, from Abeliene Christian and Tech. Dr. Hoffman put one person who'd had A&M anatomy with people who hadn't, so I'm the most experienced, which is a bit intimidating. But the guys are really nice and so far we're working well together. We jumped right in with our dog, and started working on the thoracic limb until 4:40 when it was time to clean up and call it a day. Dad took a bunch of us to dinner at Chedders. It was me, Emily, Johnny, Cindy, Danny, Chris, Katie, Stephanie, and a friend of Katie's who is living with them this year. Then, again, it was time to study! But I gave up early and went to bed. This proved to be a mistake because...
...today I had my first quiz. It was via our little remote controls we have to carry around, and it was in histology lab. We had to identify some different kinds of cells, and since this was a topic I was saving for the weekend to learn...I got 1/3. Oops. Luckily, even though that does count toward my grade, it isn't a big part and there are a few bonus questions I could get to make up. So yeah, histology is sort of boring. But anatomy is a fabulous way to end the day (seriously) because we don't have to rush out of there or stink up our next class or anything. We got our thoracic limb off and reveiwed. We finished early but just called it a day because we need to go home and do some personal studying before moving on. I also got my bone box (remember from my undergrad? It is the same thing. Actually, my undergrad one was in better shape). Emily picked me up and we went home. We had some lasagna Mom and Leslie had brought for dinner, and I, guess what, studied! Then I took a break to write this, and now I need to wrap it up and get back to work.
Matt gets in tomorrow night, which makes me happy. He is bringing work with him so I can study and he can account but at least we'll be together. It was rough going though the medical thing this week without him, although I was lucky to 1) have Uncle Johnny and Emily to come to the hospital, and 2) have Dad come down (he went back today) to make sure I was okay.
The exception I mentioned in the blood work? Yeah, so the doctor said my creatinine was high and nothing else was, and that meant I might only have one kidney. Isn't that random? I have to go see a regular doctor and find out sometime. That'd be a good thing to know.
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