Island Med Student

What do they all have in common? Nothing, other than the fact that they’ve been my life for the past 24 hours. Do let me explain.

I made it through my clinical skills exam yesterday. I’ll be writing a whole article about the experience for Medscape, but let’s just say that it was interesting. I was nervous as all hell. I ended up getting “examine the pupillary reflexes” and “do a pelvic exam” as tasks. I then had to do a cardiac exam and diagnose mitral regurg on a mannequin with a heart beat, and perform an entire exam for someone presenting with angina.

After the exam, I celebrated with my friends. Neha, Manny and I all decided to dye our hair. I have almost two months until I have to be “professional” again (aka, in the hospital), so I decided to celebrate by changing my hair color. It’s a funtastic shade of bright pink right now!

When we returned home last night, I suddenly heard the sounds of a goat crying in distress. Micah and I were horrified to discover several dogs attacking two goats across the street from us. One of the goats was barely hanging on, and we realized that his wounds were fatal (deep neck puncture wound). The other goat was severely shaken up, but her wounds were less severe. I ended up carrying her in a towel to the fenced in yard of a neighbor, to keep the dogs away. Today, I cleaned her wounds and got her to drink some water and eat some grass. I think she’s going to be okay, but I am so scared to return her to her home. Unfortunately, her owners don’t have a fence, so they keep her tied to a tree. This means she’s basically bait for the neighborhood dogs. I don’t know what to do. I want to kidnap her and import her back to the States to live on my parents’ goat farm, but Micah doesn’t seem to agree with this idea (nor did he like the “let’s adopt her and house train her” idea).

If that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, a few minutes ago the house started shaking. A cup fell off the table, and I thought the world was coming to an end for a moment. Our dutch neighbor ran out into the street in his underwear, waving a kitchen knife around and mumbling something in Dutch. It turns out that I just experienced the biggest earthquake of my life. It was rated a 7.3 on the Richter scale. It was pretty freakin cool. I hope no one on the island was injured.

Anyway, today is “study for the path lab tomorrow” day, so I have to get back to mitotic figures and glomerulonephritis. But first, I’m going to go check on the goaty. I think I will name her Jasmine.