I am home and I am awake to tell about it. The trip to CO was simply fantastic. I was too happy to sleep most of the time, hence after my arrival home on Sunday night I made it through each work day to come home and fall asleep at 7:30 PM like an old person. Yikes. It was sooooo fun though. Let's see... arrival at Paul and Julie's around 10 PM Thursday night for a tour of their house, arrival HOME at about midnight for about three hours of freezing on an air mattress (not realizing the large black box next to my head was a space heater... duh...), then up early to visit my dentist and the pup's opthomologist, lunch with the fly PhD boss, then games with Samantha in the afternoon and the pleasant discovery that my tire changing equipment was in the back of my car the entire time. Caramel appletinis with Laurie, lots of coffee afterwards with Laurie and Sarah (two appletinis = too much for Janel to drive... lesson learned, lol), and then another night of being too happy to sleep as well as encumbered with some old thought circles of mine concerning how scientists are often sadly, sadly trapped in a pressured lifestyle of massive data production, guilt-filled weekends, and scary perfectionism. Some seem to handle that lifestyle well. I think I may be the type who needed to escape from it, as I find myself wanting to rescue people from it when they don't really want to be rescued. Where am I going with this blog? Hmm. Trying to recapture a glorious weekend when I'm 3 days out and thinking about dogs with diaphragmatic hernias. I'm going to persevere. So Saturday morning was the joyful morning of reuniting with my horse, my Annette, and my Leah, and we got just enough break from the wind to wander through the snake-less fields and rediscover the hobbit hide-out, the culvert from which creatures from the underworld emerge, and go far enough away to bring worried mules to the fenceline. It was awesome. My 31 year old T-bred mare is going strong, and despite her ribs showing she has a girth size that makes me smile and look forward to another summer with her. Equine senior is working its magic! I think I was actually starving for conversation with Annette. Two hours flew by. How awesome is it that God still teaches us better ways to pray, better ways to maneuver in relationships, better ways to raise teenagers... your entire life! You never actually get done learning. I suppose that could be discouraging as well... but in talking to Annette it was intensely ENcouraging. Somehow her stories fuel my own faith challenges, even though they are so different at the individual story level. The awesomeness of conversation with awesome friends. Love it. The end of Saturday involved me practicing my soccer-mom skills picking up one dog here and dropping off another there (a potential pup adoption and a playmate for Pepperoni), more games with Paul, Julie and chicken USDA boss, and then taking my massively sleep deprived self home to play poker with my family, Paul, Julie and Sarah. I'm pretty terrible at poker. Yep. The next morning I had pancakes with the purple PhD boss, left the dogs there, and went to my beautiful church for a taste of home preaching and a whole bunch of awesome people. Miss them all so much! But had to leave them all afterwards for the long journey home, with a stop in Albuquerque to finish writing an anesthesiology exam before my brains completely died. It was a nice stop in ABQ actually -- met some really nice peeps at Barnes & Noble and nothing was stolen.
Ok so that was the sum of it all. Something at least slightly more descriptive than WOOOOT that was SOOOOOO FUUUUN!!! But I'm back. Pandora entertained me with "Finally Home" as I was leaving my home address in CO, "Here Am I, Send Me" as I turned onto the highway, and "Ghetto Superstar" as I left my trailer for work Monday morning. Monday was quite a while ago and I don't really remember what happened. I think I neutered something. Oh yes... a pug. And took out his four deciduous canine teeth. That was pretty interesting as they didn't really want to come out. Good times. "Wiggle wiggle." I heard Dr. Bar-Am's voice the entire time. The afternoon was full of appointments, then of course I went home and collapsed. Tuesday was much the same. Equine float, neuter, appointments, catch up mounds of paperwork, collapse. Today I'm back to normal. It's 8:00 PM and I'm still fairly wide awake. There was a really interesting case today -- tachypneic dog, HBC yesterday. She had few other external signs of distress/injury. Radiographs showed mild pneumothorax, lack of diaphragm border and a lot of soft tissue opacity in the left lung field. I suspected a hernia but couldn't be sure, and my boss was more sure of the hernia with just a bit of hesitation so that we offered a Barium series but explained that she should be referred for surgery either way. We ended up putting her down, and she surely did have a hernia. Many things in the left thoracic cavity that didn't belong. It was a heartbreaker. It isn't my usual MO bring my own dog out to a sad owner to try and cheer him, but I did this time. So sad. Please pray for a sad man on the Rez tonight.
Pepperoni is over playing at her friend's house and I should probably go get her. And my nose is cold. And I need to get a lecture finished up for tomorrow. I was really proud of my students today while I was grading their exams. Some of them really excelled on the short answer questions, make my heart shine. One even offered some extra info about poison dart frogs and how their poison level varies with habitat and diet. This was followed by a fantastic picture of a turtle screaming at a syringe of ivermectin! I laughed so hard I cried. There are days when teaching is very rewarding :)
:)
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