So much has happened in the last few days! I have to write it all down before I forget it.
On Thursday, I took my anatomy final exam. It was super hard. There were 120 questions, but it felt like a lot more. I talked to other people in the class and everyone thought it was really hard. It's so frustrating when you feel like you've studied and you know the material, but do terrible on the test. And it's frustrating when the professor doesn't know how to teach, and then chooses the most nitpicky details to put on the test. I feel like I've learned a lot in that class, but I also feel constantly frustrated by it. In my opinion, that's a sign of a bad teacher. She almost sets us up for failure. Expecting us to know the amount of material, and making really hard tests, and not teaching the material well, or teaching it at all in some cases (when she cancels class, she just posts her slides online). So although I learned a lot, I am left feeling like I didn't because I have such a terrible grade.
Later that afternoon was my very last anatomy lab. We finally cut open our cats to look at the abdominal and thoracic cavities. It was fascinating! I could identify just about everything in the gut. I found the stomach, spleen, appendix, small and large intestine, kidneys, ureters, bladder, liver, lungs, heart, thymus, everything! The most enlightening thing about the dissection was seeing the differences between cats. When you spend 10 weeks looking at drawings and diagrams in a textbook, it's hard to remember that everyone is different. In reality, there is no standard for how all the organs look and are arranged. For example, our cat had a very large and very dark spleen. The group next to us had a cat with a large bladder, and much smaller intestines.
Friday was my last day of school! Yay! I had class, and then went to work. Work was so exciting! I actually got to go down to the vivarium. If you don't like the idea of animal testing, then stop reading now and skip to the next paragraph. Judy needed to sac some mice, so she decided to take me down with her. Both of us were tired and didn't feel like working, so we spent a lot of time down there. I signed a waiver form so I could enter the restricted area. Once I get back from Phoenix in late June I will take a class that gives me certification to enter the restricted area on my own. We had to completely suit up- floor length lab coat, gloves, booties, hair cap, and mask. Then we walked into a maze of hallways. Each door had a picture of the technician responsible for it. There is a person assigned to each room to feed the mice and clean the cages. I can't imagine working down there and being suited up the entire day! Especially when it was so hot. It got over 90 degrees, which is a record for May in Denver. So finally we got to "our" room. Our lab has an entire room to itself. The walls are lined with shelves that have cages on them. Each cage has a card on the front that lists how many mice are in there, their sexes, the strain of mouse (kind of like the breed) what lab they belong to, and who they belong to. A few weeks ago Judy ordered 4 C57 mice, so there was a cage that said Judy and C57 mice. We grabbed that cage and went next door to the procedure room. We picked up the mice one by one by their tails and put them into another cage that had a hose attached to a CO2 tank. You turn on the tank, and wait about 5 minutes. They basically look like they went to sleep. To make sure they're dead, you have to dislocate the neck. Then we put them in a bag, and took them back through the maze of hallways. We unsuited (everything is disposable) and went up to the lab. There, we took the leg bones out. I've done this many times, and I'm getting really good at it now. I make a little slit in the groin area, and cut down to the feet. You have to carefully cut off all the muscle, leaving just the tiny little bones. And it's very important not to break them because that will cause contamination. It gets a little messy if you hit a blood vessel because then they bleed all over. But each time I do it, I get a little better and a little cleaner. I told Judy about our cat dissection the day before, and she decided to open up the mouse to show me the same organs. It was basically the same, except smaller. I was able to identify just about everything. Then we extracted the bone marrow. We cut off each end of the bone, and stick a tiny needle into the hole. Then we flush fluid through into a tube. Next week, we'll expose those cells to ozone to see what happens to the cells. So exciting!!
After work, I went home to get Jackson and then I went to the Lamont school of music's end of the year picnic. Jackson was surprisingly well behaved. He didn't even try to eat anyone's food even though there were plates laying all over the ground. He didn't bark or growl at any of the other dogs there. So besides some pulling, and jumping up on one person, he was really good. It was a beautiful day so it was great to spend some time outside.
When we got home, Hope was there with her friend Ashley. Daniel had to go back to school for a rehearsal. Hope and Ashley left to go to the grocery store, and they came back just a few minutes later. Hope was really upset because in the middle of the street right in front of our house, a snake had been run over by a car. It was still alive, but it couldn't move enough to get out of the road. So it was just kind of wiggling around. I could see it from our front window. I didn't want to go any closer. Hope was flipping out, saying she was upset because she didn't want it to suffer. I told her she could go out and chop off its head if she wanted to end its suffering, but she said she couldn't do that. I also suggested putting a box or something over it so nobody else runs it over. But I guess that didn't solve the problem of it suffering. So she looked up the phone number for animal control, and Ashley called. They were closed. So, Ashley called a reptile veterinarian nearby and told them what was going on. They put us on hold, and during that time another car came along and ran over it again. So I was pretty sure it was dead by then. Ashley walked over to take a look, and sure enough it was dead. So now what do we do? Hope was still really upset. I didn't want to just leave it there to get run over and decompose in the middle of the street. But I definitely wasn't going to go do anything. Ashley volunteered. She said the vet told her to use a shovel and scoop it off the road and toss it into someone's yard. I got her a shovel, and that's what she did. She put it in the yard of the house across the street that's for sale. I was really annoyed by Hope's dramatic reaction. She just flipped out the entire time, but wouldn't do anything about it! I just don't get her animal rights stuff. Animals die. That's what happens. If it didn't get run over by a car, it would have gotten eaten by a hawk. Do you think that's a much better way to die? I don't think so. But when I said something to the effect of "it's natural," Hope got very upset. Apparently, she doesn't think it's natural because it's a car (driven by a human) that killed it. I guess when tiny baby deer get attacked and eaten by a lion, it suffers less? I doubt it. If Hope really cares about suffering of animals, she would go to Africa and gently anesthetize a baby deer and feed it to lions. For goodness sake! Anyways, as you can tell I really had very little patience for this whole dramatic episode. Personally, I think Hope was more into the drama than the actual suffering of the animal. That's just my opinion. I try to remember that Hope is just a sensitive person who cares about animals. That's just who she is, and I have to respect that.
This turned into a very long post, and somehow included a lot of gory details about animals dying. Sorry about that. To end the post, I will tell you another reason I love Daniel: This afternoon, I went upstairs to get a snack, and when I came back downstairs about 30 minutes later, Daniel had folded all of our laundry. Coincidentally, he also started it this morning and moved it to the dryer earlier this afternoon. Which means he did our entire laundry! He has never ever done that. I love him :-)
And now we're going downtown to Denver Rocks! with some friends. There's an outdoor mall on 16th street, and today there will be live bands playing all day and evening. It should be really fun.
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