Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Resurrection

It's been a while...

I have been getting busier each day as lecture notes grow thicker, assignments pile up, and pre-reading requirements (prior to animal handling and clinical examination, and anaesthesia practical sessions) extend extremely up from the north all the way down to the Antarctic!  Those, I think, are the best excuses of setting RJ's Uni Diary aside for more than eight weeks; and now I wanted to resurrect this journal.   

Fortunately, we had our two-week Easter break but I spent most of my time reviewing Veterinary Immunology so I could lay a sturdy foundation for the complexities of Veterinary Immunopathology.  It's not easy, and I blame it to the eleven-year interval between my last serious review of the majority of these things (2001 PRC Veterinary Licensure Examination) and the current time.  I can't help but ask myself if I was a good student back then... whether I was absent when these important immunopathology issues were discussed or whether our undisputedly good lecturers had indeliberately missed to emphasize these significant biochemical mechanisms and pathways.

And oh, because of the diverse challenges in the workplace (most especially the subordination issues) during my employment, for over a decade of being a swine and poultry clinician, I failed to appreciate the essence behind the anaphylactic reaction and subsequent death that happened right before my eyes after injecting Pseudorabies vaccine to a young, newly purchased boar.  I missed to catch the interesting 'stories' behind the 'cheese-coated' lungs of weanlings that had suffered from a certain type of pneumonia... the red, diamond-shaped patches in the skin of sows... the red and white pin-point spots in the kidneys of a dead fattener...

Well, here in the University of Adelaide, I need to accept the fact that again- I have to understand and chronologically tell the details involved behind the reddish or turbid effusions in the chest of a weaner, the ultra-structural wonders behind iron injection in piglets, the pinkish, warm, swollen and painful udder of a lactating sow, the mysteries behind the crooked snout of a grower... the list goes on and one thing more, I have to stop my resistance against and learn the stories underlying the sick dog, cat, horse, and interestingly, kangaroos, koalas, tasmanian devils, geckos, magpies, etc.

I think this is it for this time.  I am actually physically exhausted and mentally drained at the moment because of our final exam in General Pathology this afternoon.  I missed some basic things because of my carelessness, I am disappointed, and I wanted to forget about it. 


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2 comments:

BlogusVox said...

Ganyan talaga ang pag-aaral, doc, merong ups and down. Pero sa tingin ko, kaya mo yan. Nanibago ka lang siguro dahil ang tagal mong nabakante. Hang in there!

bertN said...

Physically exhausted and mentally drained after the finals? Story of my life when I was in school....most of the time.

You lost a lot of your edge from being out of school for years but it will come back, if it is not there already. Trust me you'll do good.

It helps a lot if you unwind after a hard exam with a few drinks, chase some chicks who can run faster than you can catch them (potentially a disaster if you catch them while you are still in school LOL), and a resolve to do better the next time. Good Luck!