Change. . . is evil. 
I have nothing to base this statement on but I am certain it is true.  In the next two weeks I will graduate from UC Davis as Dr. Riley, pack my house, move myself, my dog and cat to the opposite side of the country, start a new job, new career and attempt to construct a completely new social network.  I need to take 800mg of ibuprofen with a glass of wine just thinking about it.

Poppy and Lulu playing ball in the backyard. We will miss our animal roommates too!

Change. . . is dangerous.
People always talk about what an adventure these types of life changes are.  Well adventure is overrated!  Adventure often involve snakes and getting injured.  Sure, you might end up with a great tan and a cool bracelet identifying you as a fellow soldier in a remote African mountain tribe, but is it worth it really? 

Good times on GEVA dental days

Change. . . is only partially deniable.
My brother told me that denial is a perfectly healthy way of handling these kinds of stressful situations.  That had been working really well. But when you start packing, when graduation approaches, when your parents start asking you what day would be best to fly home, leaving you virtually abandoned to the humidity and loneliness of North Carolina, it is more and more difficult to deny that change is coming.

The beautiful future of equine veterinary medicine

Change. . . is relentless.
Change approaches at the same rate whether you are dreading it or hoping for it with every fiber of your being. 

The regularly featured partner in crime Dr. Pryor and myself at Drake's Beach

Change. . . is a sacrifice.
The hardest part of all of this is the changes in relationships.  For the last four years, I have been working alongside an elect group of amazingly intelligent, kind and fun people.  I'm not just referring to my classmates, who are incredible, but all the doctors and technicians that I no longer just respect and revere but consider my friends.  Veterinary work is demanding and it makes all the difference in the world when you work with people who make you laugh, who challenge you and who support you.  While I'm not giving up these friendships, because I believe they will always be there, they are changing. 

Two of my favorite residents, Jan and Albert working on an abscess.

Change. . . is necessary.
Did I just write that?  Most of us do not like change.  We like patterns, routines and comfort but if I refused this change and instead I clung to these last four years of my life, what would happen?  I would be hanging onto an empty shell, a corpse.  The life of vet school is about to leave and all I would have to hang onto and live in, is the memory.  Life would grow stale and stagnant.  Change is forcing me out of my comfort zone again, making me grow as a person and now as a doctor.  There will be new patterns and routines and in a year, I will be asked to leave them behind again.
So maybe change isn't evil.  It feels evil right now but maybe change is doing me a favor.  Maybe change knows better than I do, what is good for me.
That being said, I will miss these days and I will look back, with fondest memories, on the class of 2012 and our clinical year in the UC Davis VMTH.

So goodbye for now UC Davis.  Maybe our paths will cross again in the future. . . .

A Quick Update

Well, its been a while.

The last little while of vet school has been a dynamic and incredible time.
I was sitting in the office of one of my mentors the other day, and he asked me, "How are things going this quarter?"  Wow. What a question.  I sat quietly for a few minutes while he worked away on his computer trying to find a file we needed for the project we are working on. "Honestly?" I said to him, "Every day I swing back and forth between feeling like I'm a hero, a genius, a soon to be great doctor who will go out and save the world and feeling like the stupidest, most worthless and inept person, who ever was mistakenly admitted to UC Davis."  His response? A knowing chuckle and "Yah."  But that was okay.  I didn't need him to tell me that everything was going to be okay or that I didn't get into vet school by mistake.  The comfort was in the way his response showed that he could completely relate. Because the truth is, its never going to get easier to accept who I am and what I know and more importantly, what I don't know.  And that's okay.

This quarter is almost 100% devoted to equine classes.  I wake up every day knowing that I get to discuss the most important concepts I will ever learn, with some of the most amazing equine doctors that I will ever know.  What an honor.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not like SpongeBob, spring loaded into my bed, ready the second the alarm sounds to blast into the day.  But I have more purpose in what I am learning right now than I have ever experienced before and that is an incredible rush. 

Each day produces new, amazing opportunities and each day the challenges you would expect in making the transition from third year to fourth year. I am more excited for my fourth year than anyone is likely advised, expected or allowed to be.  Six short weeks from now, I will be stepping into the clinics for the rest of my time at UC Davis.  The time will undoubtedly fly.  It will be stressful, difficult, terrifying and wonderful. I can't wait.

Senior Schedule

My Senior Clinics Schedule is here! 

This is a holy crap moment for me folks.  I mean this is reality knocking on my front door.

I'm a little bummed about starting off with path, but also glad that I will get it out of the way.  Also pretty bummed that I don't get any medicine until December but I have a good vacation distribution, I'm going on awesome externships, and all and all, I think its going to be an amazing year.  

Did I mention that all my field service and reproduction rotations are during the Spring and that I also get a 2 week vacation in the Spring? (Mu ah ah ah ah!)  

Yah, that makes me happy.

So now you know where I will be next year. . .all year.

Week 1 (6/13) - Large Animal Ultrasound (Erica)

Week 2 (6/20) - Pathology (Julie)

Week 3 (6/27) - Pathology (Huggabug)

Week 4 (7/5) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I

Week 5 (7/11) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I 

Week 6 (7/18) - Externship (Idaho Equine)

Week 7 (7/25) - Externship (Idaho Equine)

Week 8 (8/1) - Vacation

Week 9 (8/8) - Clinical Pathology 

Week 10 (8/15) - Externship (Steinbeck)

Week 11 (8/22) - Externship (Steinbeck)

Week 12 (8/29) - Vacation

Week 13 (9/6) - Externship (Montana Equine Medical & Surgical)

Week 14 (9/12) - Externship (Montana Equine Medical & Surgical)

Week 15 (9/19) - Externship (Littleton)

Week 16 (9/26) - Externship (Littleton)

Week 17 (10/3) - Large Animal Anesthesia-Critical Patient Care 

Week 18 (10/10) - Large Animal Anesthesia-Critical Patient Care

Week 19 (10/17) - Equine Emergency Surgery 

Week 20 (10/24) - Equine Emergency Surgery

Week 21 (10/31) - Externship (Loomis)

Week 22 (11/7) - Externship (Loomis)

Week 23 & 24 (11/14) - Ophthalmology 

Week 25 (11/28) - Ophthalmology

Week 26 (12/5) - Equine Medicine--In House 

Week 27 & 28 (12/12) - Equine Medicine--In House

Week 29 (12/26) - HOLIDAY 

Week 30 (1/3) - Equine Medicine--In House

Week 31 (1/9) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I 

Week 32 (1/17) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I

Week 33 (1/23) - Vacation 

Week 34 (1/30) - Equine Emergency Surgery

Week 35 (2/6) - Equine Emergency Surgery 

Week 36 (2/13) - Equine Reproduction

Week 37 (2/21) - Equine Reproduction 

Week 38 (2/27) - Large Animal Radiology

Week 39 (3/5) - Large Animal Radiology 

Week 40 (3/12) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I (Slivia)

Week 41 (3/19) - Equine Surgery & Lameness I (Silvia)

Week 42 (3/26) - Equine Emergency Surgery

Week 43 (4/2) - Equine Emergency Surgery 

Week 44 (4/9) - Equine Medicine--Field Service

Week 45 (4/16) - Equine Medicine--Field Service 

Week 46 (4/23) - Large Animal Ultrasound

Week 47 (4/30) - Vacation 

Week 48 (5/7) - Vacation

Week 49 (5/14) - Equine Medicine--Field Service 

Week 50 (5/21) - Equine Medicine--Field Service

Week 51 (5/29) - Equine Reproduction (Jacks)

Week 52 & 53 (6/4) - Equine Reproduction (Jacks)

The View From the MountainTop

     Have you ever been to the top of a mountain?  Like a real mountain?  A big mountain?  A few years ago, my cousins (John and Hannah) and I decided to summit Mt. Shasta.  John had done it before, and Hannah and I both were game after hearing his stories about it.  I didn't do anything specific to get ready.  I always run and I hike pretty regularly in my own hills.  So I figured I was pretty good to go. 
     I think it was when I was being fitted for crampons that I first realized this hiking experience would be just a little bit different than others.  Then they started explaining how I should use my ice pic to "self arrest," should I happen to start tumbling down the frozen mountainside.  Excuse me?  Self arrest?  

     
     Onward we went making our first stop at Horse Camp.  We slept well, ate decently and woke up bright and early to conquer the mountain.  We wound our way up and up and towards early afternoon found ourselves weaving along the tree line.  What a feeling.  Leaving, quite literally life, in the form of vegetation at least, behind and entering a rocky and icy world.  
     I learned very soon that I do not possess a knack for walking in slippery snow.  Therefore, as a companion on such trips I am extremely entertaining.  Whether you are in front of or behind me, you have the joyous experience of hearing first, "whuup!" followed closely by the gentle thud of my body hitting snow and the cacophony of whatever pots and pans might be dangling from my pack. 
     We made it to the second camping spot but decided to move forward and establish a "high camp" in the snow several hundred feet further up the mountain.  We hammered our tent into place and went to bed amid the thunderous gusts of wind that repeatedly beat the sides of our dwelling.  I turned to John and asked, "We're safe here right?  I mean its not like we could get blown down the mountainside?"  "Oh yah, we're totally safe," came the reply.  I instantly knew he wasn't sure at all.  Later he told me so.

High Camp

     
     At 4 in the morning we woke up, forced some oatmeal down, affixed our headlamps, and crampons clamped on and ice pics firmly in hand, out we went.  My favorite memory of that day took place in those first early hours before the sun came up.  As you looked out over the steep terrain you could see small pricks of light.  Other climbers sprinkling the mountainside.  It was such a comforting feeling.  As we neared the summit at 11 in the morning I found myself suddenly jogging the last few hundred feet.  I was so excited to be so close that I couldn't wait anymore. 

At the Summit!

     
     Another day I'll tell you about the fun of glacading back down the mountain, but the point of this story is that there is nothing like reaching the mountain top and from the moment you begin descending, you begin forgetting what it means to be up there and what it took to get you there.
     Friday I performed total intravenous anesthesia on a patient while my friend and colleague Nicole castrated the horse.  Sure, there were about a billion people watching us to make sure we didn't screw it up, but there we were.  Is that a mountain top?   I think so.  I walked down the hallway and watched as a half dozen of my classmates monitored horses, castrated, pulled wolf teeth and assisted and I was so filled with joy and pride I nearly busted.  These people have been climbing for a long time.  They have made their high camps and weathered the buffeting gusts of wind and now here they are, on the summit.  And I'm up there with them.

Listening to lungs = awesome