Hi everyone,
Well, I have great news.  I spoke with this surgeon at OSU and I'm feeling
extremely confident in his capabilities.  Not only does he have experience
with ferret surgery, obvious surgical expertise, he seemed to know aLOT
about ferret medicine, asked a lot of great questions both in general and
about the new cyosurgery and, he seems like someone I will definately be
able to work with.  I have also talked to some other clinicians about doing
stuff like ultrasounds and echos and while such tests are not 'necessary'
they are one of the benefits of being a vet student.  It will be a great
adjunct to our classroom theory as well :).  I'm very happy and very
excited and want to thank all of you for 'being there' to share my stresses
with.  I really think Ferret people are a special bunch and all the support
I've received has really been amazing.  I will keep everyone aware as
things progress.  Surgery won't be till mid November though so still say
a little prayer to keep my girls safe and happy until then.
 
Other great news.  I spoke with this professor I mentioned about the
problems with information dissemination with respect to ferret medicine.
We had been talking about a number of ideas for various independent studies
projects and grant applications and he is very excited about many of my
ideas and he's got alot of enthusiasm around ferrets :).  Best news of all,
I'm being sponsored to go to a Bioethics Symposium in Tuskegee.  A new
Multidisciplinary Center has been established , as I understand, in light
of President Clinton's recent apology to the blacks of the US for the
experiments that were done on them in WWII.  Ethics is a passion of mine
and many topics we all discuss on the FML, with respect to ferret care,
touch on all sorts of areas of ethics.  I'm definately excited though I
need to get through the next two weeks of midterms FIRST hehe.  If you
email me in the next two weeks, I apologize in advance for being slow to
respond.  I expect I won't get online as much but I *do* find it hard not
to get my fix of the FML :).
 
Thank you all again for your support.  Fill you in as things happen :)
 
Michaela Maurice
College of Veterinary Medicine
Ohio State University
Class of 2002
[Posted in FML issue 2842]