Listening to: Dead by April
Mood: Tired, but accomplished
Well, my day started off by waking up to my obnoxious alarm at 4:30am. Yes people. I dragged myself out of bed this morning, while everyone else was sleeping soundly, put my bathing suit on, grabbed my towel, pinched myself to stay awake, and headed out on the drive to Key Largo. Today Megan, my friend and classmate, and I, had signed up for an 8am-noon shift with the pilot whales down at the MMC. Today's shift was a lot more 'involved' than the last time. There weren't as many people there, so as soon as we arrived we donned our wetsuits and got right in.
There are 3 whales left. The one I assisted last time was euthanized, due to the failure to recover from pneumonia, and, well... poop blockage. She couldn't be fed because she couldn't poop, and after an ultrasound showed nothing helpful, they decided to put her out of her misery. That was sad. Anyways, today I was on a juvenile with Megan and two other women, and placed in secondary position, which is toward the back of the whale, and a slightly more dangerous position to be in, because you are closer to the peduncle and fluke, which could really do some serious damage if the whale were to get feisty. I was even in more of a precarious situation because our girl's 'tail' was bending at a right angle, instead of straight behind her, so her fluke tip was rather close to my shoulder. Aside from this, she was very well behaved, and we did a breath and heart rate test on her. Unfortunately for me, during the course of my 3.5 hr stint in the water (very cold and sore after being in the water in the same position for so long) I got farted on, I believe peed on, pooped on, and yes, got hit in the face with snot from her blowhole. Needless to say I got an intense shower when I got home.
Something cool that was going on during this shift, is that we had some vets doing some tests; a few from SeaWorld, and another vet, who was working with our whale, from somewhere else. All three whales are doing much better, but one received a secondary infection, and so they were giving her medicine through a makeshift nebulizer, placed over the blowhole, which is pretty cool. For our whale, because of her severely bent tail, the vet and two other guys straddled her tail and basically twisted it different ways, to attempt to relax her muscles, so that her tail will eventually straighten out. It was based on human therapy and vertebrae, which I thought was pretty cool. The vet was awesome. He was so nice and calm; very encouraging. At that point we had 7 people on the whale. While he and one guy were concentrating on bending her tail, the other guy was bracing me and another girl as we kept the whale from rolling over, as she didn't really like some of the treatment, and struggled a bit. That's when I felt how strong she was.
After that I got out and I was sore, stinky, and wet. Megan and I had to bolt, as she had a lab to TA, so I got back around 2:30 and managed to clean my room, bathroom, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, and even check my email! Wow! What you can accomplish when you wake up at 4:30!
We were much needed this morning, so I couldn't take any pictures, except one real quick of me in the wetsuit before I left. The other pictures are of me and my roommate, Fran, from Switzerland, at the resort area beach. That was memorial day, when I got really bad sunburn, and pretty much was miserable for the rest of the week. I won't go into details. Anyway, while we were there, we had a blast! We even ate Pirmani's at the beach! HA! Ah, like home sweet home, except I get A1A and the ocean as a backdrop instead of rainy, cloudy Forbes St. MWAHAHAHA!
Now, I can finally sit down and nurse my aching body, so that I don't die tomorrow at my hip-hop class. Hmmm, I think I'll eat some cookies...
Mood: Tired, but accomplished
Well, my day started off by waking up to my obnoxious alarm at 4:30am. Yes people. I dragged myself out of bed this morning, while everyone else was sleeping soundly, put my bathing suit on, grabbed my towel, pinched myself to stay awake, and headed out on the drive to Key Largo. Today Megan, my friend and classmate, and I, had signed up for an 8am-noon shift with the pilot whales down at the MMC. Today's shift was a lot more 'involved' than the last time. There weren't as many people there, so as soon as we arrived we donned our wetsuits and got right in.
There are 3 whales left. The one I assisted last time was euthanized, due to the failure to recover from pneumonia, and, well... poop blockage. She couldn't be fed because she couldn't poop, and after an ultrasound showed nothing helpful, they decided to put her out of her misery. That was sad. Anyways, today I was on a juvenile with Megan and two other women, and placed in secondary position, which is toward the back of the whale, and a slightly more dangerous position to be in, because you are closer to the peduncle and fluke, which could really do some serious damage if the whale were to get feisty. I was even in more of a precarious situation because our girl's 'tail' was bending at a right angle, instead of straight behind her, so her fluke tip was rather close to my shoulder. Aside from this, she was very well behaved, and we did a breath and heart rate test on her. Unfortunately for me, during the course of my 3.5 hr stint in the water (very cold and sore after being in the water in the same position for so long) I got farted on, I believe peed on, pooped on, and yes, got hit in the face with snot from her blowhole. Needless to say I got an intense shower when I got home.
Something cool that was going on during this shift, is that we had some vets doing some tests; a few from SeaWorld, and another vet, who was working with our whale, from somewhere else. All three whales are doing much better, but one received a secondary infection, and so they were giving her medicine through a makeshift nebulizer, placed over the blowhole, which is pretty cool. For our whale, because of her severely bent tail, the vet and two other guys straddled her tail and basically twisted it different ways, to attempt to relax her muscles, so that her tail will eventually straighten out. It was based on human therapy and vertebrae, which I thought was pretty cool. The vet was awesome. He was so nice and calm; very encouraging. At that point we had 7 people on the whale. While he and one guy were concentrating on bending her tail, the other guy was bracing me and another girl as we kept the whale from rolling over, as she didn't really like some of the treatment, and struggled a bit. That's when I felt how strong she was.
After that I got out and I was sore, stinky, and wet. Megan and I had to bolt, as she had a lab to TA, so I got back around 2:30 and managed to clean my room, bathroom, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, and even check my email! Wow! What you can accomplish when you wake up at 4:30!
We were much needed this morning, so I couldn't take any pictures, except one real quick of me in the wetsuit before I left. The other pictures are of me and my roommate, Fran, from Switzerland, at the resort area beach. That was memorial day, when I got really bad sunburn, and pretty much was miserable for the rest of the week. I won't go into details. Anyway, while we were there, we had a blast! We even ate Pirmani's at the beach! HA! Ah, like home sweet home, except I get A1A and the ocean as a backdrop instead of rainy, cloudy Forbes St. MWAHAHAHA!
Now, I can finally sit down and nurse my aching body, so that I don't die tomorrow at my hip-hop class. Hmmm, I think I'll eat some cookies...
Fran and I chilling at the beach. I swear one of these days I'll get a better picture of her, so you can actually see who she is!
The fancy hotels. Suprisingly, the beach wasn't very crowded that day. It was nice.
More of the beach. It was a perfect day. Go ahead. Be jealous.
Your very own heroic whale-saver. Just doin' my job.
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