So far I was right about this year being amazing. My therio class is still one of my favorites, and soon I get to start going in with an ultrasound probe to find follicles on ovaries and check edema of the uterus, things that right now I’m still trying to feel with palpation. I feel like this class is really flying by, and it’s amazing how 2 hours out at the barn goes by faster than a 50 minute lecture. I only have about 3 palpation labs left, and I’m going to miss the time out at the barn when it’s all done.
My clinics class was also a major step up. I went in for the equine surgery rotation, which the syllabus said would be about going over a lameness exam, and everyone would be required to put a halter on a horse, and pick up a foot and clean out the hoof. I wasn’t really looking forward to this. Mostly because I’ve been cleaning hooves out and putting halters on since I was about 10, and I think 13 years is enough experience for that. Not to mention the fact that last year in the first semester the zootechnology equine rotation also had us putting on halters and picking up feet, so I can in fact confirm that it was extremely boring. And when you’re an equine vet, lameness exams can make up as much as 50% of your schedule, so I’ve done my fair share of them as well. Granted, I was usually the one trotting the horses around like the slave I was so the vet could examine the horse, but then he usually had the owner trot the horse out too to see if I could spot the problem. So I’ve had a fair amount of experience diagnosing lamenesses already too, but at least they’re always different, as opposed to picking up a foot.
So I was dragging my feet into the hospital, dreading what I was sure was going to be an incredibly boring rotation that I would just spend watching the clock, when suddenly one of the nurses asked me if I had brought my scrubs. Immediately I perked up. Scrubs? You only need scrubs to go into surgery, and while it was a surgery rotation we weren’t scheduled to actually go into surgery. So what did I need scrubs for?
Thankfully I had brought my scrubs, because I had been intending on staying later and going into a surgery if there was one. So I get changed and then I hear what I consider to be the best news I could have received. The resident who was supposed to be going over lameness exams with us was in surgery, so if we had scrubs we were allowed to go in and watch too. Would I rather watch a surgery than go over a lameness exam? Hell yes.
The surgery we were able to watch was to correct an inguinal hernia on a foal, and while we couldn’t really see much it was still mesmerizing. All I could see (after subtly pushing a couple of fourth years out of my way) were the surgeons hands and a couple pieces of tissue here and there, but it was still one of the coolest things I’d ever (not) seen. We were in the OR about an hour, and my patience and diligence and constantly edging over was rewarded when I got to see every bit of them closing the opening in the muscle and closing back up. And it was awesome. If that’s what surgery class is going to be like next year, getting to scrub in and watch, then sign me up now with the third years.
And the afternoon kept getting better. After the surgery our resident told us that he had a case coming in with an unknown lesion, and we were welcome to come and observe. Clearly we weren’t getting around to lameness exams anytime soon. The horse we went to observe was a mare that had somehow managed to gore out a chunk of hoof on her front left hoof, and no one seemed to know how she had managed it or what to do about it. The resident wanted to wait until the surgeon could come look at it and see if the flap of hoof should be cut off or bandaged up, so we were al just standing around waiting for him when another vet walked up, asked “are you doing anything?” and when we said no he just walked off and said follow me, so like the sheep we are we followed. He took us out to a trailer in the parking lot where an owner had brought in a horse with tetanus. This vet crowded us all into the back of the trailer (with the owner wearing a “who the hell are all these people” look on his face) and had us all press down on the horses tail to feel the rigidity of the muscles. Then he asked me to draw up some acepromazine (a tranquilizer that can help with the muscle spasms) and he lectured us on what we would want to know from this client as he administered the ace and some antitoxin. Just that half an hour in the back of a horse trailer getting soaked in the rain with my scrub pants trailing in horse poop was more informative than any of the other rotations I’ve had yet.
When we got back inside the hospital we found the mare with the hoof lesion, and found out that the surgeon had decided to clean and wrap it, so we watched that procedure (not as interesting as the tetanus horse). Then we were back to standing around with nothing to do, and the same vet came back and told us to follow him again. (Actually, what he said was “find another group and go do something”, but we didn’t know what that meant.) He took us to another group that was examining a horse with a pretty bad abscess, and he had us all push down on the hoof so we could see the black tar-like pus that seeped out. Then he had the owner walk the horse so we could see just how lame he was on that foot (very), and we watched them wrap it up in diapers and duck tape while getting the “what causes a stage 4 lameness” lecture. And in case you’re wondering, it’s abscesses, fractures, and septic joints. And after the abscess case we left, but I left practically skipping out of the hospital, because I’d come in expecting the afternoon to be a complete waste of my time and it was the complete opposite.
And those are the really nice surprises in vet school.
No comments:
Post a Comment