Fundraising Update

It has been a while since I've posted an update on how my fundraising for Africa has been going, so I thought I would do a quick recap.

So far I have done bake sales, a fundraising event at Ibiza, and Christmas pet photography. All together, with a couple of individual donations, I have raised about $1,000. I really appreciate all of the support that everyone has been giving me! I had a great time with the bake sales, and a really great time doing all of the pet photography! It never ceases to amaze me how generous people can be, and how they are willing to go so far above and beyond in helping with my cause.

       
                        



My next upcoming event is going to be a wine tasting at Zannotti's Wine Bar on January 10, in Stillwater. Besides the wine tasting we are also going to have a wine pool, raffle baskets, and a 50/50 raffle!




Here are some pictures from our pet photography shoots!

Equine Acupuncture

Yesterday was the Holistic Club’s first wetlab, which I am very happy to say went off without a hitch. Dr. Holyaok, the same professor I had for my equine therio class, is certified in equine acupuncture, and he gave us a quick lecture and demonstration in acupuncture before turning us loose on the mares in the barn.

First he showed us the one of the major meridians, the bladder line, which runs down the neck and back just lateral to the spine, and he ran a needle cap over the points to show us how the mares would involuntarily twitch when he ran the needle cap over certain specific acupuncture points. Then we divided up between the mares and performed this same pre-examination on our own mares. Our mare was very sensitive over a acupuncture point by her hip, which happens to correspond with the ovaries. This makes sense, since it is the fall transitional period for the mares as they enter their winter anestrus.

Next Dr. Holyoak showed us how to place a 3 inch acupuncture needle in one of the main points on the bladder line. I don’t remember what it is called (Ba Hoi, maybe?), but it sits right at the highest point on the back by the hips. He showed us how to find it, and you can actually find it better with your eyes closed because you can feel the acupuncture points. As you run your finger along the midline back to the tail, your finger actually falls into a little depression, which is the acupuncture point. Technically I guess Dr. Holyoak showed us how to insert the needle as well as find the point, but since he did it in about 2 seconds it really wasn’t too helpful for the rest of us, who were now told to insert needles into that point on our own mares.

Me inserting acupuncture needles into the kidney points.

We proceeded to put about 9 needles into each mare. The first one, then 3 kidney points on each side and one ovary point on each side. The hardest part of getting the acupuncture needle in was getting it through the skin- I think a lot of us were taken aback at having to insert the needles on our own so quickly, and we tapped them in too timidly. Then we had to try and push them down through the skin before sliding the needle in the rest of the way. I had it by about the third needle. 

The horses really seemed to enjoy getting acupuncture. Which each successive needle their heads dropped lower and their eyes slid closed until it looked like they were falling asleep. As we found each acupuncture point by the same method as the first, by feeling for the slight dip in the skin, we could always tell we were in the right spot because they mare would kind of twitch when we inserted the needle, the same way she did when we ran the needle cap over her in a test for sensitivity.

After we had all of the needles in, we hooked up the 3 kidney points for electroacupuncture. Electroacupuncture is very similar to the concept of STIM in people, in that you are sending an electrical impulse into the muscle. The only difference is with electroacupuncture that pulse is being guided directly into the acupuncture point. There have been multiple studies that show that using electroacupuncture over regular acupuncture provides greater pain relief for longer period of time. I did my senior seminar on using alternative therapies such as acupuncture to treat lameness in horses, so most of the studies I read revolved around treating back or other lameness-causing injuries in horses, but the electroacupuncture always had greater efficacy than acupuncture alone.

When using electroacupuncture, you always start out at zero and slowly turn the dial up until you can start to see the acupuncture needle actually start to twitch within the muscle. Horses will all have different tolerance levels, and out of the 5 we worked on only one thoroughbred mare reacted at all, when hers got turned up a little too high, and she was completely fine once it was turned down just one notch. We left those electroacupuncture probes on for about 20 minutes, and we turned them up a little about halfway through. I believe that is a pretty standard treatment time, which is another advantage electroacupuncture has over regular acupuncture- it provides better results in a faster time.

While our electroacupuncture was running we turned to the ovary points, which we planned to treat with moxie. I’ve heard mixed results on moxie, and I don’t know as much about it. But we stabbed some aluminum foil over the needle to lay over the horse to catch any falling moxie ashes, and then stuck the little moxie cap on top of the needle. Moxie is made up of herbs, and I believe that it is used to bring heat into the acupuncture point. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, everything is about the balance between yin and yang, feminine and masculine, cold and hot, wet and dry, and so on. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, if it is determined that there is too much yin and you are out of balance, then the treatment is literally to bring yang back in and balance out your qi. I am starting my acupuncture course tonight actually, so hopefully later I will be able to explain this all better. But we stuck these moxie caps on the acupuncture needles, lit them on fire and just let them burn out. The horses didn’t mind at all.

The moxie cap on the ovary acupuncture point

The moxie burning

Electroacupuncture and moxie.

While we were waiting for these treatments to finish, we all got a hold of some smaller needles and practiced acupuncture on ourselves. I inserted 2 needles into my arm in the large intestine 11 point and large intestine 10 point. I think LI-10 is supposed to help relieve stress, so that seemed like a no-brainer. I don’t think it hurts- there is a little something, yes, but then the needle is in. With the first point I just felt a slight cooling sensation after the needle was in. I also inserted a needle into the skin between my thumb and index finger, which is supposed to be good to treat headaches. In that spot I felt some tingling, but that’s it. I don’t think I left them in long enough to actually treat myself, since it was too cold to be out in the barn with my sleeves rolled up.

LI-11 is the one right on the elbow, and then moving down my arm toward my wrist is LI-10

Overall, it was a great lab. I love that we actually got to insert the needles ourselves, that we saw 3 different techniques of acupuncture, with the regular acupuncture, electroacupuncture, and moxie, and that we got to attempt it on ourselves, because what better way is there to know what it feels like? Next week our club will be hosting a similar wetlab aimed at small animal acupuncture, which I am eagerly anticipating. Hopefully by then with a week of my Traditional Chinese Medicine classes under my belt I’ll have some more background knowledge on the different points and what they are all used for.

Fundraising Updates

I wanted to give everyone an update of how we have been doing with our fundraising adventure! So far I have done bake sales and a "Vets Going Wild" night at Ibiza in Stillwater. Both were moderately successful, but I'm going to have to step it up in order to raise the amount needed by June.

So my next fundraiser is a very quick one, a Yankee Candle Sale for Christmas. Unfortunately, in order to get orders in by Christmas I need money in by  November 14. I will however be doing the fundraiser for their spring catalog as well, and I will have a lot more time for that one. The website for the online catalog is Yankee Candle.

Also, for anyone in the Norman, Oklahoma City or Stillwater area, I am co-hosting a pet photo shoot! We will have a bake sale and raffles going on while we take pictures of your pets, either in Christmas outfits or just because. The photo shoot will be on November 17 from 9-3 at the Rose Rock Veterinary Clinic in Norman. No appointment needed.

I have also started planning a wine tasting event in Stillwater for next semester on January 10. This one is still in the works, but we are hoping to have multiple bottle of wine to taste as well as a wine pool and some raffles. There will be more information on this in the upcoming weeks.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me so far in this! You have no idea how much it means to me =]

Reptile Necropsy Lab

This morning was the wet lab I have been waiting for for a year and a half. I wasn’t too excited about having to get up at 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday, but I was willing to do it. Granted, I did fall back asleep after turning off my alarm and didn’t end up waking up until nearly 8, but the good intentions were there, and even though I was a little late at least I didn’t sleep through it!

This morning was the ZEW club’s reptile necropsy lab. By now I’m sure you’re all tired of reading about ZEW club and wish I would talk about something else, but to me exotics are just awesome and interesting and I love learning about them and talking about them.

So this morning Dr. Brad Minson from Banfield came in to give us a short lecture on reptile anatomy, basically just hitting all the main differences between reptiles and mammals, and he brought in some specimens for us to dissect. ( I do want to point out that all of the animals he brought died of natural causes and were donated to us as a learning experience; no animals were bred just for us to necropsy.) I actually wish he had given us a longer lecture, because there was a lot of interesting information. For example, reptiles have a 3-chambered heart (mammals have a 4 chambered heart) and their red blood cells have a nucleus (ours don’t). In mammals, the sciatic nerve runs down the outer part of the leg, but in lizards the sciatic nerve actually runs dorsal to the kidneys (so it is between the kidneys and the back body wall). So any kind of renal disease that leads to enlargement of the kidneys can actually lead to leg paralysis in a lizard. I also learned the most common site for venipuncture in a lizard is the ventral tail vein, which runs right down the underside of their tail. I would never just stick my own lizards, but if any of them ever need blood drawn now I know how to do it. And it’s definitely a lot more tricky than in a dog or a cat, because you cannot see that vein through the scales, so it all comes down to knowing your anatomy.

We also had a ton of different snakes to look at, including 2 rattlesnakes (their heads were wrapped up because their venom is still poisonous even when dead). Snakes are weird. They really are. Their anatomy is so different. We spent a while looking at what we thought was the stomach because it looked like it had rugae and was where the stomach would be in a mammal, only to realize that it was attached to the trachea and was actually the lung. It looks nothing like our lungs. They have trabeculae instead of alveoli, and they have this caudal blind sac that doesn't function in air exchange at all. I have no idea what the point of it is. The arrangement is also different, with the liver coming before the stomach and the gall bladder past the stomach, as opposed to being nestled in the liver like it is in ours. It’s close to the splenopancreas, which is the combined spleen and pancreas organ that snakes have. And all the organs are long and tubular, since they obviously have nowhere else to go. Except for the kidneys, which look kind of lack a stack of coins that was pushed over like dominoes. All lizards have kidneys that look like this, which makes them very distinctive. In a lizard, the organ that looks like a mammalian kidney is most likely a testis. Like I said, it’s weird.

There was also one red-eared slider to look at, which I was really excited about. As I have also mentioned multiple times, I LOVE turtles of all breeds. And they’re so funky, there’s no other animal really like them. Sometimes my husband picks up Soleil just to stare at her and tells her how weird her anatomy is. Yes, he actually does that. But what he sees as weird, I see as fascinating. Turtle anatomy is really unique. For starters, instead of having body compartments that go from head to tail, turtles have compartments that go from top to bottom. So instead of having lungs that take up the cranial portion of the thoracic cavity (which is what mammals have, basically meaning they are closer to the head than the stomach in the abdomen is), turtles’ lungs take up the dorsal third of the body, meaning they take up all the space within the body, just only the top portion of it. And their scapula (shoulder bone) is on the ventral surface instead of the dorsal surface. (Sorry for all the anatomy terms- our shoulder blades are on the dorsal surface toward our backs, while a turtle’s is on the bottom toward its stomach.) And if you were ever wondering, yes, turtles do have ears. But they are sheets of skin stretched out over the otic capsule, there is no external parts like we have. And if you want to find the jugular vein, you kind of have to pull their head out to stretch their long neck out, but other than that it’s in the same place as ours, and can be used for catheterization and venipuncture.

Overall, this was definitely one of the more interesting wetlabs I’ve even been too. It’s one of the more interesting labs I’ve had overall in vet school. I really wish they would give us more exotics work during school, because some of this stuff is just so incredibly interesting. Just how different it is from our own anatomy is interesting. I would love an in-depth lecture on reptilian anatomy. But since I might not get that, I asked Dr. Minson for a copy of his lecture powerpoint, like the nerd I am. Between that, my new turtle dissection guide, and my dozens of pictures from today’s lab I think I’ll be all right for a little while.

A red eared slider- you can see the 2 scapula right by the neck, and the dark mass is the liver.

Bearded Dragon abdomen; you can see some lung, the liver, the gall bladder, and some intestines.

This is the heart and lung of a snake. You can also see the caudal vena cava coming off of the heart.

This is the stomach and intestines of a monitor lizard. You can see the impression from the chicken bone in his stomach (the chicken bone didn't kill him, this poor guy was attacked by a dog).

The kidneys of a snake. You can kind of see their "stacked coin" appearance.

The kidneys of the monitor lizard also have a "stacked coin" appearance, and the sciatic nerve runs directly underneath them.

I'm holding the salpinx of a snake, which is essentially their uterus.

Me holding the red eared slider. I <3 my turtles and learning everything I can about them!

Green Sea Turtle Rehabilitation

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE turtles. I always have, and I always will. If I could I would adopt every sea turtle in the world and take care of them, and I hope there is a time when I'll have the resources to be able to help out more.

But since I can't, I am really glad that there are people who can. This is the blog of the South Carolina Aquarium's Sea Turtle Hospital. They take calls from people who either rescued a turtle or see one that needs help, and then they provide appropriate treatment and rehabilitation. They also take pictures throughout the process if you are interested in seeing what they do.

http://networkedblogs.com/DYHVL

If you have a minute, I highly encourage you go check out their blog. Besides being interesting from a medical standpoint, it's interesting from a conservation standpoint as well. I had no idea there were so many accidents still involving sea turtles. To me, they are beautiful creatures, and they have been on this planet a lot longer than we have, and now they need our help.

I know she's not a sea turtle, but this is my beautiful leopard tortoise Soleil when she was a baby. You can't resist that face!