Junior Surgery

I think it's safe to say that junior surgery is the class that everyone looks forward to the most, but fears at the same time. Nothing really gets your adrenaline going like knowing you are about to be responsible for a life and you have absolutely no idea what you're doing.

Junior surgery gets divided into two phases- cadaver and live surgeries, mostly spays and neuters. You would think it would make sense to have your cadaver surgeries before your live surgeries, to learn how to actually perform the surgery. Apparently the size of our class makes that impossible though, and I was one of 12 lucky people to have our first live surgery scheduled before having any of the cadaver surgeries. I was pretty close to a full on panic attack, and all I could do was obsessively read the lab manual and hope I understood what was going on and what to do.

For my first live surgery, I was one out of two anesthetists for the group. We performed two surgeries, a spay and a neuter. One anesthetist has the role of the main anesthetist for one surgery while the other is the recorder, writing down all of the patient's vital signs on the anesthesia record, and then for the next surgery the roles switch. I was the main anesthetist for the first surgery, a neuter of the cutest little puppy named Marty. Obviously, I was terrified of doing something wrong.

The first thing I had to do was induce Marty, which just means giving him the drugs to knock him out. The day before the surgery was scheduled I came into the hospital to prepare all my drug dosages for the mixture of Telazol, Butorphanol, and Dexmedetomidine. This is just a quick IM shot into the quadriceps (thigh muscle), but apparently it's pretty painful, because all of the dogs yelped when they got their shot. This didn't help my nerves or my confidence. But the next part was easy, just petting Marty until he got sleepy and laid down on the table.

Then I had to get the catheter in. I've never put a catheter into a small animal before, let alone a puppy. I'm used to giant horse veins, which you'd have to be blind to miss. Even after all my blood work in Africa I wasn't too confident, because even a sable's ear veins were larger than Marty's cephalic vein. It was easier getting the catheter in though than it was trying to take blood from him the day before the surgery though, because at least he wasn't squirming around. I didn't hit the vein on the first try- that would have been a miracle- but at least it only took one stick and some wiggling the needle around. I always feel bad when I have to continuously have to stab to hit the vein, especially since I hate when nurses do that to me.

After the catheter is secure I had to pick out an endotracheal tube. That was an adventure. I had absolutely no idea how to appropriately size an endotracheal tube. I grabbed like 4 different sizes and brought them all over to hold up to Marty's neck. Of course, they don't differ so much in length, but in diameter, so that didn't help too much. You want the largest diameter size you can fit without traumatizing the mucosa, and I still don't get how you know what that is. I guess just practice. I got the right size with the help of an anesthesia tech, and then I managed to slip the endotracheal tube down between the arytenoids and into the trachea. Now I was feeling a little more confident.

We finished setting up all our equipment after turning on the oxygen, and then we prepared to move from the induction room into the surgery lab. All of our animal shelter live surgeries take place in junior surgery, where our labs take place as well. We wheeled Marty in and got him hooked up to the anesthesia machine and got all of his monitors on. Now for the duration of the surgery it was my job to make sure Marty didn't wake up. I had his oxygen flowing, I had the isoflurane on, and I was constantly checking his blood pressure, pulse, and respiration. I gave him a sigh breath (manual breath) every 5 minutes or so, and if I thought he was getting a little light I would up the isoflurane. To check that he was still under and wasn't getting light, I obsessively checked his palpebral reflex and eye position. For the palpebral reflex, you tap the inner corner of the eye. In the awake dog when you do this, the dog blinks. If the dog is under anesthesia there should be do palpebral reflex. The eyes should also be pointed ventral, or looking down. So if I saw a little bit of a blink, I upped the isoflurane until I felt I could bring it back down again. My nerves went away during the surgery and I stopped worrying that I was going to kill the patient, but it did take constant attention and adjustment to keep Marty's levels good.

After the surgery was done, and I had turned off the isoflurane, it was my job to sit with Marty until he woke up. For such a little dog that had seemed to be not so deep at all during the surgery, he took a long time to wake up. He almost went past the 30 minute mark, which then would have to be marked down as a complication. But I can't complain; I got to sit there cradling him and rubbing his back, waiting for him to either cough or swallow so I could pull the endotracheal tube out. Then I carried him into recovery. I don't know how anyone goes through junior surgery, let alone the animal shelter rotation, without wanting to adopt every dog that goes through the program.

For the second surgery, a spay on a puppy named Topaz, I was the recorder. So I didn't have to place any catheters or endotracheal tubes, I just helped hold Topaz in place for them. And during the surgery, every 5 minutes I just had to record blood pressure, pulse, respiration, end tidal CO2, saturated O2%, and the flow levels for oxygen and isoflurane. And every 15 minutes I took a temperature. This was definitely much less stress than being in control of the anesthesia machine, plus I didn't have the nerves or stress that comes from not knowing what to expect or what to do. So I just stood a little off to the side, and every 5 minutes I checked all my instruments and wrote the values down. Not bad at all. Until Topaz decided to wake up halfway through the surgery and had to be given an extra shot of propofol through her catheter. That was some excitement I could have done without. But at the end of the day, both Marty and Topaz had successful surgeries and were able to go home immediately afterwards.

The next week I had two surgery labs, where I would be acting like the assistant surgeon and primary surgeon for our cadavers. On our first lab we did a spay, celiotomy, and placed a chest tube. For the second lab we did a neuter, gastrotomy and gastropexy. Celiotomy just means we explored the abdomen. For the chest tube, you have to force a tube through the thoracic wall into the thoracic cavity. It's an emergency procedure used to eliminate any excess air or fluid that's in the thoracic cavity. A gastrotomy is opening up the stomach, which is a procedure that's rarely performed, but might be done if an animal ingested a foreign body. Gastropexy is suturing the stomach to the abdominal wall. It's done mainly to prevent GDV, which is a life-threatening disease in dogs where the stomach kind of twists up on itself.

The first lab took forever, because again we had no idea what we were doing. Our first incision was not so pretty, and neither was our attempt to suture it back up. Our spay was also not the neatest job in the world, but at least it was done, and would have been a completed, successful surgery if it had been done on a live dog. It took us forever to suture up our incision, since for a spay you normally make a super small incision, but for a celiotomy you are cutting from the xiphoid to the pubis, or the entire abdomen from the rib cage to the hips. We were still trying to figure out the suture patterns, and since we were supposed to be using a simple interrupted pattern, that just naturally takes longer.

Our second lab went much smoother. Now we knew what to do, which helped a lot. Our initial incision still wasn't perfect, but it was better. At least it was through the linea alba, or the thin white line where the abdominal muscles join together, and not through muscle. The technique behind a neuter is pretty much the same as the spay, so now we knew how to use the three forceps technique and how to tie our transfixing knots and were able to move through that quicker. Plus a neuter is always just faster than a spay. The gastrotomy required a new suture pattern, the Lembert, which makes the stomach lining invert on itself to produce a better seal. But by halfway through closing that incision I really got the hang of it, so not only did it go smoothly, it looked pretty good. Same with the gastropexy; once it got going we were on a roll, and it looked good too. Our closing also went much smoother- our suture knots were much neater on the closing of the external rectus sheath. Our simple continuous pattern for the subcutaneous layer (which we couldn't even do the first lab because of our botched incision) looked consistent, and our skin closure had a little bit of puckering but overall wasn't too bad, and was still much better than our first attempt. I finally get why they make us do so much suturing and so many knots; it it so confusing at first and easy to overthink and mess up, but the more you do it the more it becomes second nature and you stop thinking and just let your hands move. By the end of the second lab I was even getting the pencil grip of the forceps down better, something which I can assure you does not come naturally.

I still don't feel like I really know how to do a spay or a neuter, but I definitely know more than I did a week ago. And I definitely know how to suture now, though the incision could still use some work. I have a little bit of a surgery break, but pretty soon my schedule is going to be nothing but surgery. I have all of mine this semester, which I think I'll appreciate next semester. For this class we have 7 surgeries as the anesthetist, and on our last one we play the role of both anesthetist and recorder for both surgeries. We have three surgeries as the assistant surgeon, and three surgeries as the primary surgeon. I'm still nervous for those. I really have to work on my aseptic technique, which we practice in our cadaver labs but it's easy to forget or ignore, since we usually mess up so much since we're still learning it. At this point I think that's actually what I'm most worried about. I think (and hope) that with three surgeries being able to watch a 4th year perform the procedure correctly I'll be able to do them myself as well. And then at least I can say I can do it and feel confident about it.

Sable, Sable Everywhere

One of the most commonly worked on animals in South Africa, at least for us, was sable. Apparently sable, which are in the antelope family, were almost extinct in South Africa, and they are now being bred back on the private game reserves. There was a huge sable sale in August, and since we were there in June, we had a lot of sable calls.

Working on the sable reminded me a lot of working on cattle here in the states, except we don't have to chase cattle around in trucks and dart them in order to work on them. But sable in South Africa are usually kept fenced off in sections of the reserves to protect them from other animals, and a lot of the same type of care goes into them. They even get ear tags like cattle do.

All in all, the sable are relatively easy to dart. They are so used to people that they really don't start running until the dart gun has been fired. And even then they don't always run far. In fact, sometimes we had to chase the rest of the herd away from the sable that was darted and went down.

When dealing with a darted sable, you always want to put pipes on their horns. Sable tend to swing their heads around a lot as they're being carried, and if you're working on them on the ground they can't hold their head up by themselves. And we had one member of our group take a pipe right in the neck, and you can bet he was grateful it wasn't the actual horn.

Once the sable have been darted and the horns taken care off, there is a pretty set routine. Each sable was given anti-parasitic (doramectin) and a vitamin complex IM, and each sable also has blood taken from their cephalic vein (on the front leg) and has hair pulled from the tail for DNA testing. Each sable also gets a shot of penicillin to help prevent infection, as the dart entry sites and other injection sites can't easily be cleaned or monitored.

Testing the DNA in the sable was of particular interest to the reserve managers, and on some sable that was all we did. We used a special dart that had a little claw on the end of it, which would stick to the sable, grab a tuft of hair, and then fall back to the ground for us to collect. The breeders are trying to breed bigger horns on the sable, so as well as DNA testing, the horns are always measured as well. And the horns are measured by not only their entire length; the tip lengths, the number of rings,  the tip to tip and the base length are all important as well.

Sable that are going to be going to sale are moved into bhomas, which are like pens without the reserve, so that the sable can get used to being fenced in more before the stress of the sale. This is not easy. Sable are heavy. In one day we moved 14 sable, and believe me, you feel that by the end of the day. And you have to watch them; one sable ninja kicked me in the back of the knee while we were driving it to the bhoma, and then one of the reserve workers had to sit on it for the rest of the ride to keep from kicking. I learned a very important lesson that day- always volunteer to hold the head of the sable. It's much better to be slobbered on than kicked. And then all you have to do is hold their head up and make sure they keep breathing.

The trickiest part is actually moving the sable into the bhomas, because sometimes it involves carrying sable down long narrow corridors. And it takes usually about 7 people to carry a sable- 3 per side and then one person holding the horns- and usually it's hard to fit everyone into the corridor and be able to move effectively. And as I said earlier, sable are heavy. But after some experimenting, I think it was easier to just carry them down rather than reverse them and hope the sable will walk down themselves, because sometimes they just don't feel like doing what you want them to do. But when you're ready to reverse them, wherever that may be, sable have very nice ear veins that are used for the reversal. And then you just remove the pipes from their horns and leave them alone. It's much easier doing all of this with them being left in the field than transporting them to a bhoma, but sometimes that's just what you have to do.

That kind of procedure is what we did the most off, but like I said, the sable are treated a lot like cattle. So we were called out to look at some for lameness and abscesses as well, which usually just involves more antibiotics or antibiotic wound spray. And for one sable with a lung infection, all we had to do was fill the dart with antibiotic instead of our regular sedatives, and that was the administration of the drug. Then all we had to do was collect the dart. We also did some pregnancy checks on our very last day. Only one sable required an actual ultrasound, and the rest were done by rectal palpation. By palpation you are able to feel a thicker uterine horn on one side. It's easiest to feel pregnancy around 4 months, which is also when an ultrasound is able to pick up a pregnancy.

The first day we worked on sable, I wasn't overly impressed. I wanted to work on the exotic wildlife, and sable really didn't seem all that exotic. By the end though, I thought they were super cute, and if they weren't endangered I would have loved to bring a sable home with me. Preferably the tame orphan.

The sable are known for having a painted face

Giving a sable a shot of penicillin in the butt

Collecting the hair and skin off of the dart for the DNA testing

A closer look at the DNA collection dart

Collecting blood from the cephalic vein

A closer look

Performing a rectal palpation for a pregnancy check

This was the sable that ninja kicked me, and had to be sat on for the ride to the bhoma

Giving the IV reversal in the ear vein

Save our Rhinos, Hunt a Poacher!

I really wanted to do a more in-depth description of the work I did with the rhinos in South Africa, because I really do feel that those two days were the most interesting. And they were the two days where I really felt that I was contributing the most to the wildlife conservation cause.

The whole idea of the rhino horn infusions is to make the ivory worthless on the black market. Of course, you can't tell that the ivory is worthless just by looking at the rhino, so the whole hope is that the procedure will spread by word of mouth, and poachers will know that rhinos on the reserves have been treated and that they'll go somewhere else. And so far, to the best of my knowledge, none of the treated rhinos have been poached, so it's hard to say whether the treatment is effective or not.

The treatment itself involves darting rhino from a helicopter (they are darted with 4 mg of etorphine, which is essentially morphine x 10,000), and once the rhino goes down holes are drilled into the horns in order to attach the hoses for the transfusion. A rhino's horn is keratin, the same material that makes up human fingernails, so they don't feel it. The infusion is a mixture of an ectoparasiticide and an indelible dye, or an indestructible dye. An ectoparasiticide is basically a medication that we would use on animals to treat and prevent fleas, ticks, and so on. The one used in this procedure is an organophosphate. Since some of the myth around rhino horn is that by ingesting it you can be cured of anything from headaches to cancer (this is an especially popular belief in Vietnam), the idea of injecting this parasiticide is that when humans ingest it, it will make them physically sick and not want to try it again in a hurry. The dye that is injected stains the ivory pink, and makes it worthless for carving. So overall, the entire procedure is designed to ruin the value of the horn by making it worthless for decoration and toxic to ingest.

There is some debate among veterinarians as to the effectiveness of this procedure, but I think that since it is still so new it will be a while before there is any data either for or against it. Some veterinarians are still in favor of dehorning, as a rhino's horn is able to regenerate itself in about 6 years. This procedure was created to try and prevent dehorning, as rhinos are such a huge part of the tourism industry in Africa. A rhino's horn is porous, and the infusion is thought to last for 4 years.

While doing the infusion, microchips are also inserted into each horn. The holes are then stuffed with putty and wrapped with duct tape. This allows the research teams to monitor the rhinos and the ivory, should the rhinos be poached. Each rhino also received an ankle tracking collar as well as an ear notch.

While doing all of these procedures, it was our drop to monitor respiration and pulse on the rhinos. We weren't able to help with the actual infusion since it is toxic. We measured the respiration by holding our hand in front of the rhino's nostril and counting breaths. The respiration on the rhino should be between 8-20 breath per minute as the widest range, but we were trying to keep it more in the 9-12 bpm range. When the respiration drops too low (we had one that dropped to around 6 breaths per minute) the rhino is given a shot of butorphanol in the ear artery to help wake it up a bit. The pulse on a rhino is actually taken on the inside of the ear. The normal pulse for a rhino is around 37, according to one of the vets in charge of the infusion procedure, but when they are under etorphine their pulse goes up to around 60, and that's where you want it. When the rhino becomes stressed, the pulse can get as high as 150. And as a fun fact, a rhino's body temp is slightly warmer than ours at 37-38 degrees C, or right around 98.6 degrees F. Because the days in Africa get so hot, even in the winter, we had to consistently pour water over the rhinos during the procedure to help keep their body temperature down.

The last part of the procedure we got to help with make have actually been the most fun- rolling the rhinos. This procedure is done with the rhino laying laterally on its side. However, we don't want the rhino laying on the same side for too long, or it can start to impair breathing and damage the lung. So halfway through each procedure we rolled the rhino onto its other side. This was quite an event that took about 7-8 people to manage. But then you get to say you flipped a rhino. And rhinos are actually quite efficient breathers, so I'm not sure how long a rhino would have to be laying on its side before damage occurred. But each rhino also got an oxygen tube as an added precaution.

When I first arrived in Africa, I was really only interested in rhinos in that they were part of the "Big 5". But after working with, I really love them. They are just such awesome animals, and there is nothing else like them on this planet. I'm really hoping that either the dehornings, this infusion procedure, or a combination of the two can help save South Africa's rhinos. Currently, about 75 rhinos are being poached in South Africa PER WEEK. Those numbers are just out of control. Our very first call out in South Africa was for a rhino poaching incident. So far about 200 rhinos have had this horn infusion, and considering we only managed to do 4 per day, that's a lot of work. The eventual goal is to do 6000-7000 out of the 20,000 rhinos still left in South Africa.

A rhino right after being darted.

Rolling a rhino onto it's other side

Checking respiration

The red line is the oxygen tube

Drilling into the horn for the infusion tubes

Attaching the infusion lines

Checking pulse on the ear veins

Our SA Worldvets group with a rhino

SA Worldvets

I've been back from South Africa for nearly two weeks now, and already I want to go back. I loved everything about South Africa and my experience with SA Worldvets. We were lucky enough to work with several endangered species, such as rhinos and wild dogs, and we did a lot of work with sable, which the farmers there are currently trying to breed back. It really was an incredible once in a lifetime experience. I want to write a more in-depth description of everything that I did, but I was able to do so much I'm not even sure where to start in telling it. And I have the feeling it's going to take me a while to write, because I want to do it right. But I wanted to at least share some pictures and some little fun facts, since I've been talking about this trip for nearly a year now.

This is a baby sable, and we spent a lot of time working on sable. This baby is more tame; the rest of the herds were all completely wild, and we never would have been able to get this close without darting one. By the end of the trip though I had to admit that the sable were really growing on me.

This is more what I thought about when I thought about Africa. This baby zebra was lame, and there ended up being a puncture in the hoof by the coronary band. So we poured some hydrogen peroxide in there and gave the zebra some penicillin. Every animal that we worked on also received a shot with dewormer and vitamins. And for most of the animals we drew blood for DNA testing as well, although we didn't do that on this zebra.

One of the reasons I loved South Africa. It's absolutely gorgeous. This was from the night we went camping.

Another example of why South Africa is so beautiful. 

This was the sunrise on the day we went to a private game reserve to work on rhino horn infusions. It is probably one of the only times in my life I've gotten up at 4 in the morning without complaining, and it was definitely worth it. I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

The rhino horn infusions involved infusing a combination of an indestructible dye and an organophosphate into the porous rhino horn, which essentially makes the rhino horn worthless on the black market. 

Checking the respiration on a rhino. We wanted the respiration rate to be between 8-12.

Checking the pulse on a rhino, which is done by feeling the vessels inside of the ear. The pulse should be around 60.

Each rhino was blindfolded and had cotton placed in its ears to decrease the stress of having so many people around. They also received oxygen, which is what the red tube is for.

On one of our last days we were able to help with giraffe captures, as the giraffe were being moved to another reserve.

Our SA Worldvets group

I think what I would like to do it put up a series of blog posts, where each post covers one or two days of the trip. I learned so much during my time in South Africa, and I don't want to leave anything out just because my fingers are cramping from typing too much. So I'm going to work on getting more up in the next couple of weeks as I have the time.

The Halfway Point

It's been a while since my last blog post. With at least one exam a week for the past 12 weeks, it becomes a little difficult to mark time in any way besides the exam I need to study for next. But I needed to take a minute to celebrate the fact that I am halfway through vet school.

Yes, I've actually made it to the halfway point. Only 6 days and 5 exams stand between me and my last ever summer vacation. Which is a slightly depressing thought, but is followed quickly by the realization that there is just one more year of lectures and one year of clinical rotation and I am DONE.

I am really looking forward to getting to the rotations. Every time I have to take one of my lizards I am inwardly jealous of the fact that these students are already in the final stages of school. And this might sound weird, but I like to pretend I know nothing about veterinary medicine when I go in just so I can get a feel for how they handle normal clients. I like to know what to expect and to be prepared. And not to make any current fourth years on rotation nervous, but I like to observe how they handle things and then decide how I would want to do things, whether similar or different.

While I am excited and proud of myself for coming this far, there is a bit of nerves starting to sit in. I feel like I have been concentrating for so long on just going to vet school and becoming a vet that I don't really know what to do with myself once I'm actually a vet. Is that strange? I mean, I had the dream of owning my own equine practice, and getting certified in acupuncture and chiropractic work, but I've had so many other opportunities through school that I guess I'm not entirely sure what I want to do anymore. I would still be happy and grateful to be able to run my own equine clinic, but I also feel like I want to do more in terms of exotics and zoo species too. And hopefully after my experience in South Africa working in Kruger National Park, I'll have a better idea of what line of medicine I want to go into. But the more I read, the more I am interested in trying to go into more of a conservationist line of work. Something like the Green Sea Turtle Rehabilitation Hospital, or working with the PAWS elephant sanctuary. Something where I feel like I could help animals that are usually ignored.

But I still have a lot of time to figure all that out. It's just that as another year comes to a close and I'm one step closer to being thrown out into "the real world", I can't help but wonder where I'll end up. But I think I'm just going to let life happen as it will. Once I'm back in school I'll have too many exams to worry about things like that anyway.

On top of studying for finals, I am also putting the finishing touches on my plans for Africa. I just started taking the oral typhoid vaccine, which is a live vaccine, so I'm really hoping my immune system and stress level can handle that right now and I won't get sick. I also had to get the vaccine for Hepatitis A, and I start taking anti-malaria pills in about 2 weeks. Going to Africa definitely requires a lot more than just the standard Motrin I normally pack. But it's all going to be worth it, because I definitely don't want to come down with malaria. And I know that if anyone would, it would be me. I also plan on taking about 3 bottles of bug spray with me just to be on the safe side.

I can't believe that in one month I'll be boarding my flight for Johannesburg. I can't wait to get my hands dirty and start learning all about wildlife medicine. At this point, the only slight reservation I have is that I won't want to leave Africa. And I am determined to see elephants, and preferably to work on one and help one. That would pretty much make my life. There is always so much that I want to do to help them in this poaching plight, but it always feels like there is so little I can actually do. Now is my chance to really dive in and make a difference, and I can't wait.

I plan on updating this blog as frequently as I can while I'm in South Africa, so keep your eyes open for some hopefully interesting updates on what I'll be doing! I plan on taking as many pictures as I can as well, or as many as I can while trying to work on an animal at the same time. If all else fails, I'll recruit my husband to take pictures while I work.

Now that I've procrastinated long enough writing this, I guess it's time to get back to studying for my radiology final on Monday. Wish me luck!

Open House

Today was open house at the Vet School! If you have any interest in the veterinary profession, this is the time to come out and see what we're all about. All the club's set up demonstrations to help educate the public about what it is we do. 

The first place I had to drag my husband, obviously, was to the anatomy lab. The anatomy lab had radiographs up all along the walls, as well as dried specimens and bones, and some transverse sections. So it's a good way to show people some things without completely grossing them out. That's what the pathology section next door was for, anyway. My favorite display, of course, was the elephant section. There is a giant elephant front leg set up from the scapula down to the toes, and then they also had a femur and a skull. I've never seen an elephant skull up close like that before, so that was pretty cool. And it showed what I had read about, that an elephant's brain actually sits much lower in the skull than our's does. So where we have brain behind our forehead, behind an elephant's forehead is just soft tissue and blood.

An elephant's front leg. As you can see, it's taller than me, and I'm 5'7.

An elephant's skull, from the side and from the back

A radiograph of a snake who has ingested something he probably should have, and of a leopard gecko.



Then of course we hit up the pathology section in the old necropsy lab, where they had some diseased organs out on display. We skipped by the parasitology section, which had some microscopes set up to view parasite eggs and some boxes with live ticks, because I am just not a fan. My husband did correctly identify Ixodes scapularis as the tick that spreads lyme disease (he didn't know the actual name, but major points for visual recognition, since that's what's important!).

In the old necropsy room, they had a llama's liver, the stomach of a dog, and the intestines from a zebra. All my husband said of this part was that it smells, and he was disgusted that I was standing next to him eating potato chips. But honestly, I don't even notice it anymore. The liver from the llama was enlarged and had been invaded by a metastatic cancer, and so it had all these raised nodules all over it. The dog had some internal bleeding, and the stomach and intestines were practically black from coagulated blood. The zebra had a parasite problem with roundworms. So yeah, I guess if you weren't used to it I could see how that might be a little unsettling. To me it's just cool, especially when it's from slightly more exotic animals, like a zebra. And I say slightly because they are essentially horses.

Llama liver

Next we headed over to the hospital, where the majority of the displays were. Right as you walked into the hospital there was a demo of 2 horses painted, one with a skeleton and the other with the digestive tract of a horse. It's a great way to see the differences and similarities between our own bodies and theirs.

Showing the skeleton of a horse                                    

Showing the digestive tract of a horse

The ZEW club had out its boa constrictor and some guinea pigs to look at, but I think one of the highlights, at least for me, was the Iowa Tribe's Grew Snow Eagle House demonstration. They brought down a couple of their birds- a Red Tailed Hawk and a Golden Eagle. Their program takes in wounded birds and tries to release them back into the wild. The golden eagle had a broken wing, and would never be able to fly again. They always try to reset the bones, but I guess you can't really wrap a wing that well to keep it immobilized so the bones can heal properly.

I learned a lot about raptors today though. Like that a Red Tailed Hawk can fly up to 600 miles in a day, and that if you have a problem where a hawk is going after some of your animals and you somehow capture it and drive it 500 miles a way, that hawk can be back within the same day. And that they have two eyelids, one of which is transparent, so that they can close it while flying to keep their eye from drying out and to keep crap from getting in there. Same with their nose- they actually have a bone in their tongue that lets the cover up those nostrils from inside their mouth to keep their mouth from drying out. I also never realized that raptors could control each feather individually- that's a whole lot of muscle control- and they use that ability to express different emotions with their feather placement. And just like how a horse has the patellar locking mechanism to lock their legs, a raptor (not sure if all birds have this) have a similar tendon locking mechanism in their talons, so that when they grab a hold of something they can lock their talons around it. I believe the Red Tailed Hawk could grab and lock with something like 600 pounds per square inch, and the Golden Eagle could grab with 1500 pounds per square inch. So, lesson of the day- even through those thick leather gloves falconers wear, those raptors could squeeze through them if they wanted and completely crush your hand, and then lock their talons closed and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it.

Red Tailed Hawk

Golden Eagle

A couple of other demonstrations up that we didn't really spend too much time at were the anesthesiology demonstration and the teddy bear surgery. For the anesthesiology section, they hooked a teddy bear up to a ventilator so people could get an idea of how all of the machines work. And for teddy bear surgery, kids get to bring in their stuffed animals and then have them "fixed" surgically. Kids get to dress up in the surgery gowns and masks, and I think a little heart gets sown inside the teddy bear, and the teddy gets sown up and wrapped with vet wrap, all while demonstrating proper surgical procedure. It's a great way to show kids one of the cooler aspects of medicine.

The anesthesiology set up

All in all, it was a great way to spend a couple of hours and take a much-needed break from studying!