I can't believe it's only day 3 of internship. I've seen so many things already, I can't imagine how much stuff I'll have seen and done by the end of all of this. I kind of thought that I would be ridiculously nervous every day of internship at least for the first week or two, but I wake up in the morning excited to get to the hospital and get the day started. Maybe I am actually prepared for this after all, what a crazy thought! Thanks Bel-Rea! :)
Today I helped out again with radiation therapy for a little while in the morning. I think I was mildly more useful today since I had some sense of what was going on and had seen the same patients the previous day. One of the patients who is receiving radiation for an oral tumor was starting to show signs of dermatitis from the radiation. It also doesn't help that he's had part of his mandible removed and drools excessively and near constantly. So I shaved down that area and cleaned it up a little while he was still sedated...poor kid.
After that I restrained about a zillion animals for a zillion different things from catheter placement to physical exams to a quick blood pressure reading with the Doppler. The vet students there are often stressed to the max (I can see it in their ginormous eyes and terror-stricken faces) and need people to help them restrain and what not for their patients. I got dragged around the place by an ill-mannered Shar-Pei at one point and had the red inflamed forearms to prove it. Restraining her was like hugging a cactus...a moving cactus.
We also had a Maine Coon cat come in who previously had surgery to remove a fibrosarcoma from her lateral abdominal area. Apparently, not all of the margins came back clean so she was in for more treatment. She had CT scans for diagnostic purposes and also to determine parameters for radiation therapy. It was cool to see an actual CT scan outside of some medical TV show and it was amazing how clear many of the organs and body structures were...way better than the lava lamp ultrasound.
Onco-land got pretty slow after that so I jumped over to the Neuro department (my favoriiiiiiite!) and got to see a diagnostic EEG performed on a dog. An EEG is basically a recording of brain activity gathered from a group of maybe 9 or 10 probes that are inserted into the skin all around the top of the animal's head. It looks a lot like an ECG printout from a reading of the heart's electrical activity. There were a few phases of the EEG, one included a light flashing in the animal's face at various speeds to determine if it elicits a seizure response. I wasn't able to wait around for the vet to interpret the results but will hopefully get to at least drop by there tomorrow to see what is going on with that patient.
Another fun-filled day at Auburn over. I'm hoping to spend a lot more time in the Neurology department but I'm trying to get as broad of an experience as I can so I'm sticking with my rotations for now.
Have a great week everyone! Thanks for reading my blog, let me know if you have any questions or things you want me to talk about that I haven't covered.
PS- That dog I monitored anesthesia for yesterday is doing well. They left his incision open yesterday and just packed it. Today they inserted a drain and closed it up...cool!
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