The Ninth Year...: The next few rotations...

So after my trip to Nebraska, I came back to UPenn for my next few rotations... It's been a whirwind few months, so consider this the highlight reel!

First off was Emergency and Critical Care at New Bolton Center, so as you can imagine, we saw all the emergencies that came into the hospital as well any of the colics or diarrhea cases. It was a busy two weeks with lots of overnight on-call shifts! We saw our fair share of equine colics, some of the surgical and some of them able to be medically managed. We also had a foal come in with septic joints that we treated; here is a picture of a septic joint treatment.

The joint was flushed each day with sterile fluids and infused with antibiotics. These were intensive but rewarding treatments for us, as our little foal kept improving over the week and got to go home! We also had a few goats, ponies, and miniature horses join us for a visit.

Next rotation was Small Animal Radiology. It was a great rotation for learning, as we spent hours every day looking at radiographs and trying to analyze them. In the afternoons, we learned to take good radiographs and had few labs (like an ultrasound lab) to get more comfortable using all the equipment. It was a great rotation! Here's a photo of our fake dog that we got to practice our technique on.

I have to say, he was a little easier to work with than many of our patients! And here's Casey manning the controls!

Definitely one of the highlights of the rotation was getting to "drive" the ultrasound machine. We brought a few of our personal critters in as volunteers and each of us got a chance to scan their abdomens.

In radiology, we also do all the CT scans and the MRIs for the hospital, so we gained a little bit of experience with these as well.

Next up was Small Animal Surgery. After having a pretty kind schedule on Radiology (8 am to 6 pm with some weekend duties), Surgery took a little bit of getting used to! Morning treatments needed to be done by 7 am or 8 am (depending on the day) and after a long day in surgery or in appointments, we were then responsible for all of our evening treatments; 12 hour days were the norm, but my longest was a shift from 6 am until midnight, which was a little rough, especially the next morning! Despite the long hours, I was on with a great group of students and clinicians, and we learned and saw a lot! Some of the surgeries in the hospital are being done laparoscopically, so we got a chance to see quite a few of these. Here's a picture of one of these surgeries being done!

We also had quite a few other surgeries including a few orthopedic ones, some spays and neuters, wound repairs, and some thoracic surgeries. Overall, it was an exhausting and intense but great rotation!

There's no rest for the weary though! Moving on to Dermatology and a chance to catch up on some much needed sleep while learning a LOT about skin diseases in dogs and cats! I don't have any pictures from Derm, but we treated our share of allergies, ringworm, ear disease, etc over the course of the two weeks. Highlights definitely included a middle ear flush, skin biopsies, and allergy testing, as well as getting a chance to hang out with all the awesome Derm people!

Next up: Small Animal Emergency Service! Emergency is always a surprise... Just when you think you've seen it all, something ridiculous walks through the door! Days are usually slow and boring or insanely busy, so you try to be prepared but have to be read to roll with the punches! I loved this rotation, and am very excited that I'm taking it again in over the Christmas holiday and in the spring.

After ES, I headed to New Bolton Center (back in Kennett Square) for two rotations. First up was Medicine followed by Large Animal (read: mostly horses) Reproduction. They were both great rotations. Medicine was super busy the first week, and most days looked like this:
? to 8 am: Do treatments and write SOAPS for all patients (I had three) (? means anytime between 5 and 6, depending on the morning)
8 am to 9 am: NBC rounds (different topics each day ranging from radiology to pathology)
9 am to 10 am: Medicine rounds (went over each of our cases)
10 am to 11 am: Take care of my clostridial myositis cow (the best cow in the world) who needed flushes of her leg followed by walks/grazing outside
11 am to 4 pm: Doing all treatments for our patients, usually involving eye meds every two hours plus comfort checks for everyone PLUS taking any new appointments, of which there were a few every day WHILE still trying to attend other appointments so we could actually learn something
4 pm to 5 pm: Teaching rounds ranging from neurology, swine medicine, antibiotics, etc
5 pm until finished: Treatments of all patients again, including lovely cow, which usually got finishing between 7 pm or 8 pm at night
8 pm to 9 pm: eat something, shower, and go to bed

THEN, there were on call shifts and treatment shifts on top of that; getting called in to do treatments from 1030 pm to 1 am after a full day was definitely at the bottom of my list of "fun things at NBC".

Despite the crazy schedule, Medicine was great. We had so many interesting cases including a few neurologic horses, blind horses, my favorite cow of all time, a pig with a broken leg, a sheep with a PCV of 7, etc, etc, etc.

With very little chance to rest (I did treatments the last Sunday night of the two weeks from 6 pm to midnight), I jumped right into Reproduction, another simply awesome rotation. All the awesome folks in the repro service take teaching very seriously, so they have labs scheduled for us every day and even have a herd of mares that we work with on a daily basis to improve our repro skills including rectal palpation, ultrasound, artificial insemination, uterine flushes, etc, all the while monitoring these horse for changes in their estrus cycle. The rest of our days were filled with procedures on client mares; we got a chance to be a part of embryo transfer, artificial insemination, semen collection, and more! Here's a photo of our beautiful teaching mares in the pasture; these ladies have a very lucky life!