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!
And here's an (albeit) terrible photo of me right before I inseminated my first mare!
And a much better shot of Candice and Ashley doing the same!
And
here is a little embryo that "we" made; one of the students inseminated
the mare, then together we flushed it out of the mare 8 days later!
After this rotation, I headed to Tri-State Bird Rescue- stay tuned for an upcoming blog entry!
