Hey Sailorwolf, well done on your tests! Interestingly, I also had a pathology test that night you did. But I also had my equine practical exam straight after it! That was nerve wracking. I also had my bovine practical exam two days later. I passed the prac exams, don't know about path though.

I'm fascinated by your course, you seem to be doing things we only started to do this year even though I sort of had an extra six months to a year before you. For example I intubated my first dog just a few weeks ago. I also had to be the anaesthetist for that surgery - a thoracotomy no less- and I had to sit there the whole hour ventilating for the dog. We used Thio too - but through a catheter, which was the first I'd ever placed as well.

Again, I only did my first rectals about a month ago (and have now done too many to count on both horses and cows). I remember that feeling the first time. It's funny that you should feel proud of something like that isn't it? It's like being inducted into Vetland. It so amazing when we had the pregnant cows and I was bouncing the calf around in its sac with my hand.

The bird place sounds so cool. We just use the uni birds who live in an aviary on campus. I wish we got more bird pracs - but that will come in final year.

I invite you to start a quick blog, even a couple lines a day here in my thread as I love reading about it.

 

I'm on Swot Vac now, and will launch into exams next week. I am so nervous. I should go back to cramming.

I'll try to update this thread in the next couple days.

good luck on your exams.

Yeah, Ditto... hope they go well.

Yeah I think we are doing some of the same stuff as you, but maybe we are doing it more gradually. I'm considered a 3rd year, but for us here that means our 3rd year in uni as we have a half year of vet in the 1st year, whereas when you say you're a third year you are actually in your 4th year of uni. Is that right? However I think that I am like a year, or half a year below you in terms of what we have learned.

I wouldn't mind writing a few words here and there in this blog. It could be the vet blog lol. I've got exams next week too so I'm in major study mode.

 

Was your dog anaesthetised with Total Intravenous Anaesthesia, or did you use inhalationals? Our prac was just anaesthetising the dog, watching her throughout the whole duration of the thiopentone and then reviving her. We gave her a premed of Acepromazine and then induced her with Thio and maintained her on Isoflurane, I think. She was such a sweety, I got to choose her and I chose her because she seemed calm, sweet and sturdy (lol). I was just wondering whether you did TIVA, cause with Thio that makes their recovery much longer. How'd that go? Sorry about all the jargon.

 

Thoracotomy, sounds like it would be a tough one to start with. Yes you are right I feel so "Vetland" now lol. I really should get back to studying, but between the BBC and watching Ross Noble on youtube (he's really funny watch him!), it's a little hard. lol

Tell me about it - I can't bring myself to study urinary pathology when BBC and Youtube beckon!

Yup, that first year we call "prevet" or "-1 year" lol, it is all science based, the real vet stuff starts in 'first year'. I agree, it's something like six months to a year ahead of your course. But I guess it doesn't matter as long as it's all in our heads by graduation!

 

The dog I anaesthetised - our pracs are fairly serious at this point, the prac I refer to is one where we use dogs that will be euthanased after (and were always going to be euthanased anyway) to set up a full surgery situation. The idea of doing surgery on them before they die doesn't sit right with some people, and fair enough, but I believe that by using them to teach vet students we give their deaths some meaning, rather than being another statistic caused by our society's thoughtless pet keeping and breeding. Everybody takes those pracs seriously, and it teaches us valuable things that you can't practice without possible dire consequences in a real situation. As it is, if you mess up you get a black mark on your name and our surgery (demon)strator will crush your soul!

We premed them with Ace, place a catheter, induce with Thio, intubate, maintain them on Iso and hook up Hartmann's solution (physiological saline) to the catheter. It's just as well we use Iso, as we often have greyhounds from our blood bank (we don't euthanase those ones!) or ex-racers that have failed the greyhound adoption program, Thio would not be great for such lean dogs.

I'm fine with the jargon, I worry about our fellow readers though

 

But for horses we did Total Intravenous. That reminds me. Once a couple months ago as part of a horse anaesthesia prac, some students gave Thio to a horse on Ace and totally forgot to check the catheter before they injected. It went perivascular and they had to flush it like crazy with saline and something basic (I think, to bring down the acidity), then give analgesia for the pain. We never did get to witness firsthand how Thiopentone redistributes, but we sure learnt a lot that day, none of us will ever forget to check the syringe again I think. The horse was fine, they did all the first aid in time.

 

I will describe the thoracotomy and just what is required of an anaesthetist in my next update. The main point is that once you cut through the chest wall, all the pressure in the thorax disappears so the lungs can't inflate themselves, somebody has to sit there and be the dog's lungs. That was me. I kept the dog alive with the power of one hand.

 

Okay, now I really need to study!

 

Thanks for your thoughts everyone, and good luck to you Sailorwolf on your exams.

Wow Chryso , How much longer left of uni????

Thank you. I hope you do well too.

 

How scary would that have been for the people working with the horse. I bet it probably would have hurt a lot. Yeah they tell us to flush it with plenty of saline and or lignocaine for the pain.

He he, this is my break from study. I can only study the immune system for so long, without getting all the letters like IgG and IgM (names of antibodies) mixed up in my head!!!!!

The other threads of euthanasia and wildlife rescue reminded me about something that happened last year. It was too long to put there so I post it here, as it is about my journey as vet student. This story is long and may be distressing in that it is about euthanasia, and also a bit morbid/graphic.

 

My friends and I, we three vet students, went for a weekend road trip out west. We'd had so much fun staying along the beach and were heading west to my friend's farm where we would stay for the next week. We were smack bang in the middle of nowhere, and I really mean that - nothing but empty paddocks, a tiny town here and there, and a few big dairy farms.

 

One of us spotted a big roo on the side of the road. We stopped, did a U turn and went to check for life and pouch young, but it turned out to be a big male grey and he was very dead. Using our knowledge we deduced he was killed on impact - probably a truck. So we piled into the car to go back the way we came. As we pulled into a dirt driveway to turn around, one of us noticed something in the ditch next to the road. I looked over and sure enough, another roo. This one was breathing.

 

We all got out and had a look at it - another male. He was lying deep in the ditch which was full of muddy water, panting, his legs obscured from view. It didn't look good at all. We ran up the driveway to see if there was somebody we could get, but it turned out to be a mobile phone tower. So there we were, middle of nowhere, no one around. To my shame, not one of us could remember the wildlife help number. We flagged down the next car and all they could tell us that the roo looked injured, and they didn't know the number... helpful. We got back in our car and went for a drive to see if there was anything else around. A little way up there was a house. We went in and there was a teenage boy. He gave us the wildlife help number. Phew. We drove back towards the roo and found that not one of us had reception on our mobiles - not even with a phone tower right next to us!

 

So we decided to check our roo in the ditch to see if we could at least pull him out of the cold water. We got there to see he had tried to move, and we could now see his legs. They were broken all the way through, as in, the bone was jutting out in several places and the leg was hanging by a bit of skin. I could not begin to imagine the pain he was in. The cold was probably doing him a service in dulling it somewhat. We all knew now that this roo had to be put out of his misery right there - there was no way we could carry him and no way he would survive on one leg. And not one of us was going to walk away to let him suffer a slow, cold, painful death.

 

The teenager had been wary and reluctant to help, so we decided to go in another direction, to a house 100 metres up. We knocked and knocked but it was totally empty. So we went back to the boy's house and now there was a sister. We heard him say "jeez now they want a vet" to her. I guess to a casual non-animal orientated person we seemed like mad hippies or something for caring about a random wild animal we'd only just found. She was helpful though, well, by telling us there was no real help. The closest vets were an hour away in each direction (it was also getting dark and we were getting edgy about being in the middle of nowhere, we were also expected at our destination for dinner). Also, we had to be realistic, in that the vet would need to be paid a lot for driving that far at this time on a Sunday and none of us had much money. The police might be of help, though the nearest town was pretty far, extremely tiny and might not have anyone on duty. Wildlife help people would probably have to done the same thing (call a vet or police) and they too would have taken a while to get to where we were, out there in the middle of nowhere in the dark.

 

We drove off and in our desperation called triple 0 (emergency number for you non-Aussies). To my disbelief, that didn't get through either! No reception. That really shocked me; what if it was a person needing immediate emergency help?? Anyway, we admitted that a dying animal was not high on their list of concerns. We went back to check on the roo and go through our options. We were really desperate now, and well, we were trained in euthanasia so maybe...? But talked it over briefly and realised that we didn't have anything sharp (besides which he probably didn't have the best blood pressure), doubted anything would have worked for a big roo skull, and he could probably still injure somebody badly in that state. Besides... none of us had the guts.

 

The teenagers seemed to have given us all they could and it seemed a bit rude to annoy them yet again. So we tried our luck with that other house, which was empty still. Figuring that farmers must have guns, we drove to two further houses on dairy farms which were empty (considering the sun had set, it was probably milking time. Interestingly, one of the houses had a dead cow just lying there out the front). Then, in our last desperate bid, we drove all the way along the highway another farm. The house was totally empty. But with no other choice we walked around their farm and finally found people feeding calves. They were very friendly and I guess we looked pretty distraught. Straight up, we told the farmer where the roo was and what to do, and he said he would do it straight away. My friends decided to leave then. I wanted closure, to be assured that the poor creature would not be spending a cold night in a ditch in agony, but it was dark and now pouring and we really, really had to be going home. So we left.

 

I don’t really have a moral or anything, other than I believe that bringing about death can be merciful and based on compassion, not greed/laziness. Also have the wildlife number on hand (In Victoria it is 0417 380 687 or 13 000 94535), please check for life if you see injured wildlife on the road, and go check if you think you’ve done it yourself. Also, the number 000 can still be called via satellite if you ring 112, you can reach it even if there is no reception – very important that you know this number, you never know when you need it.

 

I just wanted to share this story, because among vets it’s well known that there are animals you meet in your life that will stay with you forever. This kangaroo was one of mine.

How interesting, and how gruelling. Thanks so much for sharing your stories documenting your growth as a vet. It's tough to become a professional, but rewarding, too. It sounds as though you are well on your way.

That was a very compassionate story Chryso. But I agree with what you did.

 

I think you could have put it in the euthanasia topic. There are many long stories there.

Edited June 8, 200816 yr by Sailorwolf

I agree with Sailerwolf, you can copy and paste and add to the topic, very good post and thank you for sharing.

Thanks you guys..

 

My apologies for lack of updates, I'm backlogged a few weeks now, and Week 12 was an amazing week (anyone ever intubated a fish before?) - here's hoping I remember it all.

 

I have just been swamped, absolutely swamped with cramming for exams. It's currently 2:50am and I'm still reading things I've only ever seen once/never seen before (why on earth did they give us lectures notes months after the lectures, which were given by replacement lecturers anyway so they had no idea what they were aiming to teach us?). I've never felt this bad about exams before...

 

Gosh, I'm glad no one can see me.. I must look like a wreck.. I've been pulling off 2-3am nights for about two weeks, which I know is bad, but it's better knowing the gist of everything rather than every detail of a few things that might be on there (mostly numbers too.. I never remember those) - the non-essential stuff I can make up on the spot.

 

This is/was my schedule: 9 exams for 4 subjects.

 

-Monday 26th May: Equine practical exam; Pathology quiz 2 (Nervous and respiratory systems) (yes, two in a day)

-Thursday 29th May: Bovine practical exam

-Tuesday 10th June:-Body Sytems 1 written exam

-Thursday 12th June:-Body Sytems 2 written exam

-Friday 13th June:-BS1 and BS2 combined practical exam

-Monday 16th June:-Clinical Medicine & Surgery written exam

-Wednesday 18th June:-Animal Health and Management 3 written exam

-Thursday 19th June:-Body Systems 2 oral exam

-Friday 20th June:-Clinical Medicine & Surgery oral exam

 

Only three more to go! Then I can sleep, for about half a day, before I head out west for two weeks on a mixed practice! Fun times

Edited June 17, 200816 yr by Chrysocome

OMG girl I don't know how you do it but I know you will say I just do it, you are SOOO motivated!! Good for you.

I just finished all my exams today and am currently enjoying the idea of a long 3 week break with nothing to do

Well my last exam is today, actually I'm one of the last to have my oral exam. It's not fun. I've hit a limit where I just can't cram anything new so I'm basically waiting around with the guilt associated with "I should be studying, why aren't I studying? I'll regret it later if I don't." Really nasty feeling of helplessness. I just want it to be over.

Add it to the awful imposter syndrome, which most vet students and sometimes vets get, especially around exams, it's not nice. You get these nagging thoughts like "Why on earth am I here? I don't deserve to be here. I'm not smart enough. I'm such a fraud. Everyone thinks I'm smart but I just faked and fluked my way here. I have no idea what I'm doing. Everyone will be disappointed when I fail. I've wasted five years and thousands of dollars." It intensifies around exams and when you see even the smartest and most confident people around you break down - and I mean burst into tears - it doesn't do any good for your self esteem when you consider yourself to be 'average' among these high achievers. And you can't really talk to anyone about it - outsiders to the profession often think you're exaggerating over something trivial and being arrogant, and it upsets your colleagues because they have the same feeling and don't want to let it out just yet, not when there's so much to do.

 

But it will all be over soon. I've had some diasasters, I have no idea how it all went, we'll just have to wait and see.

The sucky thing is I'll have to pack tomorrow and leave early Sunday morning to go work on farms. No rest for me!

Well, off to uni for some more procrastinating now.

I very much enjoy your topic Chryso. It takes me back to my days working as a vet nurse. :hap:

If it makes you feel any better Chryso I think every uni student goes through what you are going through right now, regardless of their course, I know I certainly do. I'm someone for whom uni does not come easily, it's not that I can't do the stuff it's just that the teaching mode isn't ideal for me. So I often end with the 'what am I doing here' feeling, especially around exam time.

 

Good luck for your exam

I'd never really thought of that before, I sorta thought I was the only one like that. Now I think about it I do think like that sometimes. It's kinda scary, but then you think, wow I'm this awesome (even if you did fluke it you still got to have something that got you there).

I believe if you go to uni or not life always comes full of questions of worth and more, you are doing great, let us know how you do on your exam I have no doubt you will ACE it.

Thanks to all, your support means a lot to me.

 

I'm not pleased with my last exam, actually I was very unimpressed with the surgeon who didn't look me in the eye even once during the whole thing, read off his laptop while I was spearking, and yelled at me when I didn't draw the shape of the incision right from his directions across the room. How am I supposed to draw a semicircle on the triangular shaped wound if what I get is "draw it from the corner, no the other corner, now extend it, no you're going the wrong way, go back, no, the other corner, go along the triangle, no, start from your first corner, and your semicircle is still wrong and make it bigger, no the triangle not the semicircle." Argh, just come over and draw the thing, and then I'll answer your question!

The radiologist, all she wanted from me was two words, but I didn't know that. She asked me how to stop motion blur and I got the most obvious one. She was looking for more and I had no idea what she wanted so I just said I didn't know. (Usually, they go to a different topic when you say that, to give you a chance to talk about something you actually do know). She asked me something else, and I talked for ages with her giving me prompts until I said what she was looking for in the original question! She was like, "That's it!" And I was "Huh? You mean I just talked for five minutes and we were still on the same question?" I felt like an idiot because she probably thought I was babbling and didn't understand that one simple thing. Wasted so much time because both the examiners couldn't make their questions clear! I had no idea what I was being asked.

 

Grr, is what is say to that, and I'm going to forget about the entire last four weeks of my life now, I like blissful denial.

 

Anyhow, I know that those bad feelings are there, and I know that many people get it, it's frustrating because that doesn't seem to help me with the moment. But I know that it goes away, so I hang on until the end, which brings on the helplessness. But I think having the knowledge that it exists is important. I used to think I was alone in having those feelings, but now I know better.

 

I will be gone now as you see from my announcement in another thread. I'll keep writing while I'm away and post them here, probably in a few big chunks when I can.

 

Catch you soon!

Edited June 21, 200816 yr by Chrysocome

((hugs)), I bet he was just being a you know what to throw you off guard a lot of them can do that, I bet you did just fine!

Week 12

 

Ah, week 12, otherwise known as Annual Fish Week. Fish Week is a week where all subjects come together and bring us the glory of life as an aquavet.

 

Monday: Equine 12

Morning off. In the afternoon we had an equine prac class, where basically all we did was pass a stomach tube. Our horse was really jumpy and would not let us put a twitch on her, in the end the head horse lecturer (who is renowned for being absolutely-no-nonsense and terrifying, to horses and students alike) had to do it for us.

It’s an interesting sensation passing the tube. First you dunk it in lube, then approach the (somewhat displeased) horse who is well restrained. The stomach tube goes up the nose and they really resent that (although our horse was completely still for that! Imagine having a pencil sized tube stuck into your nostril. It was just the twitch she didn’t like). The tube goes into the nostril to the pharynx (back of the throat), then you kind of have to get a feel for getting the tube into the oesophagus and not the trachea. To figure out which hole you’ve gone down, you blow into the tube (to see if it’s kinked) then suck on it. You can’t suck back in the oesophagus whereas you can in the trachea.

We also took this time to practice some of our past skills that would be examined in the coming weeks, such as picking up feet and identifying areas for nerve blocks, joint taps and the like.

 

 

Tuesday: Reproduction 7.

Otherwise known as Examination of the Male Reproductive System. We did breeding examinations on rams (I’ll not go into detail here). We watched an examination on Alex the big Angus bull who was on campus that day. Finally we watched Lucky, our demo miniature pony, as demonstrators did collections and the like while a female miniature pony looked rather confused.

 

Wednesday: CMS: External coaptation

This was quite a fun prac. We learnt about the different techniques and materials for bandaging limbs. This included soft padding, plaster and the neat stuff that goes rock hard after it cools. We used either pool noodles or each others’ arms, and used the mechanical saw to take it off.

 

He's crashing! Give me some adrenaline, stat!

 

My lovely Robert-Jones bandage.

 

Aka giant cotton tip (which we later dubbed "The Face Swab")

 

Fun with Plaster casts

 

Then getting the darn thing off.

 

What can I say, occasionally we manage to have fun at Vet School.

 

Thursday: AHM 3.3

Another rather boring computer-assisted earning exercise, this time about genetics. (Mostly maths and using Excel).

 

Friday:

Morning: Canine Surgery 4

My post on this became so large, and is so important to me, that I decided it deserved a post of its own. It will appear after this post. It details another day where we walked out of the operating theatre sobered and with a little more wisdom about life and our place in the world.

 

Afternoon: Aquatic animals

Anyone ever intubated a fish? Until that day, I didn’t even know it was possible. Okay, so for being fish week there wasn’t a great deal, prac-wise, on fish, but I assure you the lectures, which I don’t talk about here, did feature them.

This prac was in two parts.

Part 1: Production fish: autopsy. There were about ten big fat Rainbow trout for post mortem. Fish anatomy is pretty fascinating. We were cutting off beautiful orange fillets. I was a little grossed out by the smell – it was making me hungry. Ick.

Part 2: Domestic fish: clinical exam, anaesthesia and surgery.

You heard me. It’s seems odd at first to have so much done for a fish considering the (quickly changing) view of fish being less than mammals and birds. There are also plenty of incredibly expensive fish out there, like those couple-hundred-dollar koi, so people do have surgery done on their fish.

First we did clinical techniques like gill biopsy and skin scraping, looking at them under the microscope for parasites. We then learnt how to do anaesthesia – there is a tank of clean oxygenated water and an induction tank with the anaesthetic agent. The fish is popped into the latter tank. Within about ten minutes it goes floppy and doesn’t react to stimuli. The fish is then placed into the ‘surgery table’. It is irrigated with water from the induction tank. A tube is placed into the fish’s mouth across the gills, so drugged water flows across them. To wake the fish up it is placed in the oxygenated tank.

I thought that was pretty cool :glare:

 

More to follow soon.

Edited July 7, 200816 yr by Chrysocome

so glad to have you back, you will have to copy and paste this as a journal for yourself so you can look back, it is wonderful, I enjoy following your journey :glare:.

It's so cool

 

I wanted to ask you something - did they explained you how does the twitch work? I was told that it hurts the horse, that's why he stays calm . Is it true?

I know they have something under the top lip "to smell staff" (I love when they roll the top lip, it's just too funny :glare: ), is that why you do it on the top lip?

Hi Zebra, I asked that myself when I was first taught to use it.

Used properly it should not produce any pain at all. If it does it is very brief. The upper lip is very sensitive. The twitch is designed to stimulate the natural response to strong pressure (almost 'pain') by releasing a powerful wave of endorphins (opioids) from the brain, which stimulates euphoria and inhibits the sensation of pain. They might feel a bit sore afterwards but the theory is that by the time the feeling in their lip returns there is no sharp pain sensation.

Of course that doesn't mean that twitches are always used properly.

Here is its wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_%28device%29