August 30, 200816 yr Author Hey guys. I've been so swamped it's unbelievable. Horse week nearly killed me I think. I don't have the time right now to write up summaries (3 assignments just started and all due on Monday) so I'll show you some of the most interesting photos from the past month. Enjoy :hap: Meet Group D! ...Delicious. Paraclinical weeks were interesting. We went to do stuff with pigs and visited the abattoir (not fun but definitely eye-opening). The other days we did tutes on parasitology and clinical pathology. Pigs was great. We are lucky enough to be down the street from a pig research facility. We practised catching and taking blood from the pigs. They actually needed the blood to help develop a test for detecting some disease in pigs. It's a closed research facility with strict hygiene standards. This sight just made me laugh. Medicos have scrubs. Vets have gumboots. I have photos of a gorgeous donkey who was my case for horse week, but I'm not allowed to show it (didn't get permission). Horse week was... bad. Especially when on call. I had to check on my horse and donkey every four hours. Including through the night. This sounds like an okay time for sleeping. But procedures can take over an hour and then there was time to fall asleep. Which wasn't easy in the student computer room with the cleaners vacuuming around me. There was always something to do through the whole day so I'd be exhausted anyway, and there were many days where I had to just glomp down my food and rush to the next case. Let's just say, it was intense, and I'm glad it's over. "Agricultural animal" week came next. So it's interesting that group D went to the zoo! We are also down the road from the Open Range Zoo. An eland (antelope) at the zoo had died and they were having general problems with the elands so the sheep/goat vet who was supposed to be taking us for tutorials decided to take us to the zoo. (Lucky us! No one else got to do it.) The amazing thing is that we were supposed to be doing scenarios on investigating diseases on different farms. Well, it turned out we did exactly the same thing, but for real. Group D visits the zoo in our private... bus.. thingy. This guy was 2 metres away and put on a show while we were investigating the elands. Giraffes! I'd forgotten how giant they are. This guy was, literally, 2 metres away. A 2 tonne rhino. With nothing but a flimsy little rail on the bus between us. And apparently he didn't like the bus. The driver told us to be ready for a sudden takeoff! That had me slightly worried... But rhinos are definitely cool. I have so much to say and no time for it right now - I will be doing it eventually though, just give me time. Hope you liked the photos. Edited August 30, 200816 yr by Chrysocome
September 9, 200816 yr Author What a strange day. I post mortemed a budgie today - I'm getting quite a few of them since I got to know the bird pathologist on campus. (It really freaked me out the first time, but I've sort of learnt to shut that out). This budgie used to live on campus as a teaching budgie then retired to become the pet of one of the students. A totally unrelated thing to this post mortem - she was completely blind in both eyes - and had been for a year! She just knew exactly where all her perches and food/water was so she got along just fine. It never ceases to amaze me how they just adapt and carry on. I also post mortemed a raven - a very rare thing to see. It had been hit by a car. It was kind of bizarre walking into the fridge at the PM area - there were a whole bunch of dead foxes in there. They are considered a pest species in Australia so were probably baited or trapped then euthanased. One of the pathologists must have somehow gotten them for teaching. I've never seen a fox before and here was a whole bunch of them. A morbid, yet interesting kind of day - far from the normal furry pets and livestock I see all the time. I just found it really odd that I was suddenly dealing with animals we vets here consider 'exoitic' - birds, wildlife and feral animals. This was all after hours stuff, I was just suddenly called by the pathologist and there was all of this to do. I'm actually on Emergencies/Intensive Care this week and was not expecting to start it like that! Edited September 9, 200816 yr by Chrysocome
November 13, 200816 yr Author What an awful, awful lot of three weeks I've just had. Tomorrow I have the last two exams for the year! I cannot wait. I think I'm going to go out and party all night then sleep for a whole day. When I recover I'll write up a summary of the past couple of months (sorry for being so late on these! I've just been so busy). Then, I'll be back for summer! :hap: Side note - I really, really hope on tomorrow's exam on diseases transmissible to humans I get to talk about psittacosis... piece of cake. If I'm lucky. It might end up being something boring like worms. Edited November 13, 200816 yr by Chrysocome
November 13, 200816 yr Hopefully it will be one of those nice ones where you get a choice of two or three topics and one of them is psittacosis
November 14, 200816 yr Yay. I just finished my exams and the feeling of freedom is great!! Now I just have to move houses. Good luck for your last ones
November 17, 200816 yr Author The feeling of freedom is indeed wonderful. I slept for 12 hours today and got up at 2pm.. it was weird. But it was the first decent sleep I'd had for three entire weeks - those 5 hour nights were doing me no good. I hate what sleep deprivation does to me and my thought processes. Results will be out in three weeks. Until then, I'll focus on other stuff. *relaxes* I'm pleased to announce that I got a hold of Knox Bird Clinic and will be doing three weeks placement with Dr Colin Walker. Near the end of my summer 'holidays' I'll be with Dr Pat MacWhirter of Burwood Vet Clinic. I'll also be doing a week here at the 'Chicken Wing' at Uni, doing laboratory type work. It really looks like my bird vet career is on its way. Alongside those I have four compulsory weeks at Uni, doing Medicine, Emergencies, Surgery/Anaesthesia, and Equine. (Emergencies over Christmas, that's going to be a nightmare!) It's going to be a jam packed summer 'holidays' for me, I'm really looking forward to it.
November 17, 200816 yr Jeez Chryso that's a fair hike from over your way!! Do you have somewhere closer to stay?
November 17, 200816 yr Author I know MB! Luckily I have some friends closer to that side. It'll still be a 45min drive in peak hour, but much better than trying to travel from Werribee! It's going to be Templestowe where I stay most of the time, but I may move around. (Long story short: I have two really good friends to me that live ten minutes away from Knox, BUT, those two hate each others' guts and rather than choosing between them, I'm going to base myself a bit further away and go visit them when I feel like it).
November 17, 200816 yr Not too bad then If worst comes to worst my parents might be willing to rent a room out cheap for that time, they are really cool parents, the type you love to have when you're a uni student (my mum just finished her PhD) and the whole top story of their house is practically vacant, they're pretty cool with animals too, they're in Glen Waverley, close to both vets. I'm in View Bank so about the same distance as templestowe but happy to make up the spare room if you need
March 24, 200916 yr Author Life has been very busy in Vetland. I've started my seventh semester, the last lot of theoretical and clinical practice before beng sent into the big wide world... and at the end of the year, to graduate with Dr in my name. It has gone insanely fast. We finally have our Birds subject! Yay! I've already got quite the reputation among my peers and future colleagues as Bird Girl, and I'm pleased to see it all falling into place. Oh and having visited all the bird vets in Victoria, I want visit some bird vets in Brisbane next semester. I've set things in motion and ache to be there, but have some obstacles to overcome like money, accom, flights and a place for my birds. Stressful. Thought I'd post a little teaser for an upcoming post. Here is my schedule for Semester 7: 09/02/09: Diagnostic imaging 16/02/09: Equine medicine and surgery 23/02/09: Paraclinical sciences 1 02/03/09: Paraclinical sciences 2 09/03/09: Special topics 1 16/03/09: Special topics 2 22/03/09: Intensive care and emergencies 1 30/03/09: Intensive care and emergencies 2 Easter break 20/04/09: Ruminants 1 27/04/09: Ruminants 2 04/05/09: Anaesthesiology 11/05/09: Small animal surgery 18/05/09: Small animal primary medicine 25/05/09: Small animal referral medicine Edited March 24, 200916 yr by Chrysocome
March 25, 200916 yr It has gone insanely fast, and its been great watching it go insanely fast for you. Cheers for updating this for us, sounds like your plan is coming together great and it wont be long now Good luck
March 27, 200916 yr Cool to hear from you Chryso. I'm currently trying to decide what track to take at the moment and I think I will go for mixed. We have started our surgery course now which is awesome. I practiced some suturing on a cadaver yesterday and got my arm done in a cast, it was good fun. I did a Robert-Jones on my friend too, I've decided those are my favourite kind of bandages. Time certainly does go by fast. I remember when I first joined this forum I was in my last year of school, now I'm almost a vet!
May 15, 200916 yr Author Last two weeks of semester 7, and last four days of lectures, ever. Starting to really feel the pressure! I promised some photos from that reptile day. There are less photos (and posts) these days because I am in the clinic rather than using teaching animals and I don't want (and am not allowed) to take photos of pets. I have decided not to post some reptile pictures I had originally planned to, because some of those animals were euthanased. It was a cool day though, that day I saw two tiger snakes, a green python, a frillneck, a tortoise and a spitting cobra. The vet had to wear special head protection so he wouldn't lose his eyes to that last one! How many vets does it take to stop a 600kg giant tortoise from going wherever the heck it wants? Occasionally just one. Here's an alpaca just because. This semester I have even more responsibility over cases, giving treatments, doing procedures and helping decide what to do next. I've just finished an anaesthesia/surgery rotation, the first week was 'removal week' for me - I anaesthetised animals for an eye removal, a tail removal and a lump removal. I did a cat spay, and helped the very amazing orthopaedic surgeon work on a torn cruciate ligament (other than fixing that, he cut out a wedge of bone with an electric saw and stuck the rest back together to improve the walking function of the leg and therefore greatly improving quality of life - surgery never ceases to amaze me!) I post nice pictures and tell fun stories, but not all of vet school is puppies and cuddles. My most vivid, and shaking, memory this year is of my equine hospital rotation. My uni took in the burns victims from the Black Saturday fires, I was rostered on right at the peak of the damage. Life in the equine ward is already very stressful, to say the least, without this disaster on top. I was already quite emotionally wounded from hearing what happened to the people and their lives, but seeing all those horses ripped a big hole in me. Other than the usual exhaustion of having to be awake at least every four hours for seven days, the hospital was overflowing and every horse needed a lot of treatment. I wondered at the tales they could tell if they were able to speak. The owners helped where they could and the things they had experienced made me tremble. I fought tears as I watched animals fighting to keep going, the owners that loved them (and sometiems that animal was the last thing they had left), and at the kindness of people that donated money, treatments, equipment and food (for the animals, and for us exhausted staff!). At the same time we had to keep it together for the animals' and owners' sakes. The week left me depressed, heartsick and exhausted (mentally, physically, emotionally). It took me some time to recover from that shock, but now I'm stronger for it. Gee, I look tired. Sailor: Mixed would be great. I'm happy anywhere as long as it's not pure largies. I can't believe that not long ago we were both posting about having just started uni, and look where we are now! Reason for edit: The more I study, the more appalling my English becomes. Edited May 15, 200916 yr by Chrysocome
May 16, 200916 yr All l can say is wow, what an experience you are going through. You are learning so much and you are very dedicated. Edited May 16, 200916 yr by birdluv
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now