Hi everyone! This past week I was on wildlife and exotic medicine and surgery (aka WEAMS or Zoo med). It was sooo much fun!!!! I learned a lot and got to see a lot of interesting things. I'll basically tell you everything we saw each day (warning: this is going be a long one!). Monday we saw a 20 year old cockatiel for a routine physical exam. Some of the special instruments they have for checking out the exotic species are pretty neat. They have an endoscope that they use to look into the birds ears and nose and then into their mouth. They also have this special stethoscope that hooks up to the computer and records the heart beat. You can then play it back and are able to count how many beats per second in order to calculate the heart rate (which is like 200+ in birds!). The cockatiel was all normal so it was good to learn what things are supposed to be like/look like/hear like. Next we saw a rabbit that presented for an oral abscess. Again we were able to learn how to do a physical exam on them as well as some diagnostic testing to determine what the abscess was and how to treat it. After the little rabbit we saw an African Grey Parrot that came for a re-check. This patient had come in a few weeks before and was diagnosed with various nutritional deficiencies (one of the most common things they see in birds). Next we saw a Red Eared Slider (which is a type of turtle) for a routine physical exam. Again it was interesting to learn just the physical exam process because each of these species have various things that you want to check and various ways to check them. Then on to Tuesday....First we saw a rabbit who is actually owned by one of my classmates. He came in because he had a mass on his arm that had been growing and he seemed to have lost weight. They diagnosed the mass as just a malignant fibroma and the rabbit actually had good body condition so the little guy will be just fine! After that rabbit we had another one that we saw. He wasn't as lucky though. The poor guy had some inbreeding issues and his teeth were overgrown and not aligned right. We had to put him under anesthesia and extract all of his front incisors. It was really cool to watch though, especially since I had just been on dentistry so knew what they were doing and the whole process. After that rabbit, then we had another one come in lol (it was a bunny-filled day for sure). This rabbit came in because it had a yellow dot in it's eye. After the exotics vet looked at it then we went down to ophthalmology so they could take a better look at it with their special equipment. The yellow dot turned out to be an abscess in the eye due to this bacteria that rabbits sometimes get when they are born called encephalitozoon cuniculi. This bacteria is very hard to get rid of so the rabbits eventually develop cataracts most of the time. They sent this rabbit home on anti-inflammatories and antibiotics to hopefully get rid of the bacteria or at least slow down the cataract formation. The last patient we saw on Tuesday actually wasn't a rabbit lol, it was a Blue & Gold Macaw! This bird a couple months before had been attacked by a dog and came in with these huge wounds all over it's body. They bandaged them and put a collar on the bird which then preceded to rub it's collar so bad it got lacerations on it's neck. So then they had to stitch up his neck as well and put a different collar on him. So..he came in to get checked out and to hopefully at least get his collar off. The doctor was not happy though to see that the bird has re-opened his old wounds from the dog:/ So then we anesthetized the bird and they had to debride the wounds and bandage them all over again. He'll have to come back every week for another month to get the bandages changed a make sure he's not doing anymore damage to himself (I can't imagine how much the owners have spent on him so far:/..). On to Wednesday....well we didn't really do a lot this day. The fourth years and Dr. Welle (the vet that was our supervisor for the week) went to a zoo up by Chicago and we were not able to go so we just spent the day learning how to run various diagnostic tests from the technician. It was helpful and we'll have to know how to do those things eventually so we might as well learn sooner than later. We also looked at different slides of the various species under the microscope which I find interesting. Birds for example have nucleated red blood cells (every other species are non-nucleated) so when you first see them it's looks like something is very wrong when actually it's normal. So that was Wednesday in a nutshell. Thursday I think turned out to be my favorite day on this rotation!! We got to go to a zoo in Decatur with the fourth years and Dr. Welle. First we had to do annual physical exams on 3 Golden Lion Tamarins!! For each one we had to anesthetize them to do the physical, then they drew blood for bloodwork, then they took radiographs of them (they are so small so their entire body fit on one film), and finally they did some dental work on them (cleaned the teeth and then polished them). After the tamarins we looked at several bearded dragons. They were being donated to the zoo so had to have a complete physical exam, bloodwork and fecal in order for the zoo to accept them. After those bearded dragons then we looked at one of the bearded dragons that the zoo already had. It was about 12 years old and had stopped eating and really just was not acting right. After looking at him they decided to euthanize him because his quality of life just wasn't very good. Even though it was sad I'm glad I got to see it because i've never seen a reptile get euthanized before and I did not realize that it takes longer for them to die (even when giving to same dose you would give to a dog of equal to greater size). They also did this puffing up thing that would have probably freaked me out if I didn't know it was normal. So after that we went down and looked at one of their pygmy goats that had an abscess on the side of it's face. They drained the abscess and then just prescribed an antibiotic for it. While we were down by the goats though we got to see a bunch of little baby ones that were sooo cute. I will attach a picture of me holding one of them as well as some pictures of the tamarins! Finally, the last thing we saw at the zoo was a 1 year old wolf named Tilly. She was hand raised and basically thinks she's a dog lol. When we walked up the the cage she just started whining and whining because she wanted people to come pet her. Then when the Dr. Welle went into the cage to give her her vaccinations (which is all she needed done) she rolled over and wanted him to pet her belly haha. She was super cute and I got a picture of her as well that I will post. Finally on to Friday...One of the first patients we saw was a baby Cockatoo who was actually born on my birthday:) Apparently young cockatoos absolutely love people and cuddling! This cockatoo had come in previously for a regular check-up and they found a granuloma (mass) on her neck. They had drained it and put her on a few medications. The doctor said that it was a lot smaller this time which is a good sign. They drew blood work to see if her cell counts have improved and then decided to continue her on two of the medications for another week and then they are going to re-check her again. After that we had another African Grey parrot. This one had come in previously for a vent infection. It still appeared swollen and irritated so we anesthetized it and did several biopsies of the inflamed site and sent the sample for culture and histopathology. By the way I should mention that we saw a lot of birds this week because the doctor that was on (Dr. Welle) is the only avian certified veterinarian in Illinois (meaning he had to pass a special board exam for specifically specializing in avian species). Next we had a Coati come in from the zoo that we had actually been to Thursday. The Coati named Yahtzee was fine Thursday and then Friday morning she wouldn't eat and seemed very lethargic so they brought her in. We had to anesthetize her and then we took radiographs of her and ran bloodwork. They just found that she had some kind of infection so they injected her with a long-acting antibiotic and then will re-check her next week. Finally the last case we saw was a little rabbit that came in because it had been excessively producing tears in it's right eye. We learned that rabbits tend to get clogged nasolacrimal ducts (duct that drains tears from your eyes and then goes out your nose, which is why your nose runs when you cry by the way). Basically they get clogged in rabbits and you can flush them out or they get blocked because their teeth roots grow up really long and push on the duct closing it. Either way this really isn't a serious problem and doesn't require treatment, The owners wanted to do radiographs still just in case so we had to anesthetize the rabbit and then took radiographs of it's head. Indeed it was just the tooth roots that were pushing against the duct and blocking it. They could remove the teeth but since the excessive tear production isn't really a problem there is really no reason to so the bunny went home just as it came in. And that's about it for my rotation this past week. Sorry this was a long one but I think a lot of the things we saw were interesting and Dr. Welle actually taught us a lot of things (which I didn't share most on here because it would have been a novel lol). This week I am on ER! Again I will kind of recap the week next Friday for all of you. Until then I hope you all have a happy & safe Halloween:)
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