Toxicology & Pharmacology!

Last week I was on Toxicology and Pharmacology. We didn't really do a whole lot of clinical stuff so this will be a short one. Most of the time we were in the classroom (there were about 8 of us on the rotation) and we just went over different cases and the drugs and fluids you used in each case and why. We were in the pharmacy for a bit and got to make up solutions and actually made some pills (clavamox) which was interesting just to see how it's done. Finally the only other thing we did was go to the ASPCA animal poison control center which is in Urbana. This was pretty cool because it gets calls from the entire country and so we got to hear a lot of different cases people called in. This week I am on regulatory medicine (like USDA stuff) so will update again Friday!

ER!!

This past week I was on Small Animal Emergency Medicine. The ER at the vet school is open 24/7 but thankfully the second years only had to be there from 9-5 Monday through Friday. The week started out kind of slow and Monday I think we saw only one case the entire day. Then Tuesday we saw 4 different cases but unfortunately they all died:( The first one of the day was a dachshund that came in and it's heart stopped beating.. They did CPR for 15 minutes and actually brought it back. Then the poor thing's heart stopped beating again about 45 minutes later and that time the CPR was unsuccessful. Then there was a yorkie that had blasto (a fungal infection dogs get from the soil that is pretty prevalent in central illinois) and its' heart stopped beating and they did CPR and brought it back as well. But again after about an hour its' heart stopped again and they couldn't bring it back. Then there were a couple that had to be euthanized for one reason or another. Wednesday and Thursday were also pretty slow and just had a few cases like a dog with a broken ankle, a dog that needed a blood transfusion,etc..Friday was probably the busiest day they had the whole week. Their was one dog that came in because it had been vomiting intermittently for almost a year and then for the past three weeks started vomiting every time it ate (why the owner waited that long is beyond me). We did ultrasounds of the dog's abdomen and saw a big ball in it's stomach. The poor guy had had it in there for so long that it had caused physiologic changes to the stomach and was causing him to vomit. The owner refused to pay for the surgery though (which is a pretty simple and routine surgery) so they said she was going to relinquish it to the humane society:(.. Another case we had on Friday was a golden retriever that came in for trouble breathing and they found that it had air in it's chest (called a pneumothorax). They drew out air from both sides but then a couple hours later it had filled back up so they surgically places chest tubes in on each side that will continuously drain off the air until whatever is causing the leakage heals..Even though we weren't super busy this week though I still really liked this rotation. The faculty and residents in ER are all very nice and really into teaching so everytime we didn't really have anything to do they would go through different things with us which I really like. For example we spent a couple hours on EKG's so now I have a better understanding of them and am ahead compared to people who were not on the rotation this week. They also taught us to put in catheters, bandage, run PCV and TP tests (types of blood tests), and venipuncture. It feels nice to actually be able to start doing more of the hands on things! This coming week I am Pharmacology & Toxicology which isn't really in the clinic but I will update you all on what I actually do next week!

Kiira