Saturday, January 29, 2011

Senior Portraits

We had our Senior Portraits made on Thursday. It was surreal to say the least. Here are a few shots from my cell phone.


My pal, Juliana. She fixed me and I fixed her to be sure our pictures came out perfect.


They gave us a "drape" to put on. This picture is funny because we still had our scrub bottoms on. Ha.


This one is blurry but here's the Veterinary School Photographer. I think his name is Mr. Thompson.



I finished my Anesthesia rotation on Friday. When I got home, there were flowers waiting on me. :) Tyler and I went to a movie to relax and enjoy life before my 6 week "Small Animal Surgery" Rotation starts on Monday.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

It's been a LOOONG time.

Hello all out there who may still check my Blog. Its been too long. Since I last wrote to you, I have been through 6 weeks of "Food Animal Clinics," 6 weeks of "Equine Clinics," 6 weeks of break/jobs/externships, 5 weeks of "Radiology," 6 weeks of "Lab Services," and and now am on my 3rd week of "Anesthesia!" Wow its been a looooooooong time. So much has happened between then and now. I have learned so much and done so many things. I will attempt to summarize and share some fun things with you now.

Beginning where I left off (I'll try to limit one story per rotation, there is SO much I could talk about)....

"Food Animal Clinics"

This is where I discovered that I not only LOVE large animal Veterinary work, that is what I want to do when I grow up. Cows, Horses, Goats, Sheep, and Llamas. I don't especially like pigs but I could do it if I had to. More specifically speaking, I would like to do large animal ambulatory work. Basically, the Veterinarian travels from farm to farm instead of being pinned up in an office all day.

I also discovered that the Brahma Bull is my favorite bull. For no specific reason, its just in real life when you see one, and stand beside one.......its pure power. I have a funny story to go along with a Brahma Bull.

I took this picture from the internet as we are not allowed to take pictures at the college of veterinary medicine.

So, one day when we were in Clinics, one of the professors informed us that we had a Brahma Bull coming in for a hoof trim. When this bull came off the tailor and showed his snorting pissed off face at the gate....I was immediately in love. This bull registered in at 2,000lbs on the scale. He was one angry "son of a gun" too. He didn't want to be looked at, much less lead onto the squeeze chute for a hoof trim. We had DVM's jumping rails, hopping on bars, getting the cattle prod, and trying to lead him through the series of gates so we could pin him up in the hydraulic chute. (basically squeezes them up and we can turn them on their side to trim their hooves safely). This bull was charging at anything that moved, I was sure he was going to tear the place down. Well, brave little me decided to ask if I could help. I was instructed (by one of my favorite professors) to run to the pen we were trying to catch him up in and "act like a clown".....well, at first I thought he was joking. He wasn't. The pen they wanted to catch him in was huge but the bull had to round a corner and actually turn inside the pen before we could close the gate. I was told to stand on the opposite side and jump up and down and wave my arms like a clown to lour the bull into the pen. great. I wasn't about to say "no," I am tough, I can do this, I have to be impressive. (inside my mind I was saying "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh").

So I got myself a broom and ran to the pen. I was jumping up and down, up and down, yelling "here bull, over here" (it was a "had to be there moment"). I couldn't see over the big cement wall the bull had to come around to enter the pen so I had no clue where he actually was. All I heard was my favorite professor say...."The Bull is loose".....and I saw this HUGE, snorting, snotty, red eyed, angry 2,000lb bull's MONSTER head turn the corner. My heart dropped to my feet, "ohhhhhh crap this thing is coming towards me!" Well, to make a very long story short, I was jumping up and down, banging the broom on the gate, bout to pee my pants and this crazy bull was just looking at me...like "really, chic...you have lost your mind." My friend Merry was there too. She promptly got a sleeve of hay and said, "maybe this will work." I said, "I doubt it, he's pretty pissed off but you can try." As soon as he saw her with the hay, he walked into the pen, pretty as you please. HA!! This 2,000lb beast was a gentle giant that had just got himself all in a tizzy. We gave him food and water and let him chill in the big bull pen for the remainder of the day, the next day we got him into the chute and trimmed his hooves with no problems. I am IN LOVE with my profession. It's rumored that this story will follow me to my graduation day when I walk across the stage....guess we will find out in 2012.

We also had a bull get loose in the parking lot, but we'll save that story for another day. Its funnier if you hear it told in person. I got to do so many things on this rotation, I really wish I had kept up with my blogging so I could have told them all to you. I had many favorite professors during this rotation. This is a picture of my "ambulatory" group. We were up bright and early palpating cows for pregnancy.










"Equine Clinics"

I also loved this rotation. It was intense most of the time and a lot of hard work but it was worth it all. I learned so much. We got to do things like float teeth, watch surgeries, perform treatments, put in catheters, ect. I do have one picture to share from this rotation. I had a patient with a precious family. On the day they came to pick him up, they brought me an "angel" figurine and brought the Equine Department flowers. I thought it was sweet. I recently got to see them when they came in for a recheck, it was very refreshing to get to talk with them again.


"Break"

I had six weeks of break, I went home to SC and worked at Banfield, and with Dr. Stafford, and some with Dr. Outlaw. I do have some pictures of working with them. I enjoyed it very much. Of course Banfield was cool, but I was basically a tech and don't really have any cool stories to tell. While working with Dr. Stafford (Ambulatory Equine Vet), he let me do everything. Here are a few pictures from those two weeks.

My first suture job on a laceration!

Stapled this laceration.

My first standing castration.

Dr. Stafford himself. It was a pleasure to work with and learn from him. I can't WAIT to get back and do an externship with he and Dr. Outlaw.



This is Mowgli, my westie. She got a dental at Banfield while I was working there, this picture is her recovering from anesthesia.

One quick story, Dr. Stafford called Dr. Outlaw to see if he could wrangle up a couple of bull calves for me to castrate while I was home. Of course Dr. Outlaw knew a guy who knew a guy and before I knew it, I was in the ambulatory truck headed to a backwoods farm. When we got there, there were two 800 lb bull calves running crazy on the trailer, as well as a stallion (male horse) waiting on me to arrive. No stocks, no catch pen, no chute.....nothing. We castrated the horse first and that was uneventful but the bull calves were next. They were running loose and wild on the trailer.

Dr. Outlaw said he would be there to talk me through it, but by the time the bull calves broke the swinging door on the trailer, kicked one of the farm guys, pinned one man in the corner, and four men plus Dr. Outlaw had roped them up for me to castrate....Doc was on the tail jack and I was on my own....so I jumped on the trailer with the boys and did what I had to do. My heart was pounding out of my chest, but I had something to prove darn it and I did. LOVED every minuet of it! I can't wait to get out of this "Small Animal Stuff" in school and get back out there.

"Radiology" and "Lab Services"
I'm lumping these two together because this blog is getting long and there's really nothing special to say about these two rotations. Radiology is self explainatory where we take radiographs of the animals so that the doctors can make a proper diagnosis. Lab Services was necropsy. Its just like autopsy for humans. We open the animals up, and try to discover what killed them.

I am currently in Anesthesia......I'll try and keep this blog updated more frequently. Right now, this isn't my favorite rotation, but we'll see how it turns out. I enjoy it when I get to anesthetize horses. That's a lot of fun. Here's a youtube video kinda showing you what we do. This video is not of Mississippi State University, its just a random video I found to show you the routine. Until next time click here....... Equine Anesthesia.