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.

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.

I cried for the first time so far in Clinics..........

Of course I didn't allow anyone to see, and thankfully I had on sunglasses so it covered my red face and watery eyes. We responded to a call this afternoon that involved a horse who had been fed too much sweet feed. This horse presented with the stance pictured above, as well as dehydration, bruxism (teeth grinding--symbolizes pain), increased heart rate, in-ability to stand on three legs when asked to raise the front feet and so on.......all of these signs point to

LAMINITIS

If you knew me about 5 years ago you would know why this is a sad case for me. I was taking riding lessons from "Kinsey Paint & Quarter Horses." After a few months of riding and training, I performed in a "fun day," which was nothing more than all the trainees getting together and having fun racing barrels, running poles, roping, ect. Well, at this show I won Dixie. That's what I named her. She was beautiful!




She was the filly of Mr. Mike's prized horse "Bit O Olympia." I was so happy to have won her. She was my first horse! I had always wanted a horse but my parents wanted me to get riding lessons first to be sure I was interested enough. Well, of course Dixie and I were best friends for a short while. One day, her feet were being trimmed and while this was happening, Dixie freaked out a little and threw herself down. She broke her shoulder. We took her to UGA Vet Hospital, they did radiographs, and gave her a guarded prognosis. We were instructed to keep her in a 12x12 stall, keep her feet wrapped, provide water, and hay, and keep it deeply bedded with shavings. My parents and I cared for her for what seemed like years (really it was only a few months). We scooped her pen, cared for her "bed sores," kept her brushed and as happy as we could.

She was doing great until the day she presented with laminitis. She was acutely "down" and would not get up. We tried what we could, but when we called the Vet out, he said there was nothing he could do. We euthanized her while her head was in my lap. It was, and still is the worst feeling I have ever felt. There was nothing I could do, after I had worked so hard for so many months. It's still very painful to think about. I am thankful that I had such supportive parents who were willing to take her to UGA Vet School, and who were willing to get down in the ammonia smelling shavings to clean my horse and treat her wounds with me, and who were willing to call a friend to bring a front loading bulldozer to dig a hole in the pasture to place her. I couldn't stand the thought of having her dragged away. I still believe this was one of the main reasons I continued to want to be a Veterinarian.

This is an example of a laminitic hoof.

There are two types of laminae in the horse's foot. The sensitive laminae attached to the pedal bone and the insensitive laminae attached to the inner hoof wall. The function of the laminae is to bind to each other and to keep the pedal bone suspended within the hoof capsule and to allow for normal hoof wall growth over the stationary bone. Laminitis is inflammation of the sensitive laminae of the hooves. Basically the suspension of the pedal bone (pictured here between the arrows), gives way and the bone sinks down, eventually poking through the sole of the horse's foot. Once this occurs there, is nothing you can do to save the horse, if you do not euthanize, the horse will not be able to walk and is in immense pain. To reference one of my favorite quotes "With a true appreciation of life, comes the responsibility of ensuring a humane death" -Pam Hullinger, DVM. The failure of the mechanism can be caused by many things. In Dixie's case it was that all her weight was being distributed to her opposite limb, to try and take the pressure off the broken shoulder. The extra weight was too much to bear for one limb and the suspension mechanism failed. In the case of the clinic horse, he had too much grain to eat---the grain killed the normal bacteria in his gut---the bacteria released endotoxin---this all compounded to cause decreased blood supply to the hoof and thus, the mechanism failed. There are many other causes of laminitis and some aren't even fully understood.

So, as we were practically carrying this horse up the hill from the pasture to his stall, I was holding back many tears, as the memories came rushing back; the times we hoisted Dixie up just so she could get out of her own feces, moving her around so the sores wouldn't be so severe in one place, treating and spraying her with fly spray, hand feeding her because she couldn't stand to eat, praying, crying, begging that she be spared....she was my first horse for goodness' sake!! There was a boy involved with the clinic case, who had been coming to feed the horse and the mistake had been made where the boy fed the horse as well as the owner. The horse had also not been fed everyday consistently. It was a sad situation, because I could put myself in his shoes. We treated the horse as best we could, and we are just hoping and praying that the pedal bone has not dropped too far to be saved.

P90X

We've started it! I hope it works. We have the entire package with all 13 videos and the nutrition guide. The food is actually good, its just whether or not one actually has time to cook all that it calls for. We started this thing on Sunday of last week, so far we have been doing good and only two videos have killed us. I'll keep you updated. By the end, we'll either be ripped or proven to be procrastinators. :)



Chef Salad

Salmon, Rice, Asparagus (soooooo good!)

Cows and Poop

I have started clinics! I am in the Food Animal Rotation now. I have two weeks in Ambulatory, two weeks in Clinics and two weeks as "back-up."

Currently I am three days into my Ambulatory trips. I am LOVING it!!! Ambulatory is when the Veterinarian actually goes out to the farm and does work. So far we have gone to the MSU Dairy to palpate cows. We were checking to see if they were pregnant or not. We also "bleed" cows, which, in this case we drew blood from the tail vein.

We drew blood for Johne's testing. This disease causes watery diarrhea in cows. It does not appear until later in life, even though the cow could have been infected at an early age. One of the reasons its a huge problem is because it decreases milk production over the life span of the cow. We test for Johne's because it adds value to cows sold from a "Johne's" negative herd, as well as insures the buyer he will not have problems with this disease later on in life.

Example of drawing blood:

http://lhvsinc.com/BioPRYN/tail-bleed.asp

After we bled the cows we palpated them for pregnancy. Usually with Dairy breeds, cows are artificially inseminated according to a program known as Ovsync. Basically it gets all the cow's cycle's on the "same page" so that they all come into estrus at the same time, all breed at the same time, and all calve at the same time. It was a lot of fun palpating the cows for pregnancy because depending on factors such as....

• uterine horn size
• uterine muscle tone
• placentome size
  
• the uterine artery size
• and "membrane slip"

one can actually tell how far along they are in their pregnancy. Monday, I didn't really feel anything while inside the cow. There was a lot of poop and it was really warm....that was about it. Today while, palpating I actually felt all the structures, and by the end of the day, my professor was allowing me to tell him which horn the cow was pregnant in (which side). Of course, he was checking before me, and doing his exam....he just didn't tell me right or wrong until I had an estimate. I had poop in my boots, hair, on my face, and all over my coveralls but I had a blast!!!

Example of palpating:

http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/fieldservice/Dairy/perepro.htm

In the truck on the way to the Farm and back our professor is quizzing us. He calls it "rounds" time. We get asked questions on what we are doing that day, the physiology behind it, things about dairy production medicine, drugs, injections, "days pregnant," and any other management questions he can think of. He expects us to know it all, but does a great job of walking us through the steps of reasoning it out in our head. I am loving ambulatory so far, and know that when its time to switch I might not want to. I know for SURE I will not be ready to move on to the next rotation. The DVM's here in Food Animal and the staff are so laid back and helpful.

I did not take any of these pictures. We are not allowed to take pictures. I simply found some on the Internet that were similar to what we were doing to give you, and idea about my tasks.

http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/nov09/091115j.asp

Flowers and Veggies

Here are some of my Spring/Summer flowers. They are just so pretty and exciting!


Dahlia's

Daffodil

When I first planted my squash plant.



Squash plant now.


Squash blooms


Wisteria


My make-shift garden




Mowgli can't stand it when I go outside without her.


Tyler made me this flower garden, We trimmed the bushes that was already there, planted little Iris and Dahlia bulbs (will come up next year), and he bought me the cutest little Humming Bird feeder! I love it!



Pepper Plant


Cucumber....its much bigger now

UPDATE: Army Veterinary Corps

Here is the skinny on what is going on........

I really don't know to be exact. I got a call from the recruiter last week, and was told that "The Board" had met and made their decision. However, all "yes'" and no's" were being held until the "Security Clearance" came back.

Our applications were turned in two days before the board met, so there was not time to get the background check and security clearance completed. My recruiter's office is in Jackson Mississippi, his office covers TN, AL, and MS. I found out on Facebook that a girl from LSU's Veterinary school has already been accepted. So now we know there are only 4 scholarships left. I am not sure how many were dispersed across the rest of the Country. All we know is there were 6 from the three states my recruiter's office covers, and all those are on "hold" until mid-May, when the background check is complete.

I will keep you updated as soon as I know!