Theriogenology

I am on my next rotation: theriogenology, or in laymans terms, how to make things reproduce as fast as possible.

ok, maybe that's a biased view, but honestly I am morally opposed to 90% of the this rotation. It has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with--the first few days I was going from rage to tears inside--why am i on this rotation?!?! dear god?!?!

because it's required. Funny thing, our clinician said this rotation is required so we gain skills (mainly cattle palpation skills) for ambulatory--another required rotation where we ride around with a large animal vet. But i have set up a different ambulatory rotation in commercial poultry medicine. When i told our clinician that he asked "then why are you here?"

that's the question i ask myself every day.

Earlier in the week we worked up two male german shepherds who were not producing sperm. As theriogenologist, our goal is to find out why they aren't producing sperm and fix them so they can breed again. my answer is NEUTER!!! there are too many animals dying in shelters every day--i honestly don't give a $&*% about breeders and would love to spay/neuter every one of their animals.

The rest of our time we spend doing large animal stuff. mainly cattle palpations. "what is cattle palpation?" you may ask. Palpating cattle is where you stick your arm up a cows rectum (what i'm doing in the picture at the top) and find the ovaries to find out what stage of estrous or pregnancy they are in. It's a routine practice done on every single dairy cow and makes me want to become vegan. Cows tolerate it ,but they don't like it.

*sigh* i'm now in my defeated-tolerating stage and am trying to focus on the few cases we talk about that involve an actually sick animal. Trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel; meanwhile i'm forced to molest cows so i can get my license......

Necropsy!

So now i'm back from the emergency center. It was a good rotation over all. I learned some things and got to meet a bunch of people. I also got to work with the only avian specialist in the state so that was awesome! The only downside is that it's mostly interns and residents, so I didn't get to do as many things as I did at the first center--because they're all learned too.

Now I'm back at school and on necropsy rotation. A necropsy is like an autopsy, but on animals. It's not something I get very excited about, and I wasn't enthused going into this rotation, but I did get to do a necropsy on a cockatiel and a whooping crane this week--so that was awesome!! I also helped with a cow necropsy and did most of a horse necropsy by myself! It's morbidly festive! haha It's kind of a rough adjustment--as students were used to being very careful when having an animal open for a surgery--delicate tissue handling, taking your time, etc. But here, it's all SLASH and RIP! literally! I had no idea was i was cutting but the clinicians kept telling me to keep going! Big knife in hand, horse leg up in the air, i'm hacking off the leg, ripping into the abdominal cavity, slicing up the spleen and digging out the brain.

At least this rotation is appropriate for the season;)

surreal

The other day at the emergency center a dog came in with a pretty much pathognomonic posture called schiff-sherrington. He was recumbent (laying down) with his front legs stiff in an extended position and his hind legs were limp with flaccid paralysis. Essentially it means he has a spinal cord lesion where the thoracic vertebra meets the lumbar vertebrae--midback. As we talked to the owner and got set up for radiographs to diagnose it, we watched his signs get more severe--his legs got more stiff, he lost all reflexes in his hind limbs and his head started to bend backwards in what's called opisthotonus, another sign of schiff-sherrinton. We radiographed him and sure enough, his vertebrae had fractured right at the thoracic-lumbar junction, almost completely severing his spinal cord.

The surreal part was that I had studied schiff-sherrington the night before. It was almost creepy.

There is no treatment (not even palliative) for schiff-sherrington, so the dog was humanely euthanized. The owners were distraught--they had no idea how this had happened--the dog was outside on a line and the owners had gone inside for a few minutes only to return and find him like this. Sad story:(

OREOS!

just break complicated topics down into terms of food or beer and i understand

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/


stupid war....