Yesterday - Rotation day! I started the term with Obstetrics, which was a 'self taught' rotation, where we 'learnt' the finer details of calving and fetotomies. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice to say it involved wheelie bins with holes cut in the bottom. Classic.

That afternoon, we ventured to Mary's where she made us kedgeree, a weird Scottish/Indian dish of smoked fish, egg and rice. Only the Scots could think up something like that - with a little friendly Indian input. It was surprisingly nice - an official version of Andrew's very successful smoked fish risotto that he made last year.

Hearts and Vodka

A quick nod to the vet-thing, today I learnt how to listen to a horse's heart (not a moment too soon!) and managed to identify systolic and diastolic murmurs (hooray for vet-school horses). The lady who runs the stable was surrounded by one gynaecology rotation, and our cardiology rotation, which lead to the phrase "are you here for hearts or bums?" Eurgggh.

In other non-vetty news, Alex and I are planning on creating chocolate vodka. It is a simple recipe involving cocoa nibs and vodka. Instructions as follows. 1) Mix nibs and vodka 2) Wait 3) Drink vodka. My sort of cooking (though I did make a champion Teviotdale Pie this evening if I may say so myself)!

T0ӎ

p.s. It was Alex's birthday on Tuesday, which means it's shout-out time. Happy birthday Alex!

Rectalling a box

Have just enjoyed a morning's rectalling. It was a fantastically laid back, yet hugely useful rotation. We started off looking at post-mortem reproductive tracts (as a crash revision course), and had a go at some bovine rectal examination through plastic boxes with holes in! This was surprisingly useful - you could lift the top off to check you were doing it right, and they even had plastic pipe vulvas! Nothing was left out... except animation I suppose. Apparently Glasgow have virtual reality rectalling systems, but I'm not sure I believe this [I later discovered this to be true - see above]. Mary's brother has just started there though, so I shall get her to enquire about this. Rich took great pleasure in reaching inside the top of the boxes and grabbing James' hand when he least expected it - "It's the fetus!" I helpfully added.

Then we had coffee, and advanced to real horses, which I rectalled (and tail bandaged sucessfully - oh yeah, I rock the horsey world now I've passed my basic horse-handling exam!), and managed to find all the useful bits that lady-horses have.

Yes, it may look like a home-for blue-tits, but this is, infact, a schematic drawing of our cow-boxes. Hand goes in top hole.

Small Fluffies

Today I was less muddy than your average common-or-garden vet student as I was playing with small fluffies. I handled rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, guinea pigs, degus, chinchillas, ferrets, tortoises, corn snakes, bearded dragons, salamanders, skinks, and tarantulas.

• Most surprising: Bearded Dragons - much softer than skaly skin and spines suggests
• Nastiest: Hamsters - I held one hamster, and then another. The second was convinced my hand was the other hamster and sniffed, sniffed, sniffed and then nibbled. Little sods.
• Best pet: Guinea pig all the way

Rabbit!

Rabbit!

Apparently this is the 1st thing you are supposed to say at the start of a new month. According to Tom T. I just stick with the reliable "Pinch-punch" - never fails (except when I forget).

This week has been tiring, not least because I've done two post-mortems (at about 4 hours each, spending the entire time standing up, it's quite surprisingly knackering, along with a 6-lecture day on Tuesday, and a late-night lambing shift on Wednesday. PM was quite good fun, even though our animals were lacking in anything obviously diagnostic. Nevermind - it was a good opportunity to have a good look at normal.

Also, saw Juno yesterday - a good film, and 85% happy as I described to Andrew.

PM

I spent this morning in the post mortem room, post morteming a cat. It was very interesting, but unfortunately it showed fewer lesions than we expected which meant, while we got a good chance to see what normal should be, we had nothing exciting to write up. Hopefully we'll have more luck on Wednesday!

Frost and Horses

This morning was incredibly frosty (see poor quality phone picture taken on the way home when most of the frost had melted). I mean, REALLY frosty. Frost everywhere. White frost. Frost frost frost. Anyway, you get the idea. It was cold, and I had to venture out to the stables for an equine clinical exam technique session. It was interesting, and I learned many exciting techniques (can finally hear gut and respiratory sounds!), but I also lost all the feeling in my fingers, which made finding pulses tough. Infact, it was so cold it was generally quite hard to find the horse. Plus I got used as a scratching post by beachball (which involved me being regularly butted across the stable by a pony - how embarrassing), and getting bitten by sway, who took a good go at my forearm with her twisted teeth. Pretty painful I must say! Luckily the huge number of layers I was wearning kept my blood (and hand) where it belonged.

One bucket of welly sanitiser, £5
One digital thermometer, £3
Stethoscope, £60

Fondling a ram's testicles* at 10am in the morning, priceless.

*strictly for veterinary examination purposes.

Have just been to my second consultation skills seminar, which this time involved taking a fake consultation with an actor lady (sometimes known as an actress) and a toy cat, infront of a video camera. Pretty scary you think? Well, actually, you'd be right. We each took a small part of the consultation, so were only required to talk for around 3 mins max - I unfortunately had the wonderful job of telling the lady what we'd 'found' on clinical exam and list the possible options that we could take from there. I got a little verbal diarrhoea and spouted at her, so didn't do a fantastic job, but you live and learn - was well worth doing. The actress was very good, though she didn't have a massively tough role to play, just stand there and seem concerned about her cat, though she did have to reveal information to us bit by bit, and obviously had quite a meticulously planned case history hidden away. I think next time we get "angry clients", which will be... interesting!