Hey all, sorry it’s been a while since my last post! A few weeks ago my schedule was switched up, so now I get to split my time between the ICU and the field. On Mondays I get to work as an assistant for Dr. Lori, who sees a mixture of general practice appointments. It’s been a really great opportunity to see a lot of variety, from lameness evaluations and suturing wounds to radiographing a fractured cervical spine. Dr. Lori is also great to work with, and he’s been really cool about letting me do a lot of hands on stuff.
On Wednesdays I get assigned to a different doctor to shadow every week. A few weeks ago I got to work with Dr. Story, who does a lot of chiropractic and acupuncture, which is something I wasn’t very familiar with before this summer. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what acupuncture actually is and does (at least I know I had some!). There are several different approaches to acupuncture, one of which involves harmony, balance, yin and yang, etc. However, the western medicine approach to acupuncture utilizes nerve stimulation to help with a variety of conditions from musculoskeletal pain to colic. In horses that will tolerate it, electrical stimulation can be combined with the needles to intensify the effects.
On Fridays I get to float around the hospital, or if there isn’t much going on I usually end up helping in ICU. However, a few weeks ago I was able to sit in on an olecranon fracture repair surgery. The olecranon is part of the ulna, which is essentially the point of the elbow. It was really interesting to watch the surgeons implement all of the techniques for fracture repair that I just learned about in our Musculoskeletal course last semester, but that I had never seen in person before. The horse recovered from surgery well, and despite an episode of colic that ended her up in the ICU for a few days, she is now doing very well and bearing full weight on her leg.
Outside of the clinic I’ve been keeping myself a little too busy, which is part of the reason I haven’t posted in so long. Denver is incredible and I’ve been able to explore a lot of the city as well as take myself on a few adventures on the weekends, my most recent of which was skydiving last weekend! This whole summer has been such an incredible opportunity to gain both medical experience and life experience, and I’m trying to take advantage of as much as I can since this will be my last summer break before graduation (and really, my last summer break ever).
I’ll try to post a few more times this week to fill in the gaps, so stay posted!
Kiva
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