Changing of the guard

The interns I spent the first part of my fellowship with recently finished out their year here.  While they are all happy to be moving on to other things, they were glad for their experience at LEqMC.  You hear a lot about internships and residencies at school, but it was nice to here an insiders perspective.  They agreed, the internship made them much more confident about their skills, and they felt much more ready to go out into practice than they did after graduation.  Not everyone who goes for an internship is planning on doing a residency; you just have to find an internship that gets you ready for what you do want to do.
Just as we said goodbye to the old interns and welcomed the new, things suddenly became very busy here at Littleton Equine.  We have had quite of few colic cases come in for management in ICU.   One Arabian mare came in with severe gas distention making the doctors suspected a torsion.  In the time it took to get permission to take the horse to surgery, however, the horse passed most of the gas.  She stayed in ICU for a couple days but did not show any further signs of improvement.  The doctors began to think she may have sand colic since she was housed in a sandy pasture.  When a horse eats off sandy ground, the sand settles in the ventral colon and can gradually build up and cause an impaction.  I did not get to see it, but the mare was taken to surgery, and the surgeons removed several gallons of sand from her ventral colon.  She has been recovering very well so far.  She receives psyllium to help her pass the remnants of the sand.  Sand colic is relatively uncommon in this region, but this case is a good reminder to take the horse's individual living conditions into account.