My final week at BEH and coming home to Michigan

I finished up my last week at Brown Equine Hospital on Friday and have made it safely back to Michigan.  I cannot believe how quickly the 12 weeks went by, and how much I learned.  It was interesting circle for me:  On my first day, I watched from the sidelines as Dr. Hackett and Dr. Brown performed two separate castrations in the surgical suite.  I was nervous and felt out of place since I was not accustomed to the hospital at that point.  On my last day at BEH, feeling much more at home, I scrubbed into one last procedure (a tie-forward) with Dr. Hackett and Dr. Brown and even sutured together the subcutaneous layer of tissue.  Look at that progress! In both my first and last weeks at BEH, I also observed several ventricular cordectomy procedures.  I still can't believe how much I learned and how comfortable I became with the procedures at the program continued.

The interesting case of the week was a fetlock arthrodesis, which is the fusing of the fetlock joint by scraping away the articular cartilage and prohibiting movement of the fetlock with a plate across the joint.  This patient had foundered and then developed severely contracted tendons that caused him to knuckle over at the fetlock.  In order to straight the joint, the distal end of the cannon bone was shaved down, and then a plate was placed over the front of the cannon bone and 1st phalanx spanning the fetlock joint. This is not a very common procedure and is very technical and time consuming; Dr. Brown was working on the patient for about 5 hours!  After finishing the procedure, a cast was applied and we waited for the patient to recover.  Even walking back to his stall after surgery, the patient was walking MUCH better.  This made us optimistic that the horse will be able to live a more comfortable life.

Our patient's leg before surgery

Radiograph of the limb before surgery

Putting the final screw in the plate during surgery

Post-op radiograph: Note how much straighter the fetlock is than before surgery

I am so thankful for the opportunity to work at Brown Equine Hospital and further my education.  Doctors Keith and Jennifer Brown were so generous to have opened their clinic to me, and I also met some amazing, knowledgeable, and dedicated technicians who taught me many invaluable skills. I would also like to say thank you to Dr. Schott at MSU for helping organize the Equine Fellows Program.  We (the students) are so grateful for the opportunities to learn from such amazing MSU CVM Alumni.  Now that I'm home, I will be spending the next few weeks relaxing before classes start at the end of August.  Thank you for reading about my adventures at Brown Equine Hospital!