Week 9:
Sunday was a day off to get laundry and errands done.
Monday was a strange day. I started the day with Dr. Jordan Kiviniemi-Moore but quickly switched over to Dr. Friend. The first few stops were mostly reproduction work. Dr. Friend injected a tendon sheath and a wind puff at our last official stop. Then we went to his farm. One of his horses had advanced moon blindness. We got to help with an enucleation procedure on it. I placed and sutured in a long-term catheter before we started. I helped tech the procedure. After we were done I got to dissect the eye. The lens had been ventrally luxated and was starting to break down. Right before we left, I got to tube another horse just for fun. It was a good day!
Tuesday was a pretty short day with Jordan. We did a fair amount of ultrasounding and lavaging. We changed the bandage from Friday's enucleation. The day ended with breeding 2 mares. That left me with time to finish my last blog post.Wednesday was closer to normal length. I rode with Jordan again.We checked and lavaged several mares. We did a pneumonia recheck on a foal. We did some recheck radiographs on a foal with a wing fracture. Jordan suggested that he get bar shoes to help reduce the motion in the hoof, so it could heal better. We took some radiographs of a foundered pony and a very arthritic pony. I pulled blood for a Coggins while Jordan looked an a potential hoof abscess. We scanned and bred a couple mares at our next stop. We finished the day looking at a horse that looked like it had been kicked in the side of the face. It didn't have any outward damage, just edema. He got a blast of anti-inflammatory agents.
Thursday was a pretty standard day of reproduction work. One of our last stops was interesting because no one spoke much English. They had to call their daughter several times to help with the language barrier. It was very difficult to figure out what was going on and decide how to help the horse. We ended up wrapping a leg and leaving them with materials to rewrap it the next day as well as antibiotics and Banamine. I can't remember what the complaint was though.
Friday ended up being a much longer day that the last few. I met with Jordan in the morning. We had to go to a couple of Friend's stops with him because his truck was still in the shop and he didn't have very many of his things. Those we mostly repro stops. We finally got started on Jordan's schedule 2 hours later than planned. The rest of the day was pretty routine. We saw a horse with a very sore back. He was suggested more time off. We saw an infection in the ear pinna of a horse. That was strange. It looked like there may have been some sort of wound that got infected. The owners had been treating with penicillin for a while. We also saw an ADR that ended up with extremely high eosinophils.
Saturday was a day off. Friend was going up to Michigan for a family vacation for all of next week. Hopefully things don't get too crazy.
Week 10:
Sunday was another day off. I ran some errands and found a laundromat since the girls across the driveway were both working. I forgot to work on this though.
Monday was an interesting day. We saw a lot of reproduction stuff but also 2 hoof issues. The first was an abscess that popped with hoof testers. The second was a nail that had stabbed horizontally into the frog. We scanned a couple foals for pneumonia rechecks. Both had improved but needed to stay on antibiotics for a little longer to finish clearing up the abscesses. We pulled blood for several Coggins tests. We collected a stallion. We finished up the day post-breed lavaging a mare we had bred in the morning.
Tuesday was a bit crazy. We were all over the place. We saw a couple of our normal stops, but we had a lot of sporadic stuff as well. We met a mare with a very interesting story. She temporarily moved to one of our daily stops for treatments. We took some staples out of a healed up knee wound. We looked at a little pony mare that had been in a fight and got her vulva and vestibule wounded. Jordan passed a urinary catheter to make sure the urethra was not involved. We looked at a deep digital flexor tendon strain. We ended the day with several dentals, vaccinations, and Coggins.
Wednesday was oddly short for a weekday with one doctor on vacation. We started with reproduction work and more dentals before the day got to its full heat. We had a couple more repro stops before we went to look at an eye. The poor old guy was blind. He had an ulcer under his lower eye lid. It seemed like he most likely ran into a low-hanging branch on one of the trees in his pasture.
Thursday was awful! Jordan volunteered to check a mare that was in the clinic for frozen semen a couple hours before we were planning to meet. She ended up having to do a foal exam too because the foal with the aforementioned mare had developed a fever and diarrhea since coming into the clinic. All of that took much longer than expected, so she pushed our meeting time back a little. Our first stop was routine repro. We came back to the north end of town to do more repro and dentals. Between the repro and dentals, we got a call from the clinic for a red bag on the south side. Thankfully, the clients got the red bag handled before Jordan called them directly. The down side was that as soon as we finished the dentals we had to go back to the south side for those clients instead of finishing our northern stops. The foal was super cute though! I spent the majority of the time there helping him stand and trying to help him find the milk. He was a little dysmature with his domed head and floppy limbs. The placenta was such a mess that we couldn't tell whether or not it was all there. It ended up being good that Jordan gloved up and went in to check. The mare had several decent sized chunks left in there. We ran a couple liters of saline through her uterus after Jordan got done feeling around and peeling off what she found. We used the Madigan foal squeeze to restrain the foal to get some blood for testing. He's definitely a feisty little guy. After being with them for 3 hours, we headed back to finish our northern repro stops.
Friday was a long day. Our first stop was pregnancy checks. Unfortunately, there were no babies to be found. We checked on the new foal from yesterday and did another lavage on the mare to rinse some more placenta out. We had a couple more repro stops. Then we saw a horse with possible kissing spine. We took some radiographs to see for sure. He was definitely not happy about pressure on his back. At 6 pm, we finally made it out to Friend's farm to check on some of the horses out there. One had been making some strange noises in the morning but wasn't doing it anymore. We took a blood sample to check for Thumps. Another had a heel bulb bruise. I got to do a lateral PD nerve block to be sure there wasn't anything else going on. The other vet student did the medial PD block. Another had a snotty nose. While we were trying to catch the third, we found a calf stuck in the mud. After we finished with the horses, we went to pull him out. Unfortunately, it had started raining and I got stuck. It took longer to get me out than the calf. Once I was free, the rain stopped. We found the calf hiding in the high weeds and took him over to the herd. None of the cows were interested in taking him, so we took him up to the barn to be a bottle baby. There was already another orphaned calf up there with spider calf syndrome.
Saturday was a day off. I ended up going home because one of my best friends was going to be euthanizing her puppy with a congenital kidney malformation. He got 77 more days with dialysis, but his body was getting worse.
Week 11:
Sunday was a decent day. I had a date day with my boyfriend and got confirmation of the end of a life before heading back to Lexington.
The meeting time for Monday morning kept changing. I barely woke up in time to make it. A mare on the clock for frozen semen was not cooperating and had to be checked early. Thankfully she had ovulated by the time we got there. It was almost worth getting up early to see the sunrise over that farm. We had to meet up with Friend again because his ultrasound is still out for repair and he didn't have a loaner. After all that, our day was pretty normal. We did a lot of repro and scanned a coughing foal. I brought the labs back so Jordan could take her Pilot to get the brakes fixed. I went out to Friend's farm to do some more learning on his horses. I tubed a horse again. I started taking the sutures out of the enucleation we did out there 2 weeks ago. I got to do a PD on a hind limb, which I think is much more difficult than the front. I got to palpate one of the old, retired brood mares. Her uterus is so saggy I can't hardly tell what I'm feeling at all. I think I found her right kidney and her spleen though.Tuesday, I was back with Jordan. We did a bunch of pregnancy checks. We did a lameness exam and injected both hocks. I got to do one of the injections. I grazed the saphenous vein just a tad. This time I was coming from the same side of the body. When I did one previously with Dr. Friend, I came across from the other side of the horse. I think I like that a little better, but it wasn't practical with this particular horse. He was very kicky. At the next stop, we lavaged a mare that went to the clinic with a dystocia on Friday night. The baby is gigantic! Jordan found a couple more pieces of placenta still hanging out in her uterus. We ran a bunch of saline into her as well. We ended the day taking the sutures out of the client enucleation we did about 2 and a half weeks ago.
Wednesday was another strange day with Jordan. Friend's loaner ultrasound went out, so we had to bail him out first thing. We flushed and scanned a couple of mares with him. Jordan and I left while the others were running plasma to and tubing colostrum to a newborn. We did some more repro and looked at some eyes.
Thursday was awesome! We all started the morning together since Friend still didn't have a working ultrasound. We did some scans, some lavages, and a breeding. We also tubed a foal to get some mineral oil. He has been having trouble defecating for a while, so he has gotten intermittent tubings for mineral oil. I went with Friend to his next stop. He took a screw out of a knee. We did one more palpation before we went to his farm. He had taken in an elderly horse for the purpose of education a couple of months ago. We had been poking, tubing, and palping her throughout the summer. This was her last day. She dealt with one more round of tubing and palpations before I put her catheter in and she was euthanized. One my turn palpating, I was able to find both ovaries, but I still couldn't find her saggy uterus. Jordan did a tracheotomy. We dissected her neck to see the relationship of the jugular and carotid artery. We did an enucleation. We dissected at least one of each type of joint in her legs. She was riddled with arthritis. We trocharized her cecum. We made a paralumbar incision and took out an ovary. Then we opened her all the way up to the sternum. We pulled out a bunch of her intestines to find her uterus and a kidney. We had so much fun and learn and reviewed a lot!
Friday, I rode with Dr. Friend. We had several of the normal repro stops. We microchipped a foal and examined it after reports of coughing. We went out to his farm. It was the other vet student's last day. Both of us got to float one horse's teeth before he left for a man weekend.
Saturday has been mostly a lazy day. I have gotten my laundry done and now I can check this off my to-do list.
I still can't believe this wonderful experience is almost over. I'm the only person left on the property. The girls across the driveway have all moved out. The other student who has been working in surgery left this morning. I suppose I'll have to be packing up soon.
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