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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Internal Med Day 5

Yesterday my fourth year and I did not have a case initially but actually ended up with one since one of the other fourth years got bit by the cat that was her case.  So, my fourth year and I inherited the cat.  It had what appeared to be an ulcer in its mouth, right on the side of its tongue.  However, upon sedation, it was found that it was more like a growth/tumor.  An FNA (fine needle aspirate: a needle is stuck into the tumor and then whatever cells/fluid that comes out is examined under the microscope) was taken and it looked kind of like it may be lymphoma but they weren't sure.  Lymphoma is a type of cancer involving lymphocytes, important cells of the animal's immune system.  When I left yesterday, it still had not been determined what the actual cause of the tumor was.  Yesterday afternoon, my classmates and I took turns presenting a case to one of the faculty members. After that, it was finish up any work that had to be done and then head away from school.

Last night, I even got to eat dinner with my sister Heidi!  She is out here with a group of girls from Connecticut and we had dinner together in Champaign.  It was nice to see her even if for just a short while!

This morning I was up at 6AM and to school for 7AM to help with a couple cases that were at school in the internal medicine department.  I was the only second year there so I got to help a couple different fourth years.  I even got to do my first saphenous vein blood draw on a dog.  The saphenous vein is the vein that runs along the lateral (towards the outside) side of the dog's back leg.  When we were done there I ended up popping into ER because I saw they had a neurologic cat coming in and asked if I could hang out and watch/help out.  They were more than happy to have me help out as they were short on people.  The cat came in and was almost unresponsive. It ended up being euthanized.  Also, a dog came in with a swollen belly.  We did some blood work and found that the dog had an extremely low platelet count.  Platelets are the fragments of cells in an animal's blood that help form a clot when a blood vessel is broken.  When the platelets are very low, it is hard for the animal to make a clot so they have a tendency to bleed.  For those that are interested, this condition of having very low platelet levels is called thrombocytopenia.  Thrombo: clot, cyto: cell, penia: decreased/low levels.  We also did an abdominal ultrasound and found numerous masses on the liver and some on the spleen.  There was also a considerable amount of free fluid in the abdomen which was presumed to be blood as the dog was also anemic (low levels of red blood cells in the blood). However, we did not tap the abdomen (take a needle and put it into the abdomen to see what kind of fluid was actually in there) due to the dog's tendency to bleed.  This was obviously bad news and the owners decided to take the dog home on some pain medications and when the dog started to suffer, they would have it euthanized.  So, I'm not sure if it was me or what, but the three or four hours I spent in ER ended in death sentences for two patients!  I was really glad that I stayed and took part in the procedures and the people in ER were really glad I was there to lend a hand!

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