Today I officially switched from orthopedic surgery to my second internal medicine rotation. And it was great. I only had one appointment at 1:30 and it was a cat who had heart problems, pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), and kidney problems. And, it was doing awesome. It's currently on no medications and doing well so we drew some blood to check its kidney values and sent it on its way!
One of my classmates had a real nice german shepherd with pneumothorax (air in its chest). When an animal has air in its chest, it makes it very difficult for the animal to breathe. They pulled air off its chest but it didn't take long and it was filling back up again. Unfortunately, the most likely cause in this dog was bullae which is when the a few air sacs near each other become weak and turn into a big balloon of air instead of little sacs and the bulla can then rupture and air flows from the lungs into the chest. The only way to fix this is to go in surgically and either cut out the bulla or remove the lung lobe that is affected.
I am also glad that I am not on surgery anymore because it looked like there was going to be up to 3 emergency surgeries going on tonight. So, while I study this evening and hopefully sleep peacefully in bed tonight, some of my classmates will be in the operating room. Guess I snuck out just in time!
This past weekend I gave a vet school tour to a bunch of Congerville folks. It was fun showing them around and they seemed like they enjoyed it well enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment