Diary of a Dick Vet

I’ve just finished my first week of EMS here in my hometown, at a busy and well-equipped 7-vet practice with forty staff members. It’s been quite a change from my UK experience, where there were three vets, four staff, and only a very small surgery with fairly minimal equipment. Aside from the change in size, there’s also new trade names to learn for the drugs and different methods in treating even the common ailments, and a few diseases and breeds you don’t find commonly in Scotland.

It’s a big busy practice and it’s been a challenge meeting and gaining the trust of the staff, but I’m starting to feel a little more settled in; everyone has been extremely friendly, but there is a gap between being the weird girl who stands and watches everyone and gets in the way, and the one who the techs are willing to help practice blood draws. I have two more weeks of practice to see and there’s a lot I want to try before I leave, so hopefully comfort levels will grow and they’ll let me do even more over time.

Of course, a few interesting cases have presented, including an injured deer and a small but critical anomaly in a routine bitch spay, that allowed me to watch an expert work under pressure. The dog was fine and was discharged the next morning. The deer had a sadder ending, but there is certainly some relief in knowing that it was humanely euthanized instead of falling victim to a predator due to its weakened state.

This week of EMS has really driven home to me how beneficial the program is. So far, I’ve seen many ‘foxtails’ or ’spear grasses’ that have managed to invade the ears, foot pads, nostrils, eyelids, and more unusual spaces of both cats and dogs. These tiny but painful foreign bodies are common to the area, particularly at this time of year, and while I was taught about foreign bodies and their removal in class, it was only briefly, before moving on to more interesting but less common diseases and ailments. EMS allows me to see and practice the day-to-day stuff, AKA the stuff I need to know, and not just the kind of problems you see in the referral setting. Removing the foxtail isn’t necessarily the difficult part, but learning to see the symptoms it tends to present with is useful.

Perhaps the most useful part of doing EMS back in the US? I think I might be getting my American accent back! The techs and vets said I sounded funny, but I think I’m starting to revert to my true accent. I must, however, stop saying ‘consultation’ and ‘qualifying’ instead of ‘appointment’ and ‘graduating.’ Bad habits die hard!

I just finished this pullover, and just in time, too! It’s knit in baby alpaca, making it far too warm to wear in California, so it will stay in the closet until I return. Oh well, at least it will be something to look forward to.

I’m really pleased with it. It may not be the most polished piece of work, but I added the waist shaping, re-designed the torso, and raised the neckline all by my little self, meaning it’s really modified to suit my figure. The snake-stitch pattern on the torso ended up pretty clean, as did the yarn-over holes along the shoulders and sleeves… I spent a lot of time working on this and a lot of time taking it apart to re-do what I didn’t like, but now it’s finished and I’ll be proud to wear it!

My exam is done, which is such a relief. For the week leading up to the event, I usually alternate between confidence and begging for just a few more days, until about 24 hours before, when I resign myself to destiny. This time, unfortunately, I spent just about every minute up to the exam trying to cram a bit more info (cf. knowledge) into my head, wishing I could just give up and spend the evening before the exam knitting. In hindsight, the tangle of thought I attempted to sort on that last day probably resulted in approxiamtely nothing, but I suppose it kept my conscious clean.

It’s nice to be out of my study-funk, although the aftermath is fairly brutal. Whereas other students tell me that their flat is never as clean as it is during exam week, I tend to live in the library from 10am to 11pm at night, so when I come home, I dump my notes on the desk and my throw my clothes on the floor and go to bed. Thus I have a disaster zone to organize; I have so much to do, it’s easier to just do nothing at all. But I want the flat to be clean before I head off to the States for five weeks, for the first half of my summer break.

Ah yes, summer. I have a few weeks of EMS scheduled at home with what looks like a really nice small animal clinic with lots of gadgets, a trip to Oregon for a Shakespeare Festival and a weekend in Yosemite, plus hopefully loads of time to browse the local yarn shops. I am bringing about 1400m of yarn with me to knit a cardigan, and hopefully I’ll make space for some more on the way back! Sadly, yarn is much cheaper in the US than in the UK, and while I love supporting independent dyers and British-based yarn companies, I can’t knit entire sweaters in Rowan or Debbie Bliss. Well, I could, but I could then afford to knit about one sweat a year…yep, it’s cheap US yarn for me. Looking forward to it!

I’ll try to remember to update about my EMS experience. I’m hoping I’ll get to try out some of the simpler surgeries and see some interesting cases, and add more check-marks to my list of procedures to accomplish before final year. Happy summer, everyone!

‘The uterus is the only Y-shaped organ in the body. It’s also the only one with ovaries at either end of it.’

Spoke by someone who has obviously (patiently) helped many-a student with their first bitch spay.

For any vet school wannabes out there, here is a taste of what you’re in for:

On Friday, I’m going to sit an exam with a few dozen multiple choice questions and four essays, pulled from five months of lectures.

PS My GI and Neuro notes are in a separate folder.

I have an ‘assessment’ on food health and safety tomorrow (causing me to skip my knitting group tonight, boo!) I’m not particularly jazzed about the topic, which makes studying even more tedious.

Veterinarians play a crucial role in providing safe animal products for the consumer, acting as an early notification system for disease outbreaks and preventing sick animals from entering the food chain. Farm animal vets frequently work in close association with local health authorities, and slaughterhouses require veterinarians on-site to identify diseased animals and to assess any obvious disruptions in carcass quality. However, within the world of vet school, which is mostly populated by students interested solely in small animal medicine, the role of the vet and public health safety is a terribly unpopular subject. Students who express actual interest in the topic usually meet raised eyebrows from their peers. It’s certainly a very unglamorous department, although obviously vital component of our education. Unfortunately, the great expense of employing veterinarians by health agencies means there is a general movement toward non-vets taking on more and more of the work, possibly to the disadvantage of the animals involved.

I do find food health safety moderately interesting, not at the level of creating ‘control’ strategies for meat processing, but in basic surveillance of emerging disease trends by the compilation of data from a network of veterinarians. Unfortunately, nowadays the majority of food-borne disease agents in meat do not actually cause sickness in the carrier animal, meaning the veterinarian is unable to identify them on the farm. Food inspection and proper processing and storage are the most successful methods of identifying unsafe animal products. Still, veterinarians prevent those diseases that infect animals and humans from crossing the line to the consumer. Safe meat, dairy, and eggs: brought to you in part by veterinarians!

I’ll be glad when I finish my exam tomorrow, because my cat and dog course is nearing a close, and that exam will demand a lot of attention. The assessment tomorrow is worth only a fraction of my overall grade for the class, which runs throughout every year in school except for final year, so there is more wiggle room for a less-than-passing score. Still, I don’t want to plunge my running total in the gutter and not be able to climb out!

The other reason I’ll be glad to finish this exam? Since reading so much about food safety over the past few days, I’ve become more concerned than usual about whether or not my own food is safe! I can’t wait to stop reading about outbreaks from seemingly safe food. It just takes a few bugs in the right environment….

How on earth (a) did break end, and (b) am I almost finished with the first week back? Exams are in a few weeks time, and I don’t know how I’ll learn all the new material and review the old stuff in the meanwhile! The perennial problem for the student, of course.

When I last left you, I had nearly completed a stunning first week of EMS. The second week was great as well, especially since the vet who did most of the operations was back from vacation. I was able to watch a femoral head and neck excision arthroplasty on a Border Terrier and a splenectomy on a Rottweiler before I left, have a good chat with everyone about the realities of working in a small animal clinic, and enjoy some good cuddles with lots of interesting pets. Success!

Sadly my scheduled trip to Holland/Belgium/Luxembourg was cancelled due to an unfortunate cloud of ash from some Northern neighbors, but at least I spent an extra week ’stranded’ in Edinburgh, rather than stuck in a foreign country, with no certain way of getting home. I spent my last week of sweet, sweet freedom knitting and watching The Mighty Boosh on DVD. As you do.

Some FOs:

My o w l s! This was my first proper sweater, and I would say it’s a good beginner jumper. Perhaps it wasn’t as challenging as I had originally anticipated because I was already confident with circulars, cables, and short-rows, but I still think anyone who can knit and purl can make this! The pattern is written wonderfully and is hugely popular on ravelry, and I’m proud someone who wrote something so fantastic is also a current resident of Edinburgh! I want to knit all of her designs (Manu is going to be my next ‘big’ project.) I’ve gotten several compliments on this sweater, which illustrates how knitted garments can truly be trendy and fashionable.

In addition, I found a way to use some of the lovely 4-ply I bought from Scottish indie yarn dyer Ripples Crafts:

It’s a very simply little shawl/wrap - I didn’t want a complicated lace pattern to obscure the colors in the yarn. I genuinely enjoyed knitting the the stockinette stitch base and then simple lace section, before finishing with some good old-fashioned garter. Garter - it’s coming back in, man. I have purposely photographed this from a distance, because upon closer inspection, it’s very, very obvious that I was off on some of my stitch counts, leading to a disruption in the lace pattern. You’d only noticed if you looked closely, and I’m going to let my amazing shawl be spoiled by details.

And finally, my pretty green hat. My wardrobe is unintentionally skewed green but my accessories are not, so this was a way to fill the deficit. The colorway is ‘Light Olive’ but it makes me think of lichen or moss, of damp forests and mushroom hunts with my dad when I was a teen. I call it my ‘Angwin Tam,’ and the yarn is 50% angora, 50% wool - it’s super-soft! I think I might buy another skein and knit some simple mittens to match, for next winter.

In addition to knitting my fingers raw, I also took a semi-impromptu day-trip to Thirsk, where the famous vet, James Herriot, had his surgery. All Creatures Great And Small is practically the bible for aspiring vets, and I’d been wanting to visit ever since I learned his old surgery is now a museum. The three hours of train journeys made it just far enough away to be someplace very different, but close enough to enjoy a full afternoon, arriving home in the early evening.

It was a very overcast day, but for a gal who lives in Edinburgh, the absence of rain is enough cause for joy. So forgive me if my photos are a bit gloomy and gray.

Donald Sinclair, aka Siegfried Farnon, vetted the Thirsk Races every year. I could just see the track, as I made the 20 minute walk from the train station to the town center.

On the front of Skeldale House

I was practically alone on my tour of the house. The guide at the entrance insisted that I take loads of pictures, and filled me in on many of the little details of the house, such as which pieces are original to the house, and sights that were directly referenced in the books. Wight’s widow was involved in the curation of the museum, so the house is a fairly accurate picture of how it looked in the 1940s. I couldn’t help but find the place a bit romantic, full of old charm, and a reminder of what vetting used to be. My absolute favorite room was the old dispensary, where James and Siegfriend mixed any number of strange brews for the farmers.

A real potions cabinet, full of 'Placentula or Cleansing Drink' and 'Oxygas for Udder Ill' and other strange wares. I wonder how vets 50 years from now will find our current pharmacies?

The consultation room for small animals

The cheerful kitchen

I doubt this tea cozy was originally in the house, but I'm still in love with it!

The back portion of the property included a short video on Wight’s life, and the car used in the television series. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the show and wouldn’t call myself much of a fan, but I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to sit in that sweet car. Sadly, no one was around to take a photo of me in it, so I had to improvise:

It's me!

Upstairs was a totally brilliant museum of veterinary medicine. I majorly geeked out, looking at the old instruments and reading about all the wonky things early vets used to do. I recognize that non-vets probably couldn’t care less about this, and since my tiny readership consists of my immediate family, and people from my knitting group who openly stalk me (hi, Jez!), there’s no need to detail all the photos I took, but I will share this beauty:

An old probang - used to retrieve potatoes and turnips lodged in the throats of cattle. It looks remarkably similar to the modern version, although the favored material is no longer leather. On a side note, it's a bit...wrong...that an instrument made from cow hide was shoved down the throats of other cattle to retrieve potatoes. I suppose it's not unlike using catgut in sheep!

In addition to the potato-grabber’, calving aids and castration instruments appear to have changed little in the past 100 years, and why would they? Those were skills based on experience and knowledge of anatomy, along with a bit of strength. The most important contribution to veterinary medicine (human medicine, too) has undoubtedly been antibiotics, and anthelminthics have dramatically improved welfare and production systems for food animals, but these don’t retrieve a stuck lamb or geld a horse. This was represented on the poster boards that guided the tour of the museum, but I imagine only someone involved in the vet profession would realize how humbling it is, after having a good laugh at the often useless potions at a vet’s disposal, that so much of this field hasn’t actually changed since the introduction of antimicrobials.

Okay, one more geeky thing:

A cat castration box - use your imagination. (Anesthesia is such a wonder!)

I spent about two hours exploring the museum, and loved every minute. I bought myself a few souvenirs and walked down the street to St Mary’s Church, which is a gothic-period church in really good condition. Its original windows had been destroyed during the Blitz, but this appears standard for most British churches; what makes it unusual is that one of these windows had been restored to near perfection. The inside was lovely:

View from the alter

There are a few more pictures on my flickr, especially of the vet museum, if you’re interested. Now I’m back in classes, and trying to relight that fire that led me to this place, to complete this course…with exams so frighteningly close, let’s hope I find my spark!

Howdy folks! I am very, very pleased to report that (a) I em enjoying my EMS at a small animal practice in town and (b) I have something vet-y to write about!

To be honest, I was a bit worried about starting EMS: I haven’t been enjoying classes very much this year, and I couldn’t tell if I was overwhlemed by everything, or I had fallen out of love with being a vet. Maybe, I thought, if I loved this more, I wouldn’t feel so exhausted all the time, or I wouldn’t catch myself losing focus in class and drifting off while studying. But being a vet and learning about how to be a vet are two very different things (’chalk and cheese,’ if you will), and I’ve realized that my disgruntled opinion about school does not extend to the actual practice of everything I’ve been learning. So that’s good.

I started my EMS on Tuesday, because they were closed for the UK public holiday of Easter Monday, so the first day after a long weekend was quite busy. I watched two cat neuters, several dentals, and an attempt at an insulin-response test on a very grumpy kitty during the morning operations period, then helped with consultations in the afternoon. The consultation room is incredibly small - room enough for a vet, and owner, and a pet - so I was a tight squeeze, but it was nice to get a chance to listen to a heart murmur, watch a puppy get a drip placed, and observe client-vet interaction. Sadly, a cat’s oral tumor had progressed so much that the decision was made to euthanize her that afternoon, so my first day included the most emotionally draining part of a vet’s job. However difficult this was to experience, I can’t help but see it as a learning experience.

Yesterday was marked with less sadness. There were the usual dentals, but also the removal of a retained testicle in a dog, and the oddly pleasurable experience of dematting an elderly cat. She was certainly dirty and her fur wasn’t fun to handle, but the end result was an entirely different cat. There was another cat (it was a feline-dominated few days!) that is being treated for a gastric lymphoma at the Vet School that needed bloods drawn to check that its chemotherapy was doing more harm than good, so I got to have an interesting chat about treatment options while reviewing a chemo drug. I also met one of the partner’s Border Collies, who spent all afternoon dropping his squeaky toy at my feet, desperate for an arm to throw it, despite being a bit sleepy from sedation after having an abscess lanced on his foot that morning.

There were no operations scheduled this morning and consultations ended at 10:30, so I’m back in my flat until 2-ish, when I go back to see a Great Dane and a Dalmatian and even more cats.  I’ve spent my free time organizing my summer EMS, which I’m looking forward to. This evening I will pop around to one of my knitting groups, which is conveniently located across the street from my practice, so I will still get a chance to work on the sleeve to a sweater I’ve been slowly building. Hopefully I’ll finish it before EMS is done, and there will be photos to share.

From a 12-year-old kid, while his 7 month-old puppy squirmed in response to a thermometer in its rectum: ‘he’s not used to having anything in there.’

Well, that’s probably good news.

The sun came out today (it was just about too warm for my heavy jacket!) and so did the camera. The crocuses are in bloom in the Meadows and in my front yard, and I can’t wait for the Daffodils next!

Flowers in the front yard

The Meadows

Everyone else seemed to agree that today would be perfect for hitting up the Farmer’s Market:

See that pretty blue sky?

During the winter, the Market is mostly full of butchers, fishmongers, and the odd baker, but there was some nice produce mixed in today:

I see the makings of a good omelette!

I bought an angus burger, which I planned on taking a close-up photo of - the kind that would upset a vegetarian while still appealing to their photographic eye - but I remembered my plan literally as the last bite of that beauty went into my mouth. It was tempting to order a second, but I managed to restrain myself. Instead I ducked into a Starbucks and bought an iced latte (thanks, family!) One day of sun and I act like it’s appropriate to get iced drinks! I stayed in the cafe and studied/knitted, then set off toward the Meadows again.

Indeed, the flowers are everywhere.

Of all the lovely things I saw and smelled and heard today, perhaps my favorite was the pencil case I bought to house my knitting supplies. Usually they kick around, haphazardly, in the bottom of my tote bag, which is pretty frustrating when I’ve just dropped a stitch and need a sturdy crochet hook to save the day. Anyway, it took fifteen minutes of rummaging through the bargain store, but in the back corner, buried under far more practical options, was this beauty:

Score!

Yep, I am well excited to show up to my knitting group on Wednesday with my new pencil case.