monkeysvsrobots.com » Things I’ve Learned Thus Far in Vet School: Volume VI

Well, I’m about 2 weeks into my last summer vacation EVER! That’s a very sad thought. I just finished my second year of vet school, and this past quarter was not too bad. I had enough free time to play polo every week, and even some weekends (and by the way, in the MvsR Gallery there is a section from a couple of polo tournaments. See if you can find me!). I had more than 7 days in a row that I did not have to study for exams. I got to spend my evenings watching much more TV than I have in a while. So, all-in-all, it was a pretty good quarter. I took way more classes at once than I have ever taken before; something like eleven or twelve. But some of them were ½ quarter classes, so I didn’t take more than 6 or so at a time. And I still managed a higher GPA this quarter than I have seen since the good old days at Hartwick. It’s also getting more interesting, because we are starting some medicine courses that teach how to recognize, diagnose and treat various diseases. So I learned all sorts of stuff on cardiac and respiratory systems of dogs and cats. Unfortunately, though it is incredibly interesting to me, it doesn’t translate well into sound-bite type stuff that works well in this format, so most of that stuff won’t be included here. We also had some interesting classes like Toxicology, Zoonoses and Food Safety, which produce lots of interesting factoids; I just hope to remember them.

This summer I am doing research again. It is a project that was proposed by my sister (an epidemiologist) and I had to apply for a grant and everything. It should be good, I am really interested in it, but people’s eyes tend to glaze over when I talk about it, so I’ll take the hint and not go into detail here. It probably won’t make good MVSR article material, but I will be trying to publish it in a scientific journal when it’s done.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now, and get on with it!

I have a confession to make. I had never read the James Herriot books until this year. So I finally started reading the series, and I discovered that the clients are all the same. The Herriot books take place in the 1930s and 1940s, and the people complain about the same thing, obsess over the same stuff, and are just as loony as they are now. It is very reassuring. I feel like maybe the world is not going crazy . . . naw, it probably is. I think someone should create a TV show all about the crazy side of vet practice, so that the general public understands exactly what we put up with, and why we are so happy when a levelheaded, rational person walks into the hospital.

I learned to intubate and anesthetize a dog this year; I placed my first endotracheal tube, and catheterized my first dog. It was cool. Next year comes spay and neuter surgeries!

I learned some interesting stuff from our Food Safety instructor. Like that he doesn’t advise washing vegetables or fruits, because it doesn’t do any good anyway. And that washing something like a raw turkey in the sink just aerosolizes the pathogens and you increase your exposure to nasty bacteria. Oh, and that mayonnaise is really so acidic that not much grows in it, even at room temperature, and that its not really the cause of all the food poisoning that people say it is. I still refrigerate my mayonnaise and wash my veggies. I guess I didn’t learn much.

I learned some interesting things in Toxicology. I always knew that Oleander leaves were toxic, but I never realized that as few as 10 leaves can knock down a cow or horse in a very short amount of time. I then discovered that there are Oleanders growing all around my apartment complex. Oh, and that one woman managed to kill multiple husbands by brewing Oleander tea, and that some frat boys ran out of wood during a BBQ and scrounged up some old leaves that they had lying around and used them for fuel. There was enough Oleander oil in the smoke produced that it soaked into the burger they were cooking and one person died. Also, Macadamia nuts appear to be slightly toxic to dogs. If they eat enough of them, it causes vomiting and some other problems, but it’s reversible. Sago Palm however, can be lethal in small doses. One or two nuts can kill a small dog. And don’t feed old dairy products with mold on them to your dog; the molds can produce tremorgens, which can produce tremors and seizure-like activity in dogs. Also, some grain molds make vomitoxin, which does exactly what it says it does.

The scariest thing that I learned from tox was that there are blue-green algae that can produce such a potent toxin that a small amount of ingested algae can kill a dog in about a half hour. So don’t let your dog go swimming in scummy, stagnant water, because there is nothing a vet can do once the dog is symptomatic. Usually they die before they manage to get to a vet. Also, if you are into herbal remedies, be very careful about any algae supplements you take. A lot of that stuff is collected from one lake in Oregon, and it is not regulated at all. You cannot tell just by looking at blue-green algae whether it is the type that produces these toxins (and there are multiple ones). You have to look at the algae microscopically and test for the specific toxins. And like I said, there is no regulation on this stuff right now, but you can bet the first people to die will bring it on.

Boxer dogs, as a breed, are prone to some of the worst diseases. Beyond the mast cell tumors and lymphoma, which they get with alarming frequency, they even have a type of heart disease named after them: Boxer cardiomyopathy. One of the symptoms is sudden death. So if you are going to get a Boxer, know which diseases the breed gets (this holds true for all purebred dogs) and make sure your breeder has screened the parents for them.

Zoonoses are a fun topic. For instance, did you know that cats get rabies more than dogs now? It’s because people are more likely to vaccinate their dogs than their cats. So vaccinate your cat for rabies, even if indoors because bats and other wild potentially rabid animals can get indoors. Just ask Hollywood, he had a (presumed) rabid possum invade his basement and knock on his kitchen door once. And plague is endemic to the Lake Tahoe region of CA and NV, and it can infect your cat (via a squirrel/chipmonk flea) and then if it becomes respiratory (pneumonic plague) it can be passed to people. In fact, you can get much scarier things from cats than you can from dogs and reptiles combined. Birds can give you a couple of scary diseases, but you usually have to be immune compromised to get them.