Last year

So i am approaching my last year of my veterinary program (that is if i've passed all my final exams). Alot has happened this year and I am hoping that it is for the better.

I am currently in my week of "rest" before the hectic life of internship.

I finally see the end of the tunnel and I can't wait to graduate and finally get on with my life.

Wish me luck! I will try and update any interesting cases I will get here (if i have the time).

I think this internship will be life changing and that I will lots of experience to help me when i step into the real world.

I am lucky to have met all the people I have met so far, and I wish the best for everybody.

A dream i had...

So today i had a horse practical exam which involves catching a horse in the yards and putting a halter and lead on.

The dream i had the night before was about this horse exam...

I was told to get my horse...and as i walked towards the yard where my horse was..there were crowds of ppl dressed very posh like royal people....i guess they are dressed like in the races.....with nice hats and stuff, like in 'My Fair lady'.

Anyhow, whilst walking through all the crowds to get to my horse, for some reason Angela Lansbury was in my dream and she was very nice and gave me a nice hug and greeted me with cheek kissing. At this point, i got very excited, because I remember my mom loved her in "Murder She wrote" so i wanted to get a picture with her, but for some reason my camera phone was very dim....

And then somehow, i just left and realised i wasn't even holding a halter and lead rope to catch my horse! so i went to the fence which looked like tables with the game Balderdash on it, so i had to move the tables to get out. This is when my examiner looked at me funny, wondering where my horse was....and I had to tell him that i need to go get the halter first...

Thats when i woke up...

Is that stress or what??

=P

Oh and by the way, i passed the exam =)

Last Semester!

So, I have finally reached the "end point" of my veterinary program. I can finally see the end of all this "studying" (even though technically i will be studying for the rest of my life with this degree)
I am starting to get fed up of all this studying, i really just wanna get out there and work. I'm sure alot of people will think i'm crazy, but after doing 2 degrees, i've had enough of sitting in lectures and trying to pay attention to boring professors. I can't wait for this semester to end, but i am not looking forward to the exams....i relaly hope i pass this last hurdle before my rotations...WISH ME LUCK!

However, i find that i am enjoying life more in this last semester more than all the other semesters here in Australia....maybe because i know its kinda like the last time i will be hanging out with all my friends here all together before we all go our separate ways BUT before then, i must say living here in Camden is great, getting to know other people from my year even though we have been in the same class for like 4 years!

Things I have done:
Gone out for many dinners
hanging out at people lodges
drinking..even on weekdays!
movie nights...
AND
Tomorrow is the "Camden Weekender". This is where my year has pulled out alot of creativity and effort to put a revue together. Even though i'm not participating in the revue itself, i am last minute help =P
There will be lots of crazy games which i am not sure if people will get if they are non-vet people...
But i'll let you guys know the details tomorrow, or the day after =P

First catheter placement and intubation

Today, i got to place a catheter into the cutest Sharpei x lab for a castration procedure. It was actually quite simple to do. I had lots of fun and had good clinical practice. It was pretty cool being able to work out an anaesthetic plan for my patient and to monitor throughout the whole surgery and ensure the patient recovers well=)

For premeds, we gave him ACP and butorphanol. We had to top up the butorphanol as the surgeries were backed up and our dog didnt get into surgery at the anticipated time.

Induction with ketamine and diazepam due to it being a short routine procedure. The recovery was very quick and a little bit rough, but he recovered smoothly.

Gave it meloxicam post-op for the pain.

I wish i could've taken a pic of him. He was the cutest thing=) (but i didn't have my camera/phone with me =()

Birds

 The birds are pretty, love watching  them outside =]

masked lapwing

a crested pigeon gathering

the pigeons on my roof

take offf

noisy miner

close up of crested pigeon

cockatoos eating feed placed by my neighbors

Oops, it caught me taking their picture

paired cockatoos flying away

A pair of wood ducks 

Other birds seen in camden: rainbow lorikeets, magpie lark (wasn't lucky enough to take photos of them =(

Day 2 + 3: Abattoir + Byron Bay

Today we woke up at 7am as we had to arrive at the abattoir at 8.30. Had a big breakfast with eggs and bacon while watching the morning news.
We then drove to the abattoir which only took 5 mins. The vet that we followed was a young vet, she gave us an introduction of the place, and gave us all the information required to complete our assignments and then she brought us to follow the production line of where our meat is produced from start to finish. It was very interesting to see the inner workings of an abattoir. I really enjoyed it, I won't describe too much of it, however, they are very strict with hygiene. So you can rest assure that our meat is safe for consumption.

We finished about 4pm got home tried out this bar/restaurant that the vet recommended us. It was really good actually, we had a steak and fries and a salt and pepper squid and fries and just shared the dishes.

Afterwards, we watched tv and crocheted as usual till bedtime.

The next morning we woke up at 5am as we had to arrive at 6am to the abattoir to help with the morning check of the cows to make sure if they are fit for slaughter.
However, by noon, we have already seen eveything we needed to see for our assignment so the vet decided to just let us off early and that we can do whatever we like.
Yay! we were done our abattoir placement. A 3 day placement done in 1.5 days. It was very exciting.

Since we thought that we drove so far for it, we had to go do some sight-seeing and drove about an hr to Byron bay. When we got there the weather was nice, went to the beach to take some pretty pictures, drove to the cape byron lighthouse for some sunset pictures and was planning to go for dinner at 6pm at this byron cafe which was wat the visitor centre recommended. However, we finished everything before 6pm and we were hungry and decided to wait in the car till 6pm to eat at that cafe. We were slightly bored and hungry. When it was 6pm we walked over to the cafe and it was closed! We waited all that time and it wasn't even open...we were very disappointed. so we just drove to the beach where there were some restaurants along the promenade and ate at the bar/restaurant. there food was pretty good and in big portions, we couldnt finish everything. then we drove home and slept early so we can have an early start drive back to sydney.

Day 1 : Casino, NSW

Since Kelly and I are required to go to an abattoir for our placement, we started driving sunday at 9.30am so that we could arrive in Casino around evening time since it is quite north up the east coast.
The driving was not that eventful, except that the last 3ish hrs, i had to help kelly drive =O
It was my first time driving since i got my licence, since i don't have a car, but i must have driven quite well, since Kelly was able to fall asleep while i was driving!! =P
Anyhow, driving on the country side with no street lamps is quite scary, and now and then there were small patches of fog too...

So anyhow, we made it to our motel in Casino, checked in, and then watched some tv and crocheted before bedtime.

Camden sunset

Sunset taken from my lodge's balcony

Beautiful isn't it?

Today!

Oh yah and today i made a yummy salmon dinner.
So just normal panfried salmon on a bed of homemade mashed potato and buttered greens.

I'm starting to sound like masterchef =P

All about foood~

So i've been abit lazy and haven't kept up with my blog...
It is exam time so I am procrastinating =P

One day ( don't remember which day) our housemate, Jacob, decided to cook us all dinner. It was fantastic, he is like a chef, always cooking things from scratch, always eating very healthy!

So he made us yummy mashed potatoes, onions and this dish(which i forgot the name...=/) it has sausages int his kind of pastry and some fresh herbs. What was funny was that, when he took it out of the oven, the smoke alarm went off!

Oh, i forgot to mention that the house im staying at is for handicapped people, so the smoke alarm is connected to this flashing light as well...So when the smoke detector went off, our whole house was flashing bright blue lights....It was already horrible with knocking out my hearing senses, but even my sight...it was the worst.
Any Jacob got the smoke detector under control, by waving the chopping board around so the smoke disperses around the detector...but now and then it would make a few beeps, telling us it wants to go off again.

So i had the job of sitting under the alarm and waving the chopping board now and then to stop it from going off again...

Anyhow, this is what he made us =)

Look he even set the whole table up for us=)

Yummy mash potatoooo

I know it doesnt look that yummy, and sausages look a little burnt, but it wasn't and tasted fantastic!

Red Lantern~

Red Lantern is a famous vietnamese restaurant in Surry Hills, Sydney.

I was able to go and have a nice lunch there. The menu:

Goi Cuon - soft rice paper rolled with prawns, pork, vermicelli, perilla leaves and garlic chives

Ca Xao Sol Cai Xanh - panfried cobia fillets

Cai Xanh Xao - mixed organic asian greens wok tossed in preserved bean curd sauce

Bo Luc Lac - Cubed pasture fed black angus sirloin

The food was deliciousss, and ot comes with a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. I chose the wine of course, and my friend Doraica chose the beer.

We were lucky to go there, as we found this awesome deal online for this 5 course meal for $85 for 2 people! One of those dishes cost $32!! It was definitely an awesome place.

Its a very small little restaurant, thats why from what I've heard is that you need to book like a few months in advance.

And thats not all~ we even got the main chef's cookbook in the deal as well~ pretty awesome eh?

Outcomes of the cases I saw

So my last blog was about my volunteer work, and since then I was able to talk with the vet that was there, and she told me that the colic case that came in ended up having a neurological problem instead. However, they are not sure whether its due to the current virus or not. But the owners took the horse home instead.

The baby alpaca probably wont make it, as she was very weak and born premature, however the owners took her home for the lat of her days i guess. As for the grannie alpaca, she died =( not sure how mom alpaca will cope with that as she was very attached to grannie.

A day at the University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Camden

I volunteered to help out on a sunday from 8am -4pm at the clinic, mainly the horse unit. Once I got there, the first thing they told me to do was to do a physical exam on this horse named King that is a regular blood donor and also had a sinus trephination(holes drilled into her sinus for drainage. I then gave him some oral meds.

I then helped the intern to restrain a mom alpaca so she can do warm compression as she has mastitis. Then she milked out the coagulated milk. The mom alpaca was quite agitated and kept trying to run away. While i was restraining her, i can hear her getting ready to spit! but thank god, she didn't.

We then went to Gran alpaca (the mom's mom), she was in to keep the mom company but developed diarrhoea while she was in hospital. But all her vitals were normal. After we finished with her, we had to disinfect ourselves before doing anything else.

We then went to help the vets hold a mare while they checked on the foal with corneal ulcer. I was able to take a good look at the ulcer close up after the intern gave him a nerve block to prevent the eyelid from shutting. Later, the intern gave the foal meds through this flush through the eyelid. After that was done, we took the mare and foal back to their box. The mare was a little rowdy, and tries to bite and stuff especially when we are doing things with the foal. But this occurs to most mares with foals...

Around 10 am we took the cria (baby alpaca) out to have some fresh air, she wasn't doing so well. She would just lie there. It seems like she was very very weak. She was born 4 weeks premature and she is now 2 wks old. At first, she wouldnt drink the milk and seemed to have a head tilt. She also would'nt pee by herself! The intern stimulated her to pee, but whenever she stopped stimulating her, she would stop peeing! Also whenever we tried to make her stand up, she had a funny gait, but that could be because shes still a baby but she had some proprioceptive defects in the right hindleg (she actually stood on the top of her foot instead of the right way around). She would also hang her head down when she was standing. Hwever, when she is sititng down, she was able to lift her head up, so I'm not sure if shes just lazy or if it is weakness.

But since she was born premature and she was the first for her mom, her mom didn't let this poor baby suckle her so the cria had a failure of passive transfer (failure of transfer of maternal antibodies) thus she is weak. We finally got her to suckle and she ended up nearly finishing the bottle till she fell asleep.

Afterwards, a horse came in who seemed to have colicky signs, but the vet is not really convinced. Kept him in hospital to further monitor him. He pawed at the ground slightly, and also got down into sternal recumbancy but got up shortly after.

THis is when it was very busy possibly around 12- 1pm. We got alot of cases to follow up and to administer meds but now we got to take care of this case that just came in. So then I did a TPR (temp, pulse, respiration rate) and the intern took some blood and gave some flunixin (anti-inflammatory drug) to see how it goes.

We then changed bags of fluid for "winter" who has neurological signs which is suspected to have west nile which is not in australia and is transmitted by mosquitos. She liked to bite! I was holder her while the intern checked her TPR, and dring that time she will try and bite me! so i had to be aware of what she is doing with her head at all times.

By now, I have helped out with alot of blood work. Mainly spinning down blood and getting a PCV and TPP value for the horses and the cria (alpaca baby).

Now is around 2pm, so its time to do another round of TPRs with the above animals again, and this time King requires flushing of the sinuses. Quite messy job. It involves having the horse in a crush, and a small hose to run water through the holes into the sinuses to flush watever is in there such as pus or any material left inside the sinus. The water squirts everywhere, the vet who was using the hose and the intern who was restraining the horses head got splashed! I was lucky, i was out of the way at this time =P
I just observed!

Then I went to help the vet with the alpacas, but this time the vet restrained the animal and allowed me to do the warm compression on the mom alpaca for around 5-10 mins and then to try and milk out the coagulated milk form her udder. THis time she was alot calmer.

At this time the intern had to go to the lab and get a PCV and TPP of another horse, and so the vet told me to do a TPR on the cria and to feed her milk, this time she suckled and had the whole bottle!

Now it is around 3pm where we helped out with "winter" again to check her TPR, collect blood sample, and change her fluid bags again. Then we also checked on the horse that came in, did a TPR on her again, and this time we felt that he had alot of muscle twitching which is quite abnormal without the presence of flies, and the horse got a little irritated with the twitching as well. The vet is still unsure about what is going on with this horse, and wants to do blood work and stuff, however the lab for the other tests is only open tmr. So the owners will have to wait!

Alas, its 4 pm! Time for me to go home:) and it was raining...=/

Phew that was a longgg dayyy! But it was fun and very interesting!
I like how they let me do things too~
Also the intern i was working with, her shift was 24hrs! so she'd be done tmr morn at 7.30am! Crazy @_@

First live surgery!

Today was my first time performing a live spey in a dog at the RSPCA clinic.
It felt great to do surgery and to know that it went smoothly with no complications.

I can't wait for more opportunities to do more surgery and to familiarise myself with the knowledge a vet is required to know.

I can't wait to finally come out of uni and start working.

Technically just 8 months left before internship! =)