I've decided what I like about radiology

I have determined that I like the idea of being good at radiology a lot better than I like actually learning radiology. Guess that in itself isn't going to do me a lot of good, though.

This week's junior practicum rotation is, as you may have guessed, radiology.

Monday started off with my 5 rotation-mates and me arriving to the radiology department promptly at 7:55 or so, for our anticipated 8 am start time. At 8:05 or so, a radiology tech came by and told us that she didn't have any idea who was supposed to be doing our orientation, but she would check around and we should just "sit tight." At 8:15, she was back to say she was the only radiology tech in the department at the moment, so she would give us "some kind of orientation or whatever."

Great. I have a great impression of radiology already.

The "orientation" consisted of haphazardly showing us around the department: the film cassettes, the computer showing currently radiograph requests, the 3 imaging suites, how to run the computerized radiography machine, and a few other things.

Then we sat around for awhile twiddling our thumbs while the seniors were in rounds and there was nothing else going on.

At 9:45 someone poked their head in and asked if a couple of us could go get a dog from CCU (critical care unit) and take him to ultrasound. There was a veritable stampede of eager vet students toward CCU, although we quickly realized it probably wouldn't take all 6 of us to move this yellow lab down a couple short hallways. I was one of the "lucky" 3 that got to help.

The yellow lab had had chemo on Friday, which was given in a vein in his left hind leg. On Sunday, he came back to the VTH for an acute onset of severe lameness -- as in he wasn't able to walk at all when we saw him on Monday. On Sunday, they stuck a needle into his swollen knee joint and got back bacteria and white blood cells, making them think he had an abscess or possibly a septic joint (bad news). So the ultrasound was intended to seek out that alleged abscess and see if it might be something they could drain.

All 6 of us regrouped in the ultrasound suite to watch the ultrasound of the dog's stifle. It wasn't real exciting. We didn't really know what we were watching, and the resident doing the US wasn't too eager to tell us what was going on. Midway through the US, 3 students got called off to the barn to help take some radiographs on a sick horse. A few minutes after that, I got to go over to nuclear medicine with one of the radiology techs to help her sedate a cat and give it an IV injection of technetium (a radioactive isotope that they were using to look at this hyperthyroid cat's thyroid tissue, prior to doing an iodine-131 injection the following day to "kill" the overactive thyroid tissue). I got to give the cat the 2 IM sedative injections, which was honestly the most exciting part of my morning. Oh, and I pushed "start" on the scanning machine once the kitty was becoming radioactive.

At 11, we had rounds and went through normal abdominal structures and 1 abnormal case (which was a linear foreign body caused by a clever dog eating the blanket out of his kennel -- natural selection, anyone??). We got out early, at 11:35 or so, because the clinician doing rounds with us had somewhere else to be.

Today was slightly more interesting. Having learned from our mistakes on Monday, we all arrived armed with notes and study materials for our two exams this week (small animal and large animal orthopedics).

And what good planning that was. After an hour of instruction on positioning dogs and cats for thorax, abdomen, and pelvis radiographs, we had almost 2 hours to ourselves for study time, minus about 30 minutes interspersed in which a few of us got to go help take met check rads (checking the lungs for pulmonary metastases from a primary cancer elsewhere in the body) on a Norwich terrier and a chocolate lab.

At 11, we had rounds again, this time with one of the brand-new residents. It was okay; we just went through abnormal abdominal films.

I think the rest of the week is basically the same sort of schedule: an hour of "class" for sure from 8-9, and rounds from 11-12, with the 9-11 period pretty much left open. Which is just as well, because although I'd like to get better at radiology, I'd also love not to fail this week's small and large animal orthopedics exams...