Nerdiness continues

Well, I may be done with the semester, but that doesn't mean I'm staying away from school. Go ahead, laugh! I laugh at myself a little too.

Several departments within the VTH are particularly understaffed (I guess "understaffed" is the best word, even though it's not like we get paid!) over winter break when the juniors aren't in school.

So ambitious (a nicer word than "geeky," right?) 3rd year students can sign up to volunteer in those departments (community practice, internal medicine, and cardiology) to basically do the same things that the seniors do.

It's actually a cool opportunity, and one that I also took advantage of during Thanksgiving break.

During the spring and fall semesters, for example, community practice normally has 6-10 senior students and 6-10 junior students. Half of the juniors see medicine appointments all week, while the other half spend Tues/Wed/Thurs mornings in surgery. During a typical week, half of the seniors head down to the humane society for spay/neuter on Monday mornings, and all but 1 or 2 of the seniors are in surgery at the VTH on Tues/Wed/Thurs mornings, leaving 3-5 juniors and 1-2 seniors to handle the medicine appointments on those middle days of the week. Everybody does medicine appts on Friday.

On vacation weeks (i.e. this week and next week), there are no surgeries, so all of the seniors are seeing medicine appointments. However, since there are no juniors, you can imagine that things can still be a little shorthanded.

Now consider that half of the seniors get the week before Christmas as a vacation week, and the other half take off the week before New Year's.

So now you're down to 3-5 seniors and no juniors each week.

Enter the nerdy juniors who want more experience! (i.e. me)

I went in all day on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, which was great because there were only 3 seniors! The schedule was lighter than usual, but still I got to see plenty of appointments.

A couple cases I saw on Tuesday:

**An 8 year old Great Dane with vaginal discharge, arthritis, generalized pruritus (itchiness) due to food/environmental allergies, and horrible halitosis. Checked out her teeth (just the expected dental disease of a senior dog), acquiesced to the owners' request for a steroid injection to help with the allergies, re-started her on some tramadol for the arthritis pain, and gave some antibacterial/antifungal wipes for the perivulvar dermatitis.

**An 8 month old little white fluffy dog flying to Texas with her owner the following day, in need of a health certificate for the airline. (Note to anybody out there traveling with their pets: If you want a health certificate, bring proof of your pet's vaccines!)

**I was supposed to have an 11 year old Lab cross with a cough of several months' duration, but he never showed up. I spent a couple hours researching various causes of coughing in older dogs, which made it a little disappointing when I had no patient to diagnose, but was still good for my brain.

A couple cases I saw on Wednesday:

**An 18 month old Pekingese/Poodle cross (no, I will not call it a Peekapoo) with the unfortunate habit of peeing all over everything when he gets too excited. Mom wanted to know if there was any medication he could be on (apparently the dog has recently started peeing on Dad if Dad is holding him when anybody else enters the room). Dog also had a history of luxating patellas, which Mom reports were manipulated so many times at the last visit that the dog couldn't walk for "weeks" afterward (really? why didn't you call and tell us about that?) and Mom kept saying "If anybody -- ANYBODY -- touches his knees today, we're never coming back!" Little guy also needed a re-enrollment in the VTH's preventive health program, bordetella and DA2P vaccines, deworming, fecal sample to be brought in later, and a quote for a teeth cleaning. It was kind of a high maintenance appointment...

**My favorite owners of the week! Who came in with their 5 year old 90 lb Boxer for his heartworm test and vaccines. He'd only been to the VTH previously for a TPLO (ACL repair) surgery a year ago. The nicest dog, and the nicest people. We ran a heartworm test, vaccinated for bordetella and DA2P, signed him up on a preventive health plan, dewormed, sent home a fecal sample cup to be returned, gave him 6 months of heartworm/flea/tick prevention, and decided to bring him back in the spring to start lepto vaccines.

I'm signed up for a couple more days in January, before classes start again on Jan 18. I'm trying not to overdo it, but community practice is so fun, and I learn so many new things every time I volunteer there. Plus, as a junior, it's really the only place where I get to have primary case management of my patients, and I don't have any more official weeks of it in the spring! And we don't have ANY junior rotations until mid-February, so I'll be extra-deprived of hands-on contact with actual live animals! (Ok, I think I'm convincing myself to sign up for a couple more days...)