Day Two: Alex learns to let go of preconceived notions

So before I came here I was mentally preparing myself for the cultural differences, the poverty, etc. And of course it’s still hard to see (there was a boy outside the department store with legs and arms like sticks), but it’s better if you prepare. One of the things I had prepared for was owners not caring as much about their animals and lower quality of care. But apparently I don’t know jack.
The hospital is enormous, 2 stories, and very confusing to find your way around (at least for us right now). One of the doctors gave us a tour of all the departments and he seems to be our main point of contact in the hospital. Which is good because he speaks excellent English (and speaks it loudly and clearly!) and is very nice. In the morning Amber and I were with him in the small animal internal medicine department and I got to witness just how much people really do care for their animals here. Obviously there are a lot of strays that are completely uncared for, but the animals that are owned are loved and treated as such. We saw multiple cases brought in for vomiting and diarrhea that had usually started just the day before (I wish American owners would bring their pets in that quickly).
The very first case we saw was an end stage Distemper. A small white Spitz completely prostrate on the table, covered in lice. We could see the ruptured pustules on the abdomen and could feel the temporal muscle twitching. There is no treatment for these animals.
We also saw a small lab puppy who had eaten through a pillow and ingested a lot of the cotton inside. Lab puppies are pretty much the same everywhere.
While we were touring the hospital we saw a cow recovering from a C-section and we were told it had been pregnant with a fetus with two heads. So of course we had to see. It was very cool: one body, the neck just starts to break into two necks, and then two heads fused just barely at the sides. 4 eyes, 4 ears, 2 noses. Let me remind you we were seeing this in pathology (i.e. it was dead, was dead long before they took it out).
The last thing in the morning we got to do was watch an IM pin be removed from a small orange cat (IM pins are used to stabilize fractures while they heal). Wallace got to assist in the “surgery”. (I use quotation marks because the cat was simply knocked down with a Xylazine/Ketamine and no one scrubbed in, but that’s normal here).
Little things noticed on Day Two:
-Guys in a band are the same no matter what country you are in.
-Being explained PCR again (even by a very nice man taking time out of his work day to help out American exchange students) is more boring than watching pain dry.
-Apparently the people at the college are very concerned that if we go out into the rain we will melt (which meant lots of waiting around while they tried to figure out how to get us from one building to another without us taking a step outside).