Dermatology and Beyond

Amber and I switched today from Small Animal Medicine to Dermatology in the mornings. We were a bit concerned it would be boring as Erin and Jen had not had a great experience there. But a different doctor was there today and he put Amber and I to work. We took lots of skin scrapings, some fungal cultures, one bacterial culture, gave injections SQ, and drew blood. Unfortunately, they don’t do really anything with the neck area of the animal so all blood is drawn from the cephalic or lateral saphenous (neither of which I am good at). Apparently owners will freak out if you try to mess with the neck area thinking you will hurt the animal. And especially since the owners are the ones who restrain their own pets here that could be a problem. One owner was very concerned that the 4 mls of blood taken from his ~70 lb. dog was going to cause him to faint.

One of the first cases we saw was a tiny little puppy with Scabies. It had scabby lesions on the elbows and the stifles. We got to see it under the microscope. We saw a dog with the hallmark signs of Malassezia; it also had the loudest growl I’ve ever heard. I was very surprised it didn’t at any point make an attempt to bite the owner; he seemed rather unconcerned about all the growling. We also saw a food allergy case, a hypothyroidism case, and other assorted skin problems. (If you want to see pictures go into the Medical Pics photo album on facebook, but don’t look if you don’t like to see blood).

In the afternoon we were instructed from afar (even though Dr. Subbiah was away visiting his mother we got a phone call telling us where to go) to go to Biotechnology from 2-3, then Pathology from 3-4, and back to Biotechnology from 4-5. In the Biotechnology Department we were shown how to make a cell culture from a chicken embryo…I’m starting to dread whenever we have to go to Biotech. It was rather boring; especially the 10 minutes of watching it in the centrifuge. Pathology was really interesting and we got to see slides of Distemper (from the case we had seen in necropsy the previous day), Rabies, Anaplasma, and some disease that he was really surprised we had never heard of: Theileria.

We didn’t go out at all tonight, which was good for me as I needed a day of rest. A few episodes of Futurama hit the spot. Also, random cultural note: instead of nodding their heads up and down to indicate “yes”, they kind of bobble their heads from side to side. It’s very interesting and I still haven’t quite adjusted to it. It’s kind of the movement we would do with our heads to indicate “maybe”. Here's a video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrmDo52NnTY