Tuesday

We got off to a late start as breakfast arrived late (I think this may be the beginning of a pattern…), but got to the hospital only 10 minutes after 8am. Amber and I went to the small animal medicine ward again and followed around Dr. Thelioghar (sp?). We saw a chicken with Newcastle Disease (verogenic strain) – it was one of eight in a backyard flock and nearly all of them had died. Newcastle is an exotic disease in the USA and highly controlled because it can be devastating to poultry producers. The bird didn’t even have the energy to stand up and was covered in feces. We saw another dog with end-stage distemper. The dog was a stray, but a man saw it so sick on the streets and brought it into the clinic. (Since this is a state funded school things are VERY cheap for clients. It costs them only 20 rupees – about 50 cents – to see the doctor. Spays/neuters are only about $2-3. Most drugs are free. Many vaccines are free, etc.) The dog had both twitching of the temporalis muscle and the hind limbs. I have a video that I will post later. We saw 2 puppies with Parvo (suspected); both of them so weak them could barely stand. We were told that many of these puppies do get over it, especially if they are older than 3 months. We saw an adult dog with suspected Ehrlichia – which was especially cool when we saw the blood smear taken from the ear (a technique we have learned in school). The last interesting case we saw was an older dog with Immune Mediated Thrombocytopenia. The dog was covered in ecchymoses (hemorrhages under the skin) and had blood pooling in the eye. Also, this patient was the first overweight dog I have seen our entire time here.

Also, a sad note, the cow that had the C-section the previous day to the “double monster” died. Apparently the fetus had been ectopic (outside the uterus) and had punctured some abdominal organs and the cow died later of peritonitis.

We were pulled away around 10am to meet the Dean. Even though we had already met him twice we had to formally meet him in his office and present him with a gift (we bought the higher up people here VT ties). Dr. Subbiah tells us we will have to bear with some of the formal protocols here. We sat around his desk for about 10 minutes chatting and his servant brought us sweet lemon tea. Valerie was very excited to learn that his specialty was in poultry sciences.

Later in the day we were pulled away from small animal medicine again to attend a lecture on Parvo and general diagnostic principles given by a man who graduated from the Tamil Nadu Vet School, but now works as a small animal clinical in West Palm Beach (quite a step up!). The power had been going on and off all day in the clinic so the lecture room was probably around 100 degrees. I am starting to get used to just being constantly covered in sweat.

In the afternoon we went to the pathology department and saw the necropsy on the dog that we saw with distemper in the morning. After being inside with no fans or lights for a while the doctor set up a temporary table outside and we continued out there. At one point we noticed that crows had flown into pathology through the open window and the doctor went in to scare them away. When he came out he told us that the crows had eaten the adrenal glands that had been set aside. This may seem gross to most of you reading, but to us it was hilarious.

We had to wrap up the necropsy quickly so we could attend a quiz program at 4pm. Tuesday is World Zoonoses Day and was a pretty big deal here. (Attending this quiz program is another formality thing that we had to do). There were 8 teams of students from the vet school who answered questions about zoonotic diseases. Although there were some random questions also in there, for example what year did Louis Pasteur receive his Nobel prize (answer: 1905). After the quiz program the Dean made a speech and asked every team and the VT students to talk about their experience at the program. Hopefully we gave a satisfactory answer; Wallace was brave enough to take the mic and talk for the group.

I was completely exhausted by the time we got back to our place, but we went out shopping with Pumadi and her friend Radha. Pumadi is one of the 5 students that will be coming to VMRCVM for 6 weeks in the fall (they actually come back on the same flight with us). Both our school and Michigan has an exchange program with Tamil Nadu. For us it is whoever is interested in coming to India can apply (and for the 3 years so far everyone who has wanted to go can). For them it is the top 10 students in the class get to go and they don’t get to pick whether they go to VT or Michigan.

Random tidbit: Most people here eat everything with there hands. Even things like rice with sauce. Since we are Americans they have given us silverware, but only spoons. So I am in the process of learning how to eat everything with a spoon.