Life in the Hospital

The past two days has been filled with hospital rotations in the morning and visiting departments in the afternoon. We have seen a lot of interesting cases, some of them very sad. The hospital case load is so large that there is inevitable always some interesting case to follow. I followed one yesterday that was a dog in the end stages of distemper infection. She was having convulsions, unable to stand, and seemed to be not mentally aware. It was very sad. She went home yesterday, and I haven’t seen her today. It is very possible she did not survive until today. Janah started following a case of a 5 year old Doberman (named Bruce) with lymphoma. He is very thin and radiographs showed involvement of his mediastinal and sternal lymph nodes (those in the chest), which greatly lowers the prognosis. He started chemotherapy today.

Dalmation with major tick infestation

The poor distemper pup

Yesterday afternoon we hung out in the parasitology lab, looking at cool specimens and examples of eggs under the microscope. Afterwards we went with Dr. Nagarajan (a dermatologist) to his own pet spa/dermatology spa, and then to another of his facilities (a private dermatology clinic). He then took us all out to dinner.

Janah listening to the murmur in a heart failure case

In Parasit lab!

Tuffy, the world's cutest pug

This is after he's lost 15 lbs! He was 50 lbs!

Dr. Nagarajan's clinic

Today I followed the case of a cocker spaniel (Titi) who is suspected of having leptospirosis. As a puppy he was infected with distemper and recovered. But the virus affected his brain, and now he has permanent “chewing gum” seizures (which aren’t really seizures). He is also in chronic renal failure, hepatic failure (kidney and liver), severe anemia, and he had a wound on his bum with maggots in it. I hope to present either this case or the other distemper case when we do our student case presentations on July 13/14.

Titi

Check out the bling on this brahman!

Baby chicks and ducklings!

This afternoon we went to necropsy and watched a dog necropsy. I think the final diagnosis was heart failure. And for the first time, we made it home at a decent hour! Half the girls are going to run at the school, but some of us decided we've had enough sweating, so we are headed to Spencers, a little grocery store around the corner for some Nutella and other items. 

That's it for now!