Ultrasound Love!

My two new favorite things.

1. Ultrasound
2. Cherry pies with tapioca to thicken

My valentine's day present to Matt -
 a cherry pie, festively decorated with vents in the shape of a heart

I am pretty sure this is the best cherry pie I have made on a technical basis - look how well it set up!

Also, when you don't have a rolling pin, but you want to make a pastry crust, I have two recommendations. The first, is to use an alcohol bottle you have stored in the freezer. The cold helps keep the crust flaky, and the shape is perfect. If you don't have any alcohol on hand, the next best household item is a roll of saran wrap! It works great, and the dough hardly sticks. (Side note, I just googled "saran wrap" as I wasn't sure if I spelled it correctly, I didn't know "saran" was a brand name! I suppose it is just like using "zip lock" or "kleenex". Anywho, thought that was funny.)

Matt and I had a very chill valentines day. He made me dinner (soy glazed mahi mahi and rice pilaf... yum!) and I made him a cherry pie (his favorite).

ULTRASOUND!!! It is so cool. I think it is my new favorite veterinary toy. Tool. Diagnostic imaging device. Alright, toy. Yes.

It was very confusing to understand at first, as the image you see on the screen does not directly correlate to how you hold the probe on your patient. You really have to flip the image around in your brain to understand where the probe sits compared to what you see on the screen. The tissue you see is also dramatically different from radiographs as far as what is white, and what is black. I think I have the hang of it now though.

WARNING: There is a lot, A LOT of vet talk below... read on only if you are slightly crazy, like myself and my classmates. We're nerds, we know it. If you choose to skip on to the end, I won't blame you.

Today we had a lab where we got to use the ultrasound machine ourselves and practice looking at the heart of a healthy, normal dog. Gummy was a great sport, he would wiggle once in a while (getting jabbed in the ribs for an hour and half would do that to anyone!) but if you were consistently petting his head he was happy enough to lay still and let us practice. I wish I could show you all what I got to see today. It is amazing the detail you can see of the heart using sound waves. Amazing!

While practicing, there were a few cases needing ultrasound examinations at the teaching hospital, so we took breaks from our normal anatomy practice to check out these patients. It was so awesome. The first was just a cystocentesis, which is using ultrasound to find the bladder, then taking a needle and syringe to draw urine from the bladder going through the belly. A simple procedure, but it can be very dangerous if done improperly.

The next case was a cryptorchid cat. We were looking for his testicles that had not descended from his abdomen. If left in his abdomen, they could eventually turn cancerous, which would dramatically shorten his life span. Much better to remove them from his abdomen now before any problems arise. Surely enough, we found them, (well, our instructor did!) which is very difficult to do, so props to him! They were hidden behind the bladder next to the prostate. Pesky testicles! This examination helped the surgeon know exactly where to go looking for the testicles, allowing the procedure to shorten in length, and less trauma to be done to the abdomen while looking for them.

After that, we received a very large (but very sweet) dog who had an obstruction in his intestines. They knew this already from the radiographs taken, but wanted to see to what extend the damage was to the loops of bowel and what the integrity of the bowel walls was like. That was an awesome case to see. I couldn't believe how dilated the intestines can get compared to normal loops of intestine, and then to actually be able to see fluid moving inside the intestines in real time! All with just the use of sound! Its amazing, really. It turned out that he was really sick, and his bowel walls were on their way to perforating (bursting open), so they soon rushed him off to surgery. They believe the foreign body that got lodged in his intestines to be a mango pit. Silly island dogs!

Lastly, the most crazy case of the day, we saw the same dog back that we did a cystocentesis on, this time to look at its lungs. On the radiograph, one lung lobe appeared to be completely filled with fluid or pus, and it had collapsed. We were trying to use ultrasound to find more information about that lung lobe. Normally, you can't look at lungs at all with ultraound because they're filled with air. Sound doesn't bounce off air very well, which is why you can't see anything on ultrasound in normal lungs. I can't even describe what this looked like, it was just a big jumbled mess! We (read: the doctors, who are very very talented at this stuff) found an abscess in the diseased lung lobe, lots of fibrin around the heart beside the lung, and some other things that I'm not really sure about. I believe the tentative diagnosis agreed upon was torsion of a lung lobe with some sort of infectious process concurrently. Crazy!

So that is it. Pretty much, I love veterinary medicine. It is a blast. I'm starting to realize how much I love cardiology and imaging (so far). I can't wait to learn more!!!

Ahhhh vet school... thanks for finally being fun again.

4 exams and 40ish days until my parents visit for a day....

4 exams and 60 some days until Europe....

11 months until I am heading state-side for good!!!