Forbs are making a comeback

Does anyone remember the story about forbs when I was in my first semester??

You know, the bushy-plants that goats eat, not the company.

Well, I have that same teacher again this semester. It is much better now, I think he likes the material better and he teaches it with much more enthusiasm. For some reason, I thought maybe his test questions had changed along with his spirit. Silly me. If you don't remember about forbs, there was a question on my nutrition exam asking which species ate "forbs". I had no idea what forbs were. They're bushes. Yup. Bushes. Goats eat bushes. I think I picked penguins or something else absurd.

Getting back to the main point, here, in 6th semester during my large animal medicine midterm, his silly test questions surfaced again. This time, it was in the form of "what shape of pupil does a horse have?". Simple question, one might think. See, the problem is, vet students don't think about these obvious anatomy features of the species we're studying. I'd say our class was more worried about the deleterious effects of endotoxin on the horse, not the shape of their pupils. We still aren't sure exactly which was the correct answer due to the way the options were written. I even consulted two anatomy textbooks, my class notes, AND the internets. In case you weren't aware, the internets are a vast sea of information, some of which is accurate. Even with all of that information I still can't figure out which is the correct answer. Only time will tell (when we get the exam results back).

For those who were wondering what the options were (Alanna), here they are to the best of my memory:
A. Round pupil with round borders
B. Horizontally elongated with straight borders ventrally and dorsally
C. Horizontally elongated with dorsal projections from the pupil
D. Vertically elongated with projections dorsally from the iris

Yeah..... I chose B because I felt like the "sun shades" horse have on their eyes could only come from the iris since the pupil is more of an anatomical area than a structure. The pupil just describes the window you see from the cornea, through the opening in the iris, through the lens and into the back of the eye. The iridic granules/corpora nigra ("sun shades") horses develop can't just grow out of thin air, they need some sort of cellular base. Sadly, none of the textbooks I own say more than the name of the "sun shades" and don't describe specifically where they arise from. The exam key will be posted later this week, so I'll update this again after checking it.

If anyone is curious what a horse pupil looks like, here is a picture I stole (err... borrowed?) from the internets:

So there's that. Seems like a simple question... but alas... Forbs. Sigh.

In other vet school news, I performed my first surgery! It was amazing. I had a blast. It was simple; an incision through the skin, subcutaneous tissue and a thin muscle that overlays the ribs. I closed it in two layers. The first was a simple continuous pattern with knots buried at both ends to close the subcutaneous tissue. The second closure was for the skin, and I used a ford interlocking pattern for half the incision and closed the rest with mattress sutures. We were asked to show a variety of patterns, normally you would choose only one to close a skin incision, unless you felt like being fancy of course. They look a little bit like this:

Ford Interlocking pattern

Cruciate mattress pattern

Rocky, my sheep who I did this to, is doing great. I'm amazed at how quickly and how well his incisions are healing. It makes me proud! I don't think he'll even have much of a scar.

Bullwinkle (my donkey) and I may just get along after all. We had a rough start... he may have tried to bite and kick me several times during our first encounter, and second. Apples seem to be the key to our new friendship. As long as I don't run out of apples anytime soon this may just work out.

Less that 50 days and I'll be in Oregon.... yay!!!

Paris is coming soon... promise.