When you accidentally look at your student loan balance

HEART MURMURS- BASICS

We didn’t waste the best years of our lives, slaving and stressing away studying, some developing clinical depression and anxiety (some killing themselves) for y’all to be like ‘Yeah nah, I prefer to treat UTI’s naturally… I don’t do antibiotics’ or ‘X treatment and Y medications are all a big scheme to rip off our money’.

HOMEGIRL, TAKE YOUR ANTIBIOTICS FOR YOUR GODDAMN UTIs BECAUSE IT’S FUCKING BACTERIA (AND STOP PUTTING FUCKING CANDY NEAR YOUR GENITALS)

Goat testis tissue sample.

Maybe I am getting old and cynical, but experience counts for a lot. This just seems to be the reality of veterinary medicine.

If you are unsure what I mean by ‘Unicorn’ in a Veterinary sense, your answer is here.

Funniest thing I’ve heard in a while. As stated by @lollyjames. #medicine #thatresidentlife #medschool

Also about a million commonly used medications.

assignment due tomorrow

"95% of anaesthesia is boredom, and the other 5% is complete and utter panic."

Routine Checkup

Hi guys!! First post that’s not just a picture of my workspace…

So personally, I can’t study in silence. I love studying with music and Spotify is my savior. Searching and downloading each and every song for iTunes is a pain in the ass, and the playlists on Spotify are so easy to make and find. I’ve compiled some some playlists that I use throughout a typical school day (obviously I don’t use every one each day, but these are my favorites) that help me stay focused and wind down. (And yes, Spotify is free!! Woo)

MORNING

RIGHT AFTER SCHOOL

STUDYING :(

CHILLING

SLEEP!

Then again you can just listen to one playlist the whole day. But that’s boring.

Inexpensive "thank you" for your vet

I’ve posted about this before but I cannot overemphasize just how much a simple “thank you” is to your veterinarian. We don’t hear it often enough.

Want to do something more but you’re broke? Write a really great review about your vet and post it on a few sites. Just copy and paste, no need to write something different for each one. A nice Yelp, Google, and Facebook review costs nothing and not only makes us feel good but attracts more clients for us. Vets often get lots of negative reviews related to the fact that we aren’t free, but not many people take time to write good ones.

Another inexpensive gift is a photo of your pet. I treated a very sweet parrot for cancer and we ended up seeing one another almost weekly for months. Eventually he had to be euthanized which was heartbreaking. Later on the owner sent me a nice thank you and a photograph of my patient. I really liked it and the picture is framed on my desk.

Finally, gift cards. A Starbucks or Dunkin gift card is always wonderful and it doesn’t have to be for much.

Just show you are thankful and appreciative anyway you can and I promise it will make your vet’s day.

Ask for Help

Today, one of the radiology residents at the vet school committed suicide. She taught us the radiology portion of our gross anatomy lab last semester and she was smart and beautiful and seemed to have everything going for her - on the outside.

You are not alone. Ask for help. Don’t be a statistic.

Calculating Fluid Losses using a Clinical History

The amount of fluid required to maintain a healthy animal is estimated to be 50ml/kg/day. This covers the loss of fluid through urination, defecation and respiration. 

These are estimated at:

Abnormal Losses need to be added into the maintenance value to ensure the fluid they are loosing are replaced. These are estimated at:

When the clinical history given by the owner is accurate, a estimated fluid deficit can be calculated.

Example:

Q. A 8kg dog has been admitted to practice with a history four episodes of vomiting today. He has also had 2 episodes of diahorrea today. What is the TOTAL amount of fluid to be replaced when administering fluids. 

Step One) Maintenance (ml/24hrs)  = 50ml/kg/day x bodyweight(kg) 

                         50ml/kg x 8kg = 400ml/24hrs

Step Two) Losses to replace through vomiting = 4ml/kg x bodyweight(kg) x number of episodes.

                         4ml/kg x 8kg x 4 = 128ml

Step Three) Losses to replace through diahorrea = 4ml/kg x bodyweight(kg) x number of episodes. 

                         4ml/kg x 8kg x 2 = 64ml

Step Four) Total fluid to administer = maintenance + Vomiting losses + diahorrea losses

                        400ml + 128 + 64 = 592ml

*Graphic Content* Great video showing how “cherry eye” or prolapsed nictitans is surgically repaired.

I. AM. LIVID.

Copper ammunition exists.  You can safely use this to hunt without causing often fatal poisoning in other animals.  No one is saying you can’t hunt anymore. In fact, the lead restrictions mentioned here only applied to national parks and wildlife refuges - so depending on which state a hunter was in, you could still have potentially used lead ammunition in other parks before this. Why repeal this?

LEAD POISONING IS REAL. Do you know how many eagles and vultures at the Minnesota Raptor Center needed treatment for lead toxicity? I had the great privilege to do an externship there, and almost all of the eagles and vultures required some level of treatment for lead toxicity. They eat what we leave behind, and that includes the bullet fragments. The ones we saw were just the ones people found and rescued; there were many more out there that suffered without lead chelation therapy and supportive care.

Once they eat lead fragments, the enzymes in the bird’s digestive system break down and release the lead into a form that gets into the bloodstream and deposits itself in the bones.  Symptoms of lead poisoning include neurological and gastrointestinal disturbances with eventual starvation and inability to digest food.  The most severely affected birds exist in a stupor, barely conscious, oozing diarrhea and limp as a dishrag as they starve to death.

Photo courtesy of the Sutton Avian Research Center

YOU look at a bald eagle, symbol of this nation’s strength and freedom, laying weakly on an exam table stargazing at nothing, mentally unaware of its surroundings, green diarrhea coming from its vent to stain its beautiful tailfeathers, its body condition wasted because it was too neurologically disturbed to remember to eat, and tell me lead poisoning isn’t significant. Tell me that the California Condor’s near extinction event had nothing to do with lead and that the concentrated conservation efforts of the Los Angeles Zoo and other organizations weren’t really needed because the condor was fine on its own.

It’s heartbreaking to witness a bird in the throes of lead poisoning, let alone a bird as majestic, beautiful and symbolic as a bald eagle.  THIS IS ENTIRELY PREVENTABLE.  And yet NINETY PERCENT of the eagles received by the Minnesota Raptor Center alone exhibit high blood lead levels.  https://www.raptor.umn.edu/our-research/lead-poisoning

If anyone knows of a better way to reach the Department/Secretary of the Interior to make known your displeasure and your disappointment at this foolish and utterly unnecessary action, please let me know.  Until then, please contact them here to express your disapproval at Secretary Ryan Zinke’s action.  

Mailing Address: Department of the Interior 1849 C Street, N.W. Washington DC 20240

Phone: (202) 208-3100

In news stories it is clear Zinke fancies himself another Teddy Roosevelt.  Me? I say that Teddy Roosevelt would be ashamed of him.

I’m still furious about this. 😡😡😡

I’m not sure if I really belong in medicine sometimes. My ideas and values seem so foreign. I hate a lot of the prevalent medicine culture, both what I’ve heard for the last five years and sometimes what I see floating past my dash. I hate this whole glorification of the martyr bullshit. Breaking duty hours doesn’t make you a good doctor. Spending every last waking minute at the hospital doesn’t make you a good doctor. The inability to have interests outside of the hospital doesn’t make you a good doctor. This is a job, folks. Sure, it’s an incredibly important job… but it’s still just a job. YOU ARE SOMEONE APART FROM A DOCTOR (or med student). Your life outside of medicine isn’t a weakness. This is the exact kind of fucked up thinking that has turned this profession so toxic. When you hear this bullshit day in and day out, is there any wonder that our collective mental health is shit?

You’re a good doctor because you take pride in what you do. 

You’re a good doctor because you care about helping others. 

You’re a good doctor because you try, really fucking hard, every day. 

You’re a good doctor because you exist as a person outside of medicine.  

These are the important things you need to remember throughout your training.