We had a 4th year planning meeting today to learn about all the wonderful intimidating aspects of setting up our 4th years rotations and externships. I think for most of us--definitely for me--there was an element of: "Wait, what? Shoot, I have to get on this! I'm not ready!" On the one hand, I want to excel! I want to be enthusiastic and personable and competent on every rotation I do (and I want to do them all). On the other hand, I know I'm going to be tired and frazzled and will want to just go home as soon as I can, so I worry that I'm going to completely FAIL to be enthusiastic and competent (and as for being personable, well, one can only do so much while trying to remember the medicine, the science, the animal-handling, and how that one person is a pain to work with but DON'T let them know that).
Oh, and I have an exam tomorrow. I did not realize this until this morning. Upon reflection, I probably would have spent a lot less time driving around doing errands this weekend had I known. And more time studying the prevention of mastitis in dairy cows.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Too Hot
I need to get up a lot earlier if it's going to stay in the high 80's + humidity. Nine AM was obviously not early enough to be outside doing things. Granted, I think the mosquitos would have been happy to eat me at whatever hour I went outside, but at least I wouldn't have felt like I was wading through liquid warmth to boot. I have achieved one main thing today, and that was moving the roosters. They have been eating the tomatoes as the tomatoes got ripe, and when they chowed down on a golden jubilee I had had my eye on for three days, that was it. (They took a few bites out of every single other tomato that was within a day of ripening for good measure.)
Roosters are easy to catch if it is at night and you have a flashlight to shine in their eyes. They stare at the flashlight and, though suspicious that you might be doing something out of their sight, they don't panic until you have already caught them. Then they shriek bloody murder. We collected all 7 from their various roosts in the barn and sheds. They had to hang out in a dog crate all night, and of course the dogs had a splendid time running over to look in at the birdies, running away when we yelled "No chickens!" and back again as soon as the echo of our voices had died down and, to a dog's brain, had no more authority.
I drove the crate out to the other farm, and released the roosters onto the lawn. Only one of them bothered to check out the corn and water I'd put out for them. All the other roosters were interested only in getting as far away from each other as possible. Hopefully they'll make a couple of circuits and either find the water I put out or, ideally, figure out where the cows' waterers are and drink out of those.
Roosters are easy to catch if it is at night and you have a flashlight to shine in their eyes. They stare at the flashlight and, though suspicious that you might be doing something out of their sight, they don't panic until you have already caught them. Then they shriek bloody murder. We collected all 7 from their various roosts in the barn and sheds. They had to hang out in a dog crate all night, and of course the dogs had a splendid time running over to look in at the birdies, running away when we yelled "No chickens!" and back again as soon as the echo of our voices had died down and, to a dog's brain, had no more authority.
I drove the crate out to the other farm, and released the roosters onto the lawn. Only one of them bothered to check out the corn and water I'd put out for them. All the other roosters were interested only in getting as far away from each other as possible. Hopefully they'll make a couple of circuits and either find the water I put out or, ideally, figure out where the cows' waterers are and drink out of those.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Dog adoptions
This has been a summer remarkably free of veterinary medicine. I believe I had planned to be more enthused about inflicting my presence on local veterinarians, but between driving home every other day, gardening, and the trying to write on a daily basis, I've been remarkably busy. It takes about three hours of procrastination for me to get around to one hour of writing. This is an improvement over it taking three days to achieve the same level of frantic "must-write-NOW". At some point, I may achieve two hours of writing at a time. And that will be about the time school starts, at which point busyness truly descends with a vengeance.
In the meantime--I inadvertently talked my fiance into getting a greyhound. Not YET, but presumably we'll be picking a dog-friendly apartment for next year. I think it's Pye's fault. Pye is one of my dogs, very old but only recently starting to act like it (something about megaesophagus and retching all the time...). We adopted him when I was in middle school. He wasn't a mellow dog then, but the intervening years really reduced the running off/playbiting/barking all night. He now has just about enough energy to wander up and gaze imploringly at you. My fiance, who has never had dogs or cats, is a complete sucker for this sort of canine manipulation. And I may have mentioned, one time when I was trying to explain greyhound dispositions (from what I've seen--I admit I don't have a ton of experience with them), that they do this same sort of imploring gaze.
I'm hoping that adopting a greyhound goes smoother than adopting Pye went. I remember the local Humane Society, which I previously had considered a Good and Intelligent institution, really didn't want to let us adopt a dog from them. The problem? We live on a farm. The dog would be on a farm. The dog would be outside on the farm. Apparently, it is anathema to the humane society's mission to let any dog spend nights outside the warmth and protection of a house. If the dog came from a farm? Well, then it would be okay--unless the dog had become an indoor dog since its days on a farm. All dogs at the humane society are housed indoors. Ergo, all dogs from the humane society are indoor dogs. I think they finally let us have Pye because he had already come through the humane society twice (both times because he had way too much energy for living in a house), and they were getting desperate.
Talking with other people from farms (often vet students), this is pretty common. It doesn't matter how qualified the potential owner might be, the humane society would rather euthanize dogs than adopt them out to farms. Do they think the dogs are going to be unhappy on the farm? Do they envision horrible accidents involving combines? Do they think all outdoor dogs are abused dogs?
That said, greyhounds would not make good farm dogs. From what I know, they are capable of a little too much speed with not enough discretion for wire fences.
In the meantime--I inadvertently talked my fiance into getting a greyhound. Not YET, but presumably we'll be picking a dog-friendly apartment for next year. I think it's Pye's fault. Pye is one of my dogs, very old but only recently starting to act like it (something about megaesophagus and retching all the time...). We adopted him when I was in middle school. He wasn't a mellow dog then, but the intervening years really reduced the running off/playbiting/barking all night. He now has just about enough energy to wander up and gaze imploringly at you. My fiance, who has never had dogs or cats, is a complete sucker for this sort of canine manipulation. And I may have mentioned, one time when I was trying to explain greyhound dispositions (from what I've seen--I admit I don't have a ton of experience with them), that they do this same sort of imploring gaze.
I'm hoping that adopting a greyhound goes smoother than adopting Pye went. I remember the local Humane Society, which I previously had considered a Good and Intelligent institution, really didn't want to let us adopt a dog from them. The problem? We live on a farm. The dog would be on a farm. The dog would be outside on the farm. Apparently, it is anathema to the humane society's mission to let any dog spend nights outside the warmth and protection of a house. If the dog came from a farm? Well, then it would be okay--unless the dog had become an indoor dog since its days on a farm. All dogs at the humane society are housed indoors. Ergo, all dogs from the humane society are indoor dogs. I think they finally let us have Pye because he had already come through the humane society twice (both times because he had way too much energy for living in a house), and they were getting desperate.
Talking with other people from farms (often vet students), this is pretty common. It doesn't matter how qualified the potential owner might be, the humane society would rather euthanize dogs than adopt them out to farms. Do they think the dogs are going to be unhappy on the farm? Do they envision horrible accidents involving combines? Do they think all outdoor dogs are abused dogs?
That said, greyhounds would not make good farm dogs. From what I know, they are capable of a little too much speed with not enough discretion for wire fences.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Mad Cooking Skillz: It looks like parasites!
I has 'em.
Granted, the last three things I made didn't really turn out, as such. But this one is awesome, I promise! And healthy, which is a huge step out of the ordinary for me. It's just wrong, though, that Whole Foods has cheaper orzo and kalamata olives than the local generic grocery store. On one level it makes sense: Orzo = specialty item, Whole Foods = specialty store, therefore Whole Foods = better orzo selection. But the idea of anything being cheaper there is an alien concept.
I needed the orzo to make salad for the celebratory end-o-finals potluck my class is holding. We have a competition for pathology/parasitology themed foods, and orzo...I mean, have you seen it? It looks almost exactly like little lucilia bots, without the hint of ridges.
I wanted kalamata olives to simulate cuterebra, although really I just wanted kalamata olives because they are tasty. And then I added so much spinach and tomato that it doesn't really look frighteningly parasitic at all. But my main goal is to bring something that people will eat, which never seems to happen when I bring cookies. Even the cross-section-of-the-pons cookies I brought last year completely failed to disappear, and they were delicious in addition to being neuroanatomically correct. Well, correct-ish. It's hard to prevent refrigerator cookies from getting a little lopsided. Those would have been neat to do this year--I could have added red hots and called it nigropallidal encephalomalacia.
Granted, the last three things I made didn't really turn out, as such. But this one is awesome, I promise! And healthy, which is a huge step out of the ordinary for me. It's just wrong, though, that Whole Foods has cheaper orzo and kalamata olives than the local generic grocery store. On one level it makes sense: Orzo = specialty item, Whole Foods = specialty store, therefore Whole Foods = better orzo selection. But the idea of anything being cheaper there is an alien concept.
I needed the orzo to make salad for the celebratory end-o-finals potluck my class is holding. We have a competition for pathology/parasitology themed foods, and orzo...I mean, have you seen it? It looks almost exactly like little lucilia bots, without the hint of ridges.
I wanted kalamata olives to simulate cuterebra, although really I just wanted kalamata olives because they are tasty. And then I added so much spinach and tomato that it doesn't really look frighteningly parasitic at all. But my main goal is to bring something that people will eat, which never seems to happen when I bring cookies. Even the cross-section-of-the-pons cookies I brought last year completely failed to disappear, and they were delicious in addition to being neuroanatomically correct. Well, correct-ish. It's hard to prevent refrigerator cookies from getting a little lopsided. Those would have been neat to do this year--I could have added red hots and called it nigropallidal encephalomalacia.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Poisonous plants
Continuing my toxicology studying...(this is going to be a long one)
Most poisonous plants do not taste good. If you don't force the animals to eat them, they probably won't. (For a given definition of "force"...leaving a cat in the room with a lily may qualify as forcing the poor feline to chew on the plant).
Other definitions of "force":
-overgrazing
-underfeeding
-lack of forage (i.e. drought) or accumulation of toxins (ex. corn accumulates nitrates)
-misidentification
If the hay contains toxic weeds, stop feeding it. This may fix all the problems.
Berries are bad.
Common names are, well, common. Totally different plants may share the name.
Now, by system:
Cardiovascular
Cyanide and cardiac glycosides are the major toxins here. Oleander, Japanese Yew, and foxglove are potent, as are seemingly innocuous fruit trees like apple, apricot, and choke-cherry (which sounds totally innocuous, doesn't it?).
Kalanchoe has cardiac glycoside-ish substances, and it's sold as houseplant where it doesn't grow wild. But then, everything toxic seems to be sold as a houseplant. Like lily of the valley. And monkshood. And water hemlock.
Choke cherry (prunus virginiana)
delphinium/larkspur
foxglove (digitalis)
Japanese yew (taxus) has red berries with poisonous seeds. On the other hand, they've made a nice chemo drug with it now.
Kalanchoe causes vomiting, diarrhea, in addition to the CV signs. No struggling before death, cyanotic membranes, and petechial hemorrhages in the GI tract.
Lily of the valley (convallaria majalis) works through cardiac glycosides.
Monkshood (aconitum) grows in meadows and mountains.
Oleander (Nerium oleander) is very common in California. Do NOT toast marshmallows on sticks from oleander bushes.
Summer pheasant's eye (Adonis aestivalis) is similar to oleander and foxglove, horses and sheep are the usual victims.
Water hemlock (Cicuta maculata) is even more poisonous than poison hemlock, although it becomes deceptively palatable (to herbivores, presumably) after being sprayed with herbicide.
Blood
Bracken fern takes weeks to start causing bone marrow depression in cattle. Horses are done for by thiaminase and get neurologic signs.
Onions have n-propyl disulfides, which oxidize hemoglobin and cause weakness, depression, pale or icteric mucous membranes. Also GI distrubances, rapid pulse and respiration, and, of course, Heinz-body hemolytic anemia.
Red maple contains gallic acid in the wilted leaves, which kills horses by hemolytic anemia.
Sweet clover (melilotus), a question I got wrong on the neuropath exam, are only poisonous when dried improperly and make dicoumarol. Sheep are more resistant than cattle.
GI
Solanaceae: everyone's favorite little known fact is that tomatoes are related to nightshade! (a guy once tried to impress me with his knowledge of this fact, which would probably have gone over better had he not so obviously been clueless about anything and everything else botanical)
Other fun clinical signs: CNS depression, cardiovascular collapse, hallucinations (a specialty of Jimsonweed, aka datura).
Mountain laurel is related to azalea and rhododendrons, and its toxins can get into meat and honey.
Mayapple (sometimes called mandrake, though it's not the same plant as that mandrake). Vomiting, lethargy are the big clinical signs, but it can be treated with copious fluid therapy. Mayapple doesn't make much of a house plant, but it's sold as a lovely native plant for people doing shade gardening.
Sneezeweed is a direct GI irritant, seen in sheep in the west (where it's probably always overgrazed and droughty).
Tobacco.
Brunfelsia, known as Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, can cause seizures and resemble strychnine. Takes a long time for recovery.
Liver and skin
It turns out plant-filled diets contain phylloerythrin, which is a photosensitive compound that does really nasty things when it deposits in the skin and get exposed to sunlight. Cracking and sloughing sorts of things. Plants like St. Johnswort and tansy ragwort cause liver disease, and then photosensitization (pyrrolizidine alkaloids). Plants like alsike clover just cause photosensitization (mainly horses). Then there's cycad palm, which is just incredibly toxic. On the other hand, in more northern states where it never flowers, you don't have to worry about its seeds, which are the most toxic part.
Nervous system
Hemp grows wild and is occasionally eaten in complete innocence by pigs that are bedded on it. More often it is the basis of entertaining stories about teasing out the truth from people who bring their dogs in after the dog ate someone's stash...Expect nervousness, irritation, CNS depression, and coma. In the dog.
Horsetail shows up in forage. It's related to bracken fern, has the same thiaminase enzyme. Cows that eat it become hyperexciteable, stagger, tremble, lose weight and drop milk production.
White snakeroot also likes wetland areas. Its toxin is tremetol, which causes choke, from partial throat paralysis, and trembling in horses.
Yellow star thistle causes what is sometimes called "chewing disease". Horses develop a very focal lesion at the nigropallidal...um...spot.
Musculoskeletal
Black walnut shavings are used for bedding, and then cause laminitis, severe edema, and ultimately severe GI signs in horses.
Hoary alyssum creates similar problems when it shows up being fed in hay.
Well, that was a brief section.
Renal
Oxalates!
Also alkaloids.
Autumn crocus, honestly, affects the GI more, but colchicine alkaloids in the bulb still do irreversible kidney damage.
Death camas show up most in the western states--they're occasionally mistaken for onions, it seems.
Philodendron, peace lily, dieffenbachia (dumbcane) are all oxalate containing houseplants. Dumbcane is especially interesting--its cells eject calcium oxalate when it is chewed, which makes the throat swell up (rendering the chewer dumb).
Easter lily is the culprit of the cat-in-a-locked-room mystery (at least back before anyone realized that lilies were quite that toxic to cats--or that cats would eat something that was so completely deadly).
Greasewood and halogeton (Jack-in-the-pulpit, another native shade plant) contain oxalates that really screw up rumens and cause other problems for grazing animals.
Reproduction
Goats that eat avocado plants get mastitis.
Locoweed interferes with estrus cycle.
Lupine--which is actually grown as forage for cattle-- causes crooked calf syndrome if the cow eats it between days 40-70 of gestation. The calf may be born with cleft palate or more severe signs.
False hellebore, also known as corn lily, causes "cyclops lambs".
Poison hemlock, which is related to carrots of all things, is most famous for being used to kill Socrates (or was it actually water hemlock?)
Ponderosa pine can cause abortions.
White snakeroot is secreted in milk--that's the one that killed Lincoln's mother.
Then there's castor bean, a lovely toxic looking ornamental that contains ricin, one of the most toxic substances known to man.
Most poisonous plants do not taste good. If you don't force the animals to eat them, they probably won't. (For a given definition of "force"...leaving a cat in the room with a lily may qualify as forcing the poor feline to chew on the plant).
Other definitions of "force":
-overgrazing
-underfeeding
-lack of forage (i.e. drought) or accumulation of toxins (ex. corn accumulates nitrates)
-misidentification
If the hay contains toxic weeds, stop feeding it. This may fix all the problems.
Berries are bad.
Common names are, well, common. Totally different plants may share the name.
Now, by system:
Cardiovascular
Cyanide and cardiac glycosides are the major toxins here. Oleander, Japanese Yew, and foxglove are potent, as are seemingly innocuous fruit trees like apple, apricot, and choke-cherry (which sounds totally innocuous, doesn't it?).
Kalanchoe has cardiac glycoside-ish substances, and it's sold as houseplant where it doesn't grow wild. But then, everything toxic seems to be sold as a houseplant. Like lily of the valley. And monkshood. And water hemlock.
Choke cherry (prunus virginiana)
delphinium/larkspur
foxglove (digitalis)
Japanese yew (taxus) has red berries with poisonous seeds. On the other hand, they've made a nice chemo drug with it now.
Kalanchoe causes vomiting, diarrhea, in addition to the CV signs. No struggling before death, cyanotic membranes, and petechial hemorrhages in the GI tract.
Lily of the valley (convallaria majalis) works through cardiac glycosides.
Monkshood (aconitum) grows in meadows and mountains.
Oleander (Nerium oleander) is very common in California. Do NOT toast marshmallows on sticks from oleander bushes.
Summer pheasant's eye (Adonis aestivalis) is similar to oleander and foxglove, horses and sheep are the usual victims.
Water hemlock (Cicuta maculata) is even more poisonous than poison hemlock, although it becomes deceptively palatable (to herbivores, presumably) after being sprayed with herbicide.
Blood
Bracken fern takes weeks to start causing bone marrow depression in cattle. Horses are done for by thiaminase and get neurologic signs.
Onions have n-propyl disulfides, which oxidize hemoglobin and cause weakness, depression, pale or icteric mucous membranes. Also GI distrubances, rapid pulse and respiration, and, of course, Heinz-body hemolytic anemia.
Red maple contains gallic acid in the wilted leaves, which kills horses by hemolytic anemia.
Sweet clover (melilotus), a question I got wrong on the neuropath exam, are only poisonous when dried improperly and make dicoumarol. Sheep are more resistant than cattle.
GI
Solanaceae: everyone's favorite little known fact is that tomatoes are related to nightshade! (a guy once tried to impress me with his knowledge of this fact, which would probably have gone over better had he not so obviously been clueless about anything and everything else botanical)
Other fun clinical signs: CNS depression, cardiovascular collapse, hallucinations (a specialty of Jimsonweed, aka datura).
Mountain laurel is related to azalea and rhododendrons, and its toxins can get into meat and honey.
Mayapple (sometimes called mandrake, though it's not the same plant as that mandrake). Vomiting, lethargy are the big clinical signs, but it can be treated with copious fluid therapy. Mayapple doesn't make much of a house plant, but it's sold as a lovely native plant for people doing shade gardening.
Sneezeweed is a direct GI irritant, seen in sheep in the west (where it's probably always overgrazed and droughty).
Tobacco.
Brunfelsia, known as Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, can cause seizures and resemble strychnine. Takes a long time for recovery.
Liver and skin
It turns out plant-filled diets contain phylloerythrin, which is a photosensitive compound that does really nasty things when it deposits in the skin and get exposed to sunlight. Cracking and sloughing sorts of things. Plants like St. Johnswort and tansy ragwort cause liver disease, and then photosensitization (pyrrolizidine alkaloids). Plants like alsike clover just cause photosensitization (mainly horses). Then there's cycad palm, which is just incredibly toxic. On the other hand, in more northern states where it never flowers, you don't have to worry about its seeds, which are the most toxic part.
Nervous system
Hemp grows wild and is occasionally eaten in complete innocence by pigs that are bedded on it. More often it is the basis of entertaining stories about teasing out the truth from people who bring their dogs in after the dog ate someone's stash...Expect nervousness, irritation, CNS depression, and coma. In the dog.
Horsetail shows up in forage. It's related to bracken fern, has the same thiaminase enzyme. Cows that eat it become hyperexciteable, stagger, tremble, lose weight and drop milk production.
White snakeroot also likes wetland areas. Its toxin is tremetol, which causes choke, from partial throat paralysis, and trembling in horses.
Yellow star thistle causes what is sometimes called "chewing disease". Horses develop a very focal lesion at the nigropallidal...um...spot.
Musculoskeletal
Black walnut shavings are used for bedding, and then cause laminitis, severe edema, and ultimately severe GI signs in horses.
Hoary alyssum creates similar problems when it shows up being fed in hay.
Well, that was a brief section.
Renal
Oxalates!
Also alkaloids.
Autumn crocus, honestly, affects the GI more, but colchicine alkaloids in the bulb still do irreversible kidney damage.
Death camas show up most in the western states--they're occasionally mistaken for onions, it seems.
Philodendron, peace lily, dieffenbachia (dumbcane) are all oxalate containing houseplants. Dumbcane is especially interesting--its cells eject calcium oxalate when it is chewed, which makes the throat swell up (rendering the chewer dumb).
Easter lily is the culprit of the cat-in-a-locked-room mystery (at least back before anyone realized that lilies were quite that toxic to cats--or that cats would eat something that was so completely deadly).
Greasewood and halogeton (Jack-in-the-pulpit, another native shade plant) contain oxalates that really screw up rumens and cause other problems for grazing animals.
Reproduction
Goats that eat avocado plants get mastitis.
Locoweed interferes with estrus cycle.
Lupine--which is actually grown as forage for cattle-- causes crooked calf syndrome if the cow eats it between days 40-70 of gestation. The calf may be born with cleft palate or more severe signs.
False hellebore, also known as corn lily, causes "cyclops lambs".
Poison hemlock, which is related to carrots of all things, is most famous for being used to kill Socrates (or was it actually water hemlock?)
Ponderosa pine can cause abortions.
White snakeroot is secreted in milk--that's the one that killed Lincoln's mother.
Then there's castor bean, a lovely toxic looking ornamental that contains ricin, one of the most toxic substances known to man.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Surgery: Anatomy, Art
Today for surgery class (i.e. sit in lecture hearing the basics once, so that next year we cannot say things like, "I've never heard of ___, how do you expect me to know about it?") we're covering anatomy.
So far: anatomy is important.
Anatomy has important implications for suture. Last week we went over suture, so in theory this all makes perfect sense, at any rate makes more sense than enzymology in clin path. In all fairness, the clin path professors do a terrific job, and I'm sure by the time we have an exam, enzymology will make more sense than whatever the next topic is going to be.
So far: anatomy is important.
Anatomy has important implications for suture. Last week we went over suture, so in theory this all makes perfect sense, at any rate makes more sense than enzymology in clin path. In all fairness, the clin path professors do a terrific job, and I'm sure by the time we have an exam, enzymology will make more sense than whatever the next topic is going to be.
Anatomy has been occupying me outside of lecture recently. An artist friend of mine discovered anatomy last year by way of a life drawing class. All of a sudden her sketches of people included such innovative things as triceps. (This year I'm going to be taking the same class, actually, although for different reasons--my drawing skills need help. I know where the muscles are, I'm just lousy at delineating them.) She would like to now spread the joy of knowledge, so we're working on an anatomy workshop for fantasy artists. It will have skulls. If I could, I would bring in a horse leg with intact suspensory apparatus, but that's probably a bit beyond the scope of a one-hour talk that is starting out with "This is a skeleton..."
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Pharm studying...
I. need. a. nap. I woke up at 5 am this morning, just like I did back in February on the untapered dose of prednisone. Alas, it was not accompanied by the irrepressible urge to study. It could have been; I caught an early bus to school, but I got sidetracked by the lake and took mostly blurry photos of geese for a while. If I'm going to make a habit of this, I really ought to start carrying my nice camera. It's not pocket sized, and it has the drawbacks of middle-range digital (grainy ISO, anyone?). But I can force it to do things like take photos in poor light that are not irretrievably blurry (or grainy), sometimes within seconds of pressing the button.
At any rate, I still have studying for the exam tomorrow to do, but my eyes are so tired it's distracting. So...perhaps a little nap...
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