Week 7 of 13

As mentioned in my previous post, I didn't have uni on Monday or Tuesday this week. I spent a bit of time catching up on sleep and housework.

On Wednesday, I didn't have to be in uni until 1225, so I went to the library to do some work. The normal room I work in was shut off because there was a book fair for medical textbooks, so I sat on the armchairs and worked on my thesis for a little bit. I also did a lesson in my Slovak A1 course, then it was time to go to ruminants. We examined some calves, then spoke about one of the patients - a cow who came in with a suspected left diplaced abomasum. It turns out she didn't have an LDA, but instead ruminal atony and severe dehydration. She was also 8 months pregnant. She was given aggressive fluid therapy, and she seemed to recover, and then very unexpectedly gave birth to her calf 3 weeks early, with no warning signs. The calf was very small, and died very soon after birth so it's suspected there was some pathological process going on, most likely to do with the cows nutrition. Unfortunately she retained her placenta, so she's getting treated with oxytocin to induce the expulsion, and after that's done, she will be going to the abbatoir. 

At the end of the day, I went to exotics where we talked about different methods of fixation for bone fractures in birds. Lots to think about with birds, because they are so small and fragile! 

I was dreading Thursday all week. To start with, we had a trip to a meat processing plant at 0800 to learn about deboning meat. Then, I had to go to the slaughterhouse to make up for the trip I missed last week when I wasn't feeling great. It wasn't as bad as I thought! We had a tour of the meat processing plant, where they told us all the meat is from Slovakia, and is distributed only in Slovakia too. While I personally don't eat meat, I am all for sustainable meat consumption like this. Something like 90% of the meat consumed in Slovakia is pork, and they use all parts of the animal which I can appreciate too. Afterwards I stuck around for the slaughterhouse tour. We were talking about post-mortem examination of bovines. 

We had Andrology for the second time on Friday (previously each group had been going on trips instead of having our lecture/lessons). The lecture was interesting, but when we got in for our practical, nothing worked! We were supposed to collect a semen sample from a sheep, but the eletroejaculator didn't work, so the professor said that we could look at a sample that was collected earlier. Unfortunately the sample had been left on the warming plate so had been thoroughly cooked. No problem, he says, we have some in the water bath. Nope, all the sperm in that were dead so we couldn't do any sort of evaluation. Instead, he told us about the theory of what we would be looking for in a semen analysis.

Saturday was a less eventful day - I went to the library and trawled through the university database for more data for my thesis. I've managed to collect a decent chunk now to do some analysis. Lots more to do still. 

On Sunday I went back to the small animal clinic for a few hours. It was actually really busy! There were several inpatients, and a steady stream of patients. I really enjoy working in the clinic, and it's very cool to see what we're learning about in person. For example, we learnt about hotspots in dogs a few weeks ago, and today we saw a lab with the most typical presentation of a hotspot. I've been really trying to learn Slovak, and today there was a Slovak student in the clinic with us. I spoke a little bit to her, in Slovak, and she said my pronunciation is really good! I'm very happy about that! It's been really useful to be able to understand a little of what the clients and vet are talking about, and makes me feel less like a lemon.