Vet Student at Košice

This term seems to be making up for the time we spent online - we have 9 practical trips in the next 6 weeks. Mostly to the university farm to work with the cows, but we also have several trips planned to the Košice slaughterhouse. Can't say that I'm thrilled about that, but I know it's an important part of the process.  Today's farm trip was to do salmonellosis testing in calves at the university farm. We had to do a general inspection of the calves, take a TPR, a blood sample and if they had diarrhoea, a fecal sample and a rectal swab. It was a bit chaotic because there were 31 of us - in previous years it's been around 20 people maximum . We split up into 4 groups, and were assigned a section of cows to examine. Eventually we settled into a routine, and we all got to try taking bloods and other samples. I was very happy to hit the vein on two calves as I haven't taken blood from a cow before - not much different to dogs, but the skin is much thicker!   The sa...

    Full disclaimer, this happened several weeks ago, I am only just getting around to typing it up. So for part of my course, we have to complete a certain amount of hours of "extra-mural studies" in practice. At the end of my 2nd year, we only had to do 80 hours so I booked 2 weeks in a first opinion and referral practice in Belfast. My friend lives and works at the place, so I stayed with her and we did some touristy things around Ireland, like going to see the Giant's Causeway. In my first week at the practice, I mostly just observed, trying to remember everyone's names and what I'd learnt in the last year. The practice focussed a lot on neurology and orthopaedics, so I observed and did several neurological exams.  I got to practice loads of clinical skills like blood draws and placing IV catheters. We missed out of doing most of that in first year because of covid. Because my friend is a nurse there, I had a bit of an "in", and got to do ...

 Not gonna lie, I've felt pretty emotional for the last few days. I didn't update my blog last week because all I could think about was my cat, but actually I did some cool stuff! On Monday 7th, we did our first post mortem. It was a cat, and we couldn't find many gross lesions, aside from a few very large lymph nodes, and a chronically inflamed GIT. The teacher didn't know the history, as the animals don't always come from the university clinic. It was quite interesting, and I didn't feel as squicked by it as I thought I would (except for the part where we had to remove the brain. Pretty sure that's put me being a pathologist for good). It'll be interesting when we're all a bit more practiced. Unfortunately because we did anatomy online, we're not the best at identifying structures.  We also had our first breeding and diseases of game practical, where we went into the university museum to look at some taxidermy. I have mixed feelings about taxid...

Goodbye, my old friend. I hope you enjoyed your time with us. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a cat that had a better life.  Thank you for letting me practice my clinical skills on you, I know it annoyed you when I poked and prodded at you. Thank you for being such a good patient when you needed your ear cleaning twice a day - I will think of you every time I clean another cats' ears.  I will miss your little black shadow on the steps outside. I'll miss our countryside walks together. I'll miss watching you play with your tinfoil ball. I wish you'd have waited for me to come home, but I know you liked to do everything on your own terms. Goodbye my sweet boy, I'll be seeing you.   May 10 2010 - March 10 2022