Funny/Interesting Things Professors Say #3

Professor quotes

Pathology
“I did brush my teeth this morning… so…”
“some student have described it as nuclear spooning.”
“Cats look different anyway… they’re like little horses in miniature. No, really, they have a lot of similarities!”
“transmissible venereal tumors can be present anywhere dogs like to touch their nose or do the nasty.”
“this is in species that love to contract their spleens”
“Platelets are sensitive little guys. You talk to them ugly and they get agitated and aggregate.”


Infectious Diseases
“Good guess! I mean, good answer.”



Toxicology
“I would think if you have an upset stomach, you wouldn’t want to take strychnine.”
“I don’t know how you guys are going to finish a major exam in 50 minutes…”
“those big planes have a glide path about like a rock.”
“obviously children don’t lick it off.”
“He should have been shot between the eyes… or slid down a 40 foot razor blade into a barrel of turpentine.”
“Most people don’t read the damn label, just like most people don’t read the damn instructions.”


Surgery
“The single, lone ranger, advantage…”
“Silk… oh! Bad, bad boy! Wicked! Evil!”
“The angels sing when we start talking about Surgilene”
“If anybody says “I’m going to sew this back together” I’m going to jump them and wrestle them to the ground.”
“placing 45 simple interrupted sutures is a real buzz kill.”
“this is part where I feel like I need to interpret through dance or something”


Public Health
“I’m going to try to make this not boring… this could be hard.”

Surgery!

I’m really excited to be starting Surgery class. Granted, this semester we won’t actually get to cut anything. (I don’t think.)

But we do start learning the best way to hold our instruments. And the best way to organize and sterilize a surgery pack. And the best kinds of sutures to use. And how to tie sutures. Basically, we learn all the stuff you need to know to be a surgeon!

I have the added issue of being left handed, which is only problematic in that right now, all my tools are right handed. I’m going to be spending this semester deciding which ones I want to sink the money into ordering in left handed. Surgery tools are expensive enough; they’re even more expensive left handed.

I hope I can keep the multitude of similar, but slightly different, scissors straight!

We finally get to pick classes!

After 2 years of having our schedules completely out of our hands, we finally have some freedom to choose. (Granted, there are 19 hours of required class in the Fall and 16 hours of required class in the Spring.)

Honestly, it's a little overwhelming! There are 63 options, and we have to narrow that done to a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 20 or so.

Then there's fact that we aren't guranteed to get any of the classes that we want. They assign us to classes based on request and then lottery.

So, my current plans are:

Emergency Response and Management (which has 130 slots, so I'll definitely get it)

Primate Medicine (25 slots, but I assume not a lot of interest)

Animal Models of Human Disease (10 slots, but probably not a lot of interest)

Interactive Emergency and Critical Care Small Animal Cases (30 slots)
OR
Contemporary Issues in Animal Welfare (second choice in that time slot, also 30 slots)

Small Animal Endocrinology: Problem Solving (8 slots)
OR
Diagnostic Cytology Topics (second choice, 40 slots)

Small Animal Dentistry (30 slots, who knows if I'll get it! I'm signing up for this one in 2 slots, in hopes one will come through)

Small Animal Cardiology (130 slots)

Food Animal Advanced Elective (130 slots- good for boards)

Clinical Lab Animal Medicine (5 slots, I assume not a lot of other interest)

Resolving Small Animal Behavior Problems (130 slots)

Common Complaints (8 slots, everyone wants it... so, we'll see!)
OR
Physical Medicine, Rehab, Pain Management, Alternative/Complementary Medicine (16 slots)

Small Animal Oncology (100 slots)
OR
Diagnostic Lab (6 slots)
OR
Physical Medicine, etc (16 slots)

Feline Medicine (80 slots, but it fills up every year!)

Regulatory Issues: Update for the Practitioner (80 slots. I'm not excited about this one, but it's important for being accredited/licensed as a vet. It's more important for large animal people for health certificate stuff, but it's important for rabies vaccine administration in some states and I don't know where I'm going to end up.)

Small Animal Gastroenterology (130 slots)

Small Animal Nutrition (65 slots)

Emergency Medicine (130 slots. Everyone can take this one. Dr. Bailey teaches it 6 times a year.)

There is a Ton of Toxicology

I’m a little overwhelmed with the amount of information we’re expected to know about toxicology. We just started this class halfway through the semester (it started after pharmacology ended.) And, wow! We thought we had to know a lot about pharmacology (drug names, mechanisms of action, significant side effects, contraindications, general category of disease affected) but toxicology seems like so much more!

Both classes do weekly quizzes (I think mostly to force us to keep up with the information.) In pharmacology, each quiz would cover maybe 3-4 pages of the notes that I make from lecture. In toxicology, the first quiz covers 20 pages of condensed information (and 60 of the note set, which is about 600 powerpoint slides of information!)

I’m trying to keep about 15 heavy metals and 10 pesticides straight (for just this quiz!) with respect to names, forms, pathogenesis, organ system most affected, animal most affected, lesions and treatment.

It’s just a lot of information!

Antimicrobial Resistance

I’ll try not to get too much on a soapbox here, but I feel very strongly about the antimicrobial use in livestock debates that are raging right now.

The gist of the argument from people like the Infectious Disease Society of America and Katie Couric is that livestock producers are using antibiotics willy-nilly in their livestock and that this is contributing to antibiotic resistances that we’re seeing in human medicine.

I have several problems with this assertion. For one, I don’t think that livestock producers are using antibiotics willy-nilly. It isn’t in their economic best interest to do so! They have narrow profit margins on a per animal basis, so they tend to only treat when there’s some kind of economic benefit. The argument they make back here is that “growth promotant” antibiotics are used to treat subclinical protozoal parasite infections. My response to that is that is a subclinical infection and the animals are healthier without the parasites.

For two, why are they so uptight about antibiotic use in animals? Have they looked at the use of antibiotics in human medicine lately? Most doctors throw antibiotics at people when they come in for the sniffles. Also, most people don’t complete their antibiotic courses. So, my general feeling here is that while veterinarians do probably need to clean up their act with regards to prudent use of antibiotics, those human medicine folk need to clean their own house before they complain about our dusting.

Spring Break is Over!

We went on a cruise and it was awesome!

The vet school blogging will start back up tomorrow!

Spring Break!

Today marks the beginning of Spring Break!

I'm heading off on a cruise, so the posting will start back up next week.

Club Lectures

One of the coolest things about vet school is the extra-curricular activities. I really love going to the lunch and dinner meetings hosted by various clubs. Mostly I’m in clubs that apply directly to my interests (AAFP for cats, LAM for lab animals, ACVIM for internal medicine), but I enjoy going to meetings when other clubs host meeting that they invite everyone to.

Tonight’s meeting was hosted by SFT (The Society for Theriogenology) and the speaker was the guy who does artificial insemination for Sea World. The lecture has been awesome.

The procedures they do are so cool. There are neat pictures of dolphins and baby dolphins and orcas and baby orcas. (Baby marine mammals are so cute!) The speaker is hilarious! (Or, maybe, it’s so funny because even vet students aren’t immune to the reflexive giggle when somebody says “penis.”)

My favorite quote of the evening: “The last killer whale I got pregnant…… Never mind. Moving on…”

After a long hiatus

Hello there, internet-world. I've been away a while! School got very time consuming (no surprises there, I'm sure!)

However, I'm back and intending to post at least 3 times a week from here on out!

Vet school gives me plenty to talk about.