Stove Fan

Tonight the electrician called for at least the second time. He has seemed intent about fixing the fan over the stove in my apartment, and I didn't feel like having him there while I was away and haven't really had any time during business hours for him to come. So I was bad and didn't respond to the first message.
This time he was up at the apt complex already, so I drove up there to meet him. He goes and takes off the fan cover, turns it on, and it runs. How obnoxious. Apparently the fan was catching on the cover. Now, if it was actually very important to me to have the fan work, I would have checked it out. As it was, I didn't feel the need to have it fixed immediately, and didn't call him. I had only alerted the apt managers to the fan condition as part of my apt assessment form, to make sure they knew I hadn't broken it.
I uttered comments to the effect of preserving my image (I am certainly capable of taking the cover off the fan and checking its function) and the guy said "I guess we can't expect tenants to know these things." Hopefully that was tongue in cheek...

Worried If, Worried If Not

I was on call for large animal last night, worried I might get a call and worried I might not get a call. At some point I will have my own first horse colic case, and there's always the question of when to refer the beast for surgery. In some ways I'd like to get the first such case out of the way soon.
I was reading up on colic assessment in my Current Therapy in Equine Medicine book, cell phone in pocket and pager clamped to the edge. The answering service wouldn't call, and I kept wondering if perhaps they had the wrong number for me. I half expected to return to work in the morning and hear of a bunch of angry clients who couldn't get through to the vet. I indulged in a couple chapters of "All Creatures Great and Small" (James Herriot), reading about his first case which was a horse colic with a strangulating lesion. I have a hankering to read those JH books again now that I've been through vet school and have a fuller understanding of the stuff he dealt with. Of course, I've never heard of arecoline used in a modern day colic treatment. It's amazing how new our standard treatments/anesthetic agents are.
I never got called, and there were no angry horse clients.

***
Tonight Dr. A is on call. Before the end of our day, an owner called with a horse which had been tied to a 4x4 board, spooked, and took part/all of the board with it. We heard the lip was drooping down and there was a laceration on the face. Being interested, I offered my assistance and Dr. A offered me full ownership of the case (which was pleasing to me). As it turned out, Dr. S hung out and gave me a hand. It was an easy situation in which to manage my first equine laceration.

The horse arrived, physiologically stable but sporting a facial laceration. This I stapled, and proceeded to evaluate the inside of the lip. I initially thought there were only minor abrasions, but closer evaluation revealed a 3-4 inch section of lip mucosa which had torn free from the lower mandible. No wonder the lip was drooping! Cleaning, carbocaine, and stitching -- and the horse was closer to normal configuration.

A neat case, with a neat owner to boot. Definitely a good end to my day.

Looking back over my unposted blog drafts, I see that I have a significant number of unfinished pieces. And there's no telling when they'll get finished.

A month ago I graduated from veterinary school at Oregon State University. Two days prior to this momentous occasion, I accepted a job at a mixed animal practice in Roseburg. Two weeks following graduation found me living in an apartment and forging my way ahead as the "very new vet" at My Clinic. Being licensed to practice under the "supervision" of another vet for 12 months, there is now no one to figuratively hide behind when I enter the exam room. For some reason I had thought the doctors here would hover over me for my first week or two. They did not, likely knowing the best way to start applying knowledge is to just get in there and do it. It is also good that the majority of cases are not matters of life and death, although it sort of felt that way my first day on the job.

A dog comes in with severely swollen bulbar conjunctivae in one eye. Now, I had never seen anything so incredibly swollen -- it was like a bulging circular water balloon around the globe of the eye! I looked for a foreign body, and pondered, and looked it up in books, and for pictures on the internet, and nowhere could I find reference to such a swollen seemingly fluid-filled swelling of the conjunctiva. After checking for a corneal ulcer, I prescribed a steroid ointment. By this time the swelling seemed less and by the time I called the owner a day or two later all was well. It was just a case of ordinary conjunctivitis, probably irritant or allergic in nature, that any vet who has been at it for 2 weeks would face with little concern. But at that point, I had seen little in the way of eye problems and the case sure had me wondering. (And imagining all sorts of false things like a ruptured duct, a prolapsed tumor, ???)

Before starting my job, the whole ophthalmic exam thing scared me. I remember small animal ophthalmology in vet school, and all these pictures of various abnormalities/ailments, and wondering how in the world I was going to know what was wrong unless I had the eye picture book before me. Practice makes comfortable (though never perfect), and in the last two weeks I have diagnosed a broad but shallow corneal ulcer in a dog, pulled a significant grass awn out of the third eyelid of a cat (most of it came out with little resistance (amazingly) from the awake cat, and we sedated it to get the rest), seen a couple cases of conjunctivitis, and today I had a dog with a swollen third eyelid (probably the third eyelid gland, although it wasn't prolapsed). These basically get treated with eye ointment either with or without steroids depending on the nature of the problem (e.g. no steroids for corneal ulcers).

Eyes are now a relatively welcome presenting complaint -- at least you can see them, and figure out what's wrong or at least how to treat them. I think that perhaps synechiation will jump out at me the first time I see it.

I wonder how long it will take people to figure out my new webpage address?
I'll post a post with the old address and the new so a search might reveal the new.
Old: www.oregonstate.edu/~varneyc/fenestra.html
New: allatorvosi.blogspot.com
Possible search keywords:
Claire Varney
Fenestra
Veterinary
Mennonite
Draft Horse