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.