The last couple of days have been interesting. Our second week of neuro block consisted of... a lot of neuro! I'm not a huge fan of the stuff we're learning mainly because I don't really feel like I'm getting anywhere with it. I have zero experience with neuro and I think it's definitely kicking me in the butt. Basically, we're learning about the spinal cord and lesions isolated to the cervical vertebrae -- particularly the caudal cervical vertebrae.
I got to do a bovine physical exam yesterday, which was so exciting! I like cows a lot more than when I started. For anyone curious on how to do one, there's amazing videos on YouTube and the Penn CVM site has a lot of handy pictures and descriptions as well. I was amazed at just how loud rumen contractions were! I'm not fantastic at auscultation so I was pretty proud of myself for knowing where to listen to the heart and lungs on both sides as well as cecum, rumen, and other fun gut sounds! We were also able to do something called ballottement, since the cow was... PREGNANT! It was super cool. Basically, you push your fist into the cow's side repeatedly, almost a punching motion, and that swings the fetus away from you until it comes back and hits you back. Too cool!
I had an ophthalmic exam lab today which I really liked. I'm liking ophthalmology way more than I expected but I'm still on the fence as to whether or not that's a viable career option. I really like my surgery, and I'm not sure how much of that ophthalmologists get to do. Piper came in as a volunteer and I'm assuming she was good, since I didn't hear otherwise! She's volunteering as well on Friday. I figure it's free screening as well as it's good for her to be poked and prodded as much as possible by as many people as possible. We learned how to use the transilluminator to monitor direct and consensual PLR. We also used the direct ophthalmoscope which is something I've known I need more practice with. I've been able to use that a few times thanks to the doctors at our Banfield rotation but it definitely takes a lot of practice. We also performed indirect opthlamoscopy (no idea if that's a word!) which I'd never seen before, so that was pretty cool. Basically, you shine the transilluminator in the pet's eye until you see the tapetum essentially reflect back at you and then you place a huge magnifying glass in the middle and boom! The whole retina is there for you to exam, as well as the optic nerve and blood vessels. One of my friend's facilitators said he'd take her and her dog in next Monday for some more practice so I'm hoping to crash that.