Well on 10/18 @ the end of our Therio lecture our professor that taught the equine section came in & announced we needed to pick up a take-home exam that would be open book/note/internet. Our range of exam scores for his section of the in class exam were 44%-78% (@ least some people got an "A" or "B" on the renal exam)! It was basically the same exam except some of the questions were re-worded in hopes of us choosing the correct answer this time around. Honestly, the questions were still poorly worded considering he stipulated some questions may have multiple correct answers to circle...in that case he should've paid particular attention to saying "which one is" or "which are." Were we to infer then that there is one answer only and multiple answers, respectively? It should just read "which is/are," especially if when he stated "which are" & there was only one correct choice! Also, basically all of his lectures were plagerized from an equine repro book, which helped in the fact that the pictures he had on the exam were mostly straight from the book but his exam was still by no means easy. I'm anticipating the range on this exam will probably be slightly higher, but not by much.

What have you learned?

Just the other day in our Anesthesia class the professor asked a question & since no one answered he asked "Have they been teaching you anything here the past few years?" WOW...what a loaded question! While I have gained a plethora of knowledge over the past few years here in vet school I must admit most of the things I remember are questions I got wrong on previous exams & the questions aren't even that relavent to practicing veterinary medicine...just passing the class. I mean my goodness we have to memorize everything under the sun that's toxic to animals for our toxicology exam, yet when we get out in "the real world" all we have to do is look up the toxic principle in a vet toxicology book!

So my Therio midterm was horrid! The professor said there would be 26 question on his equine section, which were multiple choice & decided not to do slide questions...LIAR! He had like 10 slides with questions. I should've known...what is the one important utensil when doing therio evaluations...LUBE, LOTS OF IT!

I've been meaning to post since last time but there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day. While I'm not doing Jr Sx yet (see DVM Wannabee's post) I have been overwhelmed by other things. Sunday night my mom called me hysterical (ironic b/c she says I get too hysterical when my animals have an emergency) saying that my dog BlackJack grabbed my cat Mitzy again in the head & she has a big cut under her chin & her mouth wasn't closing. She didn't know what to do & she lives alone with the animals. I calmed her down & was asking her how it happened, what she saw, is she breathing ok, bleeding anywhere, & any other trauma? I told her to call the vet I work for @ home because she is about 1 mile away in the same town...she can look @ her & tell you what would be best to do. I told her she was probably going to have to drive her down to school so she could be fixed since everything is mucho expensive in the suburbs of Chicago & I get a pretty good discount @ school since I'm a student. When all was said & done a CT scan confirmed that she had subluxated her right TMJ (temporal mandibular joint), had a 1-2 inch laceration on the ventral aspect of her left mandible, & a few other minor wounds (one of which possibly cause a slight skull fracture). They reduce the luxation, put in an esophagostomy tube, splinted her upper & lower canines together, & placed a Penrose drain in the mandibular laceration. She is doing pretty good considering.
This is not the first time this had happened...the exact same thing happened last summer except it was just the subluxation & no other injuries. I'm not exactly sure if my dog is having medical problems (senility) or if it behavioral but this is the fourth time he has hurt other animals in our house (Mitzy twice, Pepper once, & Frisko once).