Excerpt – Vet Student Adventures

Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – Vet Student Adventures

Our pathology lecturers had a very special sense of humour and a unique way of conducting themselves, starting their morning by doing a post mortem while drinking their morning coffee, an activity which initially horrified us students but we grew used to! Pathology taught us to describe our findings with advanced scientific terminology but also encompassed some very special terms such as “aero chocolate liver” and “bread and butter necrosis”!

One of our lecturers taught us how our actions had the potential to have serious implications and how our profession carries a substantial weight of responsibility. He explained how when submitting a piece of tissue to the laboratory we needed to be considerate as to how much tissue to place in the bottle as there was a minimum amount of formalin required to preserve it optimally so that the pathologist examining the tissue could assist us to make a diagnosis. He outlined how it was possible to cut a piece of tissue too big so that formalin couldn’t penetrate the sample and how certain bugs called clostridia would have the perfect conditions for reproducing and producing gas while they did so.

If this happened in the standard glass jar that was used for submissions the gas would create a critical pressure, the glass jar would burst with a loud bang, the courier driver would get a fright – thinking that he was being hijacked (unfortunately not an uncommon event in Pretoria at that time), swerve off the road, knock down a power pole and cut off electricity to the entire east side of the city!

Doing surgery for the first time was an exhilarating experience. We were each assigned a dog to spey, a surgical procedure, which can still scare even the most experienced vet, as although it is routine, it has some high risks of bleeding if the surgeon isn’t thorough. Our surgical theatre was a different world and I used to jest that perhaps it could be something similar to what some kind of heaven may be like;

• Everyone has to go through the process of taking off their usual clothes and don white theatre clothes with shoes, hats and surgical facemasks to match.
• After this step you were allowed to go through to the “other side” which you would never know existed unless you saw it.
• Animals would be brought in to theatre, have magical operations to fix their broken bones, damaged skin and a number of other procedures.
• Everyone in the theatre walks around in their funny white uniforms, kind of like angels but we just look a lot sillier!

In our final year we spent our time working in the clinics, often doing after-hours shifts in ICU (our Intensive Care Unit) through the night monitoring patients and attending to their needs. We would also have shifts in the “Outpatients Clinic” where one of us would be responsible for attending to emergencies through the night. I remember my intense enjoyment, being responsible for juggling eight emergencies on one of my shifts of animals hit by cars, being debilitated with tick bite fever, having difficulty delivering pups, choking, etc. Here began my love affair with emergency medicine where I savour having to think quickly, act elegantly and often have to handle additional challenges like the animal owner’s extreme emotion.

I remember having to do an emergency blood transfusion on a severely debilitated cat. For this purpose our hospital had a few pet cats, one of which was Gandalf, a handsome and friendly moggy who roamed the hospital grounds. Gandalf had just finished his dinner that night when we grabbed him to be our life–saving blood donor. In order to facilitate the smooth collection of blood from Gandalf we needed to sedate him and unfortunately this meant that as a side effect he would vomit up his dinner. We rushed to sedate Gandalf, he promptly threw up his dinner and succumbed to the sedation but not long after our severely debilitated patient had sadly died. Gandalf had his sedation reversed and quickly came to, delighted to enjoy a whole new serving of dinner and unperturbed by the course of events.

To read more about my adventures, read Vet Tales available as a book or e-book from https://www.drliza.co.nz/shop/