Day 26

Had a sick piglet this morning in one of my boxes - it looked like it had dilated cardiomyopathy with associated congestive heart failure - the heart was enlarged and thin-walled, with fluid in the chest and abdominal cavity and with a fibrinous exudate on the liver, which was enlarged and congested. The heart's been sent off for histopathology. My supervisor reckons I'll get the results around Christmas time, and the PM room staff think it'll be more like Christmas 2008. I think I'll be waiting a while, then.

Today was supposed to be the last day of us collecting material from the farm, but because we started so late on the first week, I'll be collecting material all next week too. I'm not complaining, because it means I get to spend lots more time in the PM room. >:)

This afternoon, a bull mastiff came in from a vet practice in Glasgow, with lymphosarcoma (often called 'Bull Mastuff disease' because this breed seems to get it quite frequently). It was a lesson in anatomy - all the lymph nodes were grossly enlarged and in some cases, visible through the skin.

To those non-vets out there reading this, the locations and names of lymph nodes are something all vet students are expected to know, but because the nodes are usually small they're hard to find, and sometimes even hard to see when pointed out. So to see them through the skin was something very unusual, and all those nodes I'd heard about but never actually seen were suddenly there. And visible. Also visible were nodes I didn't know existed, like the cervical nodes - which must be miniscle on a normal dog, but were bigger than 1.5cm on this poor animal.

Think I'm recovering from the shock of my first driving lesson today. When I was a kid, my nightmares weren't about monsters but about cars being out of control and stuff like brakes not working. It's one of the reasons I've put off taking lessons for so long. However, my birthday present this year was money for lessons, and I suppose we all have to start somewhere.

I shook the whole way through the lesson and experienced that feeling of blind panic you usually get as you enter an exam hall. When I got in the door from the lesson, my heart rate was sitting at 170 (normal 65!) and my hands were still shaking an hour afterwards. Still very apprehensive about the next lesson!