There's Something Fishy About This Lab

A week or two ago, we had a fish handling lab.

Did you know that people anaesthetise fish? Fish are sedated before they are killed commercially, but people also have valuable pet fish or display fish (like in an aquarium) that sometimes get sick and need veterinary care. There are a number of basic diagnostic techniques for investigating what could be wrong with a sick fish, and medicine or even surgery can be used to treat them.

Fish anaesthesia is surprisingly like mammalian anaesthesia. For a dog, the anaesthetic is vaporised and they breathe it in through their lungs via the anaesthetic machine. For a fish, it's basically the same: the drug is dissolved in the water rather than the air, and they "breathe" it in through their gills. If a dog is too deep, you give it pure oxygen to breathe for a while; for a fish, you put them into fresh water to breathe for a while.

Unfortunately for me, I managed to pick crappy fish for my partner and myself. They would not go to sleep. As they get more sedated, they lose their balance reflexes (float sideways and stuff), but it can freak them out a little as they go down. So one would have a panic attack, and that would wake up the other one, which was just drifting off. Then the first one would calm down, but the second one got a fright. The professor came by to increase the dose three times after the first lot! We spent at least half of our lab time staring into the bucket waiting for them to be deep enough to work with. It didn't help that we kept thinking they were fine, picking them up, and then they would flop around and wake up and we'd have to put them back. As an aside, the anaesthetic we were using is derived from clove oil, so the lab smelled like a strange combination of live fish and cloves.

Once they were asleep, we could take them out and do things to them. They survive in the air because their metabolism and respiration is slowed down so much under anaesthesia. Normally you have to keep them really wet to protect their skin, however. Our lab was designed to be a non-recovery lab, using fish at the end of their lives and such, so we didn't worry about that.

First thing we did was take blood. There's a vein in their tail, right in front of the fin, and we spent almost the entire rest of our lab time trying to stab it. If the needle goes through a scale on the way in, you plug up the thing with keratin and have to get a new needle. Little fish have little veins and not a lot of blood, so it was a pretty frustrating endeavour. The other site I tried was the dorsal aorta, which sounds really scary: you stick the needle into the back of their mouths, and that's apparently right where the aorta comes off the heart. I blindly stuck mine in and actually got an entire drop of blood right off the bat, but everyone else I talked to had a much harder time with that one.

Another thing we did was skin scrapes, which is apparently quite useful as fish can get protozoal infections, and if you put the mucus on a slide, you can see the protozoa move around. Our fish were not so interesting.

The last thing we did with the live fish was a gill biopsy. If you don't know anything about fish physiology, I have to tell you, gills are cool. They look cool, they are designed cool, they are just cool. You can also snip off a tiny piece with scissors, put it on a slide, and have a look for disease or degeneration that might be making the fish sick (it would be like people having a lung problem). Electron micrograph photo:

The last thing we did was euthanise the fish and do a post mortem. My partner and I had basically no time to do this, so we only had a quick look before lab ended. They have inflated swim bladders next to the kidney, that was the neatest thing, like a little balloon inside their body cavity. They have teeny tiny little spleens, massive massive ovaries filled with eggs, a simple two chambered heart, and skinny twisty intestines. From google:

Halfway Day

After years of anticipation and fundraising, halfway day finally arrived. It takes place near the beginning of second semester, third year, and marks the exact halfway point of our degree.

In preparation, the third years host all the annual vet events (Mr. Vet, the Slave Auction, the Naked Calendar, the Vet vs Ag students debate, and numerous bake sales and other small fund raisers). The other classes always support the third years, in return for getting supported when their time comes.

I'm pretty sure what we did is basically what happens every year: bus trip to Taupo, fancy dinner, and three options for activities during the day. Those options are skydiving, river rafting, or chillaxing (groups went to the hot springs, or fishing on the lake). Skydiving was crazy popular, as you'd expect, however on account of the expense, if you wanted to do that you had to pay a bit extra. I decided not to go skydiving, because you get your one jump and you're done. I chose the rafting, and it was amazing.

We got the day off of class (it was a Friday), and got up at the crack of dawn. After the two or three hour bus ride, with half of us asleep and the other half getting a head start on drinking, we were dropped off at the rafting facility. There was a large amount of chaos as we ate our packed lunches, changed into swimsuits, and queued up for our gear. That was kind of fun: we wove through this little area with staff at every station, rapidly sizing us up and stuffing something in our arms. Then there was the awkward squeezing into wetsuits and buckling up the jacket correctly, and redoing it all when you realise you put something on in the wrong order. Or when, ten minutes later, you suddenly have to pee.

Once we were all geared up, and had taken a sufficient assortment of photos of each other, it was time to grab the rafts and get going. The vans took us about ten minutes away to the river, we teamed up, got ourselves into the water, and then we were off.

The river guide said there were fifty rapids. I was expecting a wild ride, splashing around corners and what have you, but in reality it was actually quite relaxing. Well, I guess it was pretty exciting when we got stuck, and had to rock back and forth pretty vigorously to get ourselves un-stuck. And there was also a lot of passing and getting passed by other rafts, which always involved more than a little bit of splashing with paddles. 

But like I was saying, apart from a few speedy turns and the larger rapids, I would mainly describe it as serene. We had an absolutely perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, warm and sunny. The river cut through cliffs covered in ferns, so most of the time we were surrounded in lush greenery. Halfway through, all the rafts stopped, and they served us hot chocolate and marshmallow fish. Quiet, still, bright, green, ah it was beautiful.

Adding to the relaxed feel, our river guide had a very calm, pleasant voice:

"Okay forward paddle team, forward paddle. That's it team. Okay guys back paddle now. Back paddle."

After the last rapid, they stationed a photographer and shouted at us to pose. I'm in the back right, in front of the river guide. 

On top of everything, when they brought us back, they gave us complementary sausages, beer, and a few other munchies. Everyone was showered and relaxed, and overall the whole experience took up most of day, so personally I think it was the best value choice.

The rest of the evening, we hung out at our hostel, watched some of the Olympics, and got ready for our formal dinner. After night fall, we walked down to the lake, where three boats waited for us. Since there are about a hundred of us, and the boats were not really that big, we kind of crammed ourselves in there, but it was still pretty romantic. The line for the teeny tiny bar, however, must have taken up half the boat. Once we were in the middle of the lake, the town of Taupo nothing but lights on the shore, the boats lined up so we could move between them. Depending on what meal we had ordered (I believe the options were beef dish, chicken dish, and vegetarian dish), we found tables on our designated boats, and dined.

I had the vegetarian meal, and it was awesome. Most of the others weren't actually vegetarians (only 2 or 3), but just thought it would be the best meal, and I'm pretty sure they were right. We had lasagna, along with numerous sides, including scalloped potatoes (one of my favourites), and fresh, soft rolls. We were also the smallest boat, with the fewest diners, so it was reasonably quiet and intimate.

After we finished the meals, our class rep and a few others gave speeches, and they awarded silly prizes ("cutest couple" for instance, and recounting embarrassing moments). The rest of the night was music and dancing, standing out on the deck watching the lake, and sitting at the tables chatting. A vet faculty member is always voted to come on halfway day, and ours was really into it, totally dancing with us and joking around with everyone.

Once the boats got back, most people hit the town. Or more correctly, most people hit the hostel to get themselves ready, and then hit the town, which is a slight detail my friend and I did not realise. We followed some classmates to a nice bar, did some dancing, and noticed that there was a surprising lack of vet students around. So we got bored and left, and just hung out back at the hostel with a small number of people.

Overall it was a great experience, and every bit as fun as expected. The only downside is that we've been looking forward to it for so long, and now it's over. We're faced with long years of classes and studying, as many in front of us as behind, but harder than the first half. I guess the next thing to look forward to is... graduation!

Tongue-is Contortus

Parasitology involves a lot of harrowing memorisation, especially since we have to not only recall parasite names, we get points off if we spell them incorrectly. I apologise for the horrible almost-pun of the post title, it amuses me (inspired by our friend, Haemonchus contortus). Anyway, here are some particularly bizarre names...

Funny sounding:
Bunostomum phlebotomum

Dictyocaulus arnfieldi

Nematodirus helvetianus

Protostrongylus rufescens

How do you pronounce this?:

Aelurostrongylus abstrusus

Dipetalonema reconditum
Ollulanus tricuspis
Ornithostrongylus quadriradiatus
Trichostrongylus axei

Uncinaria stenocephala

Winner of all:
Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus

There are many others that I find entertaining, but I realised I was turning this into quite a long list, and no one is likely to be that interested.

Being On the Other Side (Part 2)

My job teaching the second year anatomy labs included taking part in the oral examination at the end on topography, which is using external landmarks to identify the location of structures that you can't see. That basically means, if you point anywhere on a dog, I should be able to tell you exactly what is there and what it does. I made a post about it when I had to go through this--it's the first oral exam of the degree!

They use the third year students as scribes. So the professor asks the questions, and the scribe copies down what the student says, so there's some sort of record. This concept was terrifying as an examinee: some older and more knowledgable student hiding in the corner of the room, watching you silently and making notes.

If I had known what it was like behind the scenes, I doubt I would have been so nervous.

For one thing, there is NO space to write. Every student gets one line on the sheet, and each question gets a box (four or five questions each). So I had to condense 2-3 minutes of nervous speed-talking into a box the size of my thumbnail. Well, I guess the details aren't so important after all.

The examiner I was paired with was the other ridiculous factor. He's well known as a ridiculous professor (not in a good way), rather lackadaisical. He was completely relaxed and probably a bit bored, since he had to examine student after student all day long, which was an interesting contrast to the complete terror of the poor second years coming into the room. By the end of the afternoon, he was yawning and joking about beer, as some poor sould who'd been waiting tensely for the entire morning stares at him, pale and waiting for it to all be over. Their minds blanked, they stuttered and misspoke, some went really fast, some had massive pauses. But frankly, most of them were 4/5 or above on every question. The lowest person still scored an overall 70% or so.

What really amazed me was that Prof Lackadaisical wasn't really paying attention. Most of them, the grading process pretty much consisted of the student leaving the room, and he turns to me and says "Yeah, she was fine, 5/5 for everything." As the afternoon stretched on, however, I had to point out things like "Well she DID call this thing this totally-other-thing" and he'd be all "Oh. 4/5 then." Eventually we got to him turning to me and asking "How was that one? Was she right?" and I became the sole arbiter of their grades. So, really, they had nothing to worry about, because it depended on both me and him remembering what the person said, and all the details falling through the cracks in the floor because I had only written like 10% of what they said in the first place. Well, that, and the fact that they all had studied and knew what they were talking about.

Being On the Other Side (Part 1)

In the first half of the year, I managed to get a (paid!) position as one of the demonstrators for second year anatomy lab. I spent a year previously as a TA for general microbiology labs, so it wasn't my first experience with teaching. This job was very low involvement: show up during lab and answer questions.

Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of the little things that happened from day to day. This upsets me because I know I got some funny comments every week, but at the same time, clearly none of them were very memorable. Mostly what I would do was pick some questions to quiz the students on, and go around from group to group talking to them and reviewing the material. There are several types of groups.

Group Style A: Some of the groups were really into it, and wanted me to go over all the pre-lab preparation questions and show them a zillion things. These were the fun groups because they gave me purpose in life. Usually I knew the answers, too. Occasionally there would be some random question in the pre-lab about something no one had ever heard of before, and us demonstrators would have a quick huddle to see if anyone else knew what the hell the lab book was talking about. Sometimes it wasn't even the question's fault--on my first day, I definitely looked like a total dumbass for the first several questions, as I hadn't been around cadavres in so long, I forgot what everything looked like in real life.

Style A has 2 subsets.

Subset 1: Some groups were really into it, but slow learners, or the type of people that are more comfortable having things repeated a lot or explained slowly. These are the best groups because I could spend a lot of time with them, get somewhere, and look smart.

Subset 2: Some of them are really smart. These ones are a mixed blessing. They're the ones that I could talk to about more advanced medicine stuff that we're learning in our year (this anatomical structure is important in this disease, or this surgery). They're also the ones around whom it's easiest to look like a dumbass.

Group Style B: This group style also has 2 subsets. These are the ones that really do not care or notice that there are demonstrators around.

Subset 1: It could just be because they are smart, prepared, and have no questions. They're nice people but don't need my help, and generally answered my quiz questions correctly and without prompting. When I'd stop at their tables, I usually only spent a few seconds there...

Subset 2: The most annoying type of group is the group full of outgoing friends that use anatomy lab as a social gathering. They don't need a demonstrator because they have no questions, because they aren't paying attention to what they're doing. Usually there's one or two people doing stuff, while the other three laugh loudly about their weekend. I get asked a question by one of the paying-attention-people, and have to talk over the two other conversations going on around me. I made my rounds to these tables, but I managed to avoid them by filling up my time with Group Style A groups.

Paying it Forward (Initiation)

As third years, the tables have turned, and it finally became our responsibility (?) to organise initiation for the first years.

There are some new rules in place, since the class before us went a little overboard, so I think there was some bargaining with the university. I had nothing to do with it, though; all I know is that it was a go.

It was all hush-hush, to keep the date a secret from the first years (as usual), and everyone got to work planning an obstacle course, collecting old dairy products, and filling water balloons. We planned it for when all classes had a common break. When it was time, we all scampered to the locker rooms to get into overalls and masks, scurried to the farm services garage where we had stashed hundreds of water balloons, and then camped outside the first years' classroom. I have shamelessly stolen these photos from my friends on facebook.

First, we stormed their classroom.

We ran them to the concourse, pelting them with water balloons (that's what I did), eggs, and various unidentifiable liquids, though our class wasn't too mean with what we threw. People also had syringes full of juice and were "drenching" the first years with it.

Once rounded up in the concourse, we made them dance to a song that everyone learned at VLE, thanks to our fun and silly cattle lecturer. They got rather doused while they were are it.

Some of our classmates kindly showed them the steps. 

On an unrelated note, I'm the dinosaur with glasses, towards the left. None of my own classmates could figure out who I was.

As usual, we found an excuse to get them to wade through the vet pond.

I think there was some sort of obstacle course around the back of the vet tower, but I didn't contribute to it and am not sure what was there. I think there was an inflatable pool they had to step through, among other things. Here we can see clouds of flour... other people were not so kind with what they threw.

In the end, the first years were pretty much all smiles and laughs. They were gross, but they knew it was  coming, and I think they had fun. And like I said, we weren't too mean to them--less than the previous year, at any rate. 

I took some friendly fire towards the end. Thankfully, I was wearing overalls, but I was not impressed.

Professors: Lecture is a Bedtime Story

In second semester this year, we began our only single semester paper: Poultry, Fish, and Wildlife Management and Disease. It has a fancy name, but the class is really relaxing. The topics are very different and thoughtful and involve a lot of guest speakers. For example, we had two lectures on zoo medicine, a lecture by a lady who went to work with fur seals in some very exotic places only accessible by boat, and some thoughtful lectures on wildlife reservoirs of scary human diseases. We recently had a lecture on care of aquarium fish, we talked a bit about toxins in the food chain, and we even had some lectures on how to tell which predator killed an animal. (In case you are wondering, it involves clues from what organs/areas, if any, were eaten, and measuring the distance between puncture marks from the canine teeth).

I am not sure how to convey this in writing, but our lecturer's voice is like a lullaby. He's got this wonderful soft, soothing voice. It doesn't matter what he says, it sounds like a bedtime story.

The Only Interesting Thing From 2nd Semester 2nd Year

I suppose it's worth mentioning that we did have one kind of cool class that I intended to write stories on, but never did. I can't give a good representation of my impressions of it since I've been through so much of third year, but I thought it deserved a few sentences of recognition.

The class was called Mechanisms of Disease, and was basically "Intro to Clinical Thinking." We were given a case at the beginning of every week, had a lab and lecture on the topic, and at the end of the week one group would present the details of what was going on with the case and what to do about it. At that point in time, we knew very little, and the intent was basically to get our feet wet.

For example, one of the earlier cases was a mast cell tumour. It was presented to us as a dog with a swelling and we were given a few details on the patient. That week in the lab, there were a bunch of dead legs with masses on them (as in, no longer attached to dogs), and we were taught how to take a fine needle aspirate. Another case was of chronic renal failure, and in that lab we were given pee to examine.

One thing that is a bit funny, is that now, every year, when they do the scouring calves lab, they give us a long thorough reminder on how to wash our hands properly. You see, several years ago, one of the calves had crypto (a protozoal infection that causes diarrhoea), and was used for the animal handling lab. Then the entire class proceeded to come down with crypto. This incident is so infamous that this year, when we learned epidemiology, the prof used the data from a study done to determine the cause of this outbreak. They did a survey to find out the dates that people were sick (it causes vomiting and diarrhoea for about a week), and even got a few samples to test, and lo and behold, it was a point source outbreak. Cause: Mechanisms of Disease Lab.

I Apologize, Second Year Was Boring

Why didn't I post anything second semester of second year?

Second year was boring. Sorry. We didn't do or learn anything interesting.

Why didn't I post anything for practically all of third year?

Third year is hard. We have five double-semester papers, and in first semester class went from 8-5 on more than one day, the shortest day being 5 hours and ending at 1pm (Fridays). Clinical studies had 6 lectures a week; microbiology had 7. Parasites had 2 labs a week. This is the year where we have to do a lot of memorization: disease agents (like specific viruses and so on), pathology, parasites (life cycles, morphology, etc), anaesthesia, pharmacology, to name a few. For some reason, second semester is not quite so full on. I waffled about for a while, then finally remembered I have the time to chronicle some of our adventures here.