First Day In the Hospital - 7/5

The first day at TANUVAS we walked to school. It’s a very short walk but we have to cross a super busy road, which is incredibly dangerous. Ruby told us that when she and Dr. Subbiah were at vet school here, a girl was hit crossing the street and suffered severe head trauma and died. Ugh. Thus, that was the only time our group has been allowed to walk across the street. We have to use the school van to take us to and from the school.

We met with the vice chancellor of the school at “9:00” which means any time before 10. Thus we got there early and had to wait. It was really hot, as is usual, but we found a room with AC to wait in, which was nice – we only sweated a little inside.
This is what the school looks like:

The building was built in 1903, so there’s a statue (of rams horns) out front to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the school.


All the architecture on this building is really awesome:







Finally we met with the vice chancellor, gave him his gift: a VT tie.

Then we left the old building and went to the vet hospital. The hospital is interesting. Every section is for a specific specialty. For example, a dog comes in and will go to the small animal medicine ward. It may have a cough and so the doctor auscultates and determines there’s a heart murmur. Then he calls over the cardiologist (who’s just hanging out in that area). He confirms it, so they send the dog to get an echocardiogram. The owner picks up the animal and schleps him to the separate small animal building, and meets the same cardiologist in the echo room. The owner restrains the animal through the whole thing. Then the cardiologist explains what he finds to the owners and they go to the pharmacy section of the hospital and pick up meds.
This happened today (Jen is helping correctly position the animal)

Perhaps that’s not so abnormal – but here’s where it gets interesting. An owner can visit several sections of the hospital in one day and no doctors will treat for things not in their realm.
While I was in the dermatology section (super boring) this 16 year old dog came in with this giant tumor hanging out from the skin on its chest. The dog also had a skin irritation. We only diagnosed the skin irritation as a particular fungus, and didn’t even touch the tumor. That’s for pathology to deal with.
Puppies who come in to the hospital for vaccines and have a bit of skin irritation get vaccines, and then sent to derm for a look at their puppy pyoderma. It seems like such a waste of time for the owner and the clinicians, but it’s the system and it seems to work.

Oh man, the cost of all the vet work is super cheap! All medications are about 20 rupees (less than 50 cents). A spay is about 10 bucks. This is because the hospital is subsidized by the government since it’s a teaching hospital. I think this is something we should take back to the states!

Anywho, we took a tour of the hospital. I’ve included a video, but it’s about 30 minutes and it’s kinda hard to hear what he’s saying. (Indian accents are tough for me, and apparently even tougher for my camera to pick up over barking and mooing).

TANUVAS Tour from Erin R on Vimeo.

After the tour, we split up into our rotation sections. I’m in dermatology for the first two days, small animal medicine for the next too, then ophtho&ortho, and small animal surgery. Then we visit other areas in large animal medicine.
Derm is pretty much the same as it is in the states: pyoderma, ticks, lice, fleas, and associated allergies, some contact dermatitis. Yep – boring. They don’t usually get cases until 8:45 (though the hospital opens at 8) and they stop promptly at 11:30. I imagine that all around the word dermatology is much the same: boring, you don’t cure anything, and you go home when you’re scheduled to every day.

Wallace and Val, who were in ortho got to see a kitten who had a traumatic femur injury earlier. The hospital had put in an intramedulary pin for stabilization (metal rod through the center part of the bone to keep it stable while the bone healed). Since it had been in there for 50 days, it was time to pull it out. Wallace got to help pull out the pin. We watched.

Surgery is totally different – inhalant anesthesia isn’t really a big deal, apparently. They knocked this kitty out with xylazine and ketamine and went to town.
Also, you can’t wear your shoes in surgery:

Usually they have special surgery flip flops you wear, but there weren’t enough for us, so we just wore socks. That’s right: surgery flip flops.

Then we went to see the fetal monster (2 headed calf) that had been pulled from a dystocia case earlier:
link to dead 2-headed cow:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/lh/photo/um0Q_BjVh26flGtqOnneEQ?feat=directlink

Then we went to lunch.

In the afternoon we went to the bank and finally got some rupees exchanged for our dollars, and also went to the biotechnology section of the hospital. Boring. We watching this guy prepare a sample for PCR which would have been interesting had it been 6 years ago when I hadn’t seen this before, or had it been any different in india than in the states. Lets say that it was less interesting than watching paint dry and leave it at that.

By the end of the day we were beat, so we stayed in that night and I passed out pretty early.
Oh, and here’s a tour of our apartment area. It’s pretty short. Hope you enjoy:


-Erin