First day at the Clinic..

I will admit first things that I was terrified for today! Ok, maybe not terrified but extremely nervous to the point where I didn't get much sleep. Everyone has been asking me if I was nervous going to a foreign country and traveling on my own and I can honestly say that no I wasn't. I was nervous about working at the clinic. Vet students will get this, because all of a sudden I am being held responsible for all of the information I am to have supposed to learn the last two years! The usually have students here that are in their 4th or 5th year (depending on the country, some vet programs are 5 years) which means they know what they are doing. I on the other hand felt clueless, so needless to say I was pretty anxious for today.
  We started this morning at 7 am and did physical exams on all of our in hospital patients. Their are 3 interns (young veterinarians that have graduated but are in their first 1-2 years training) and currently I am the only student, we all have several patients assigned to us. When the head doctor arrived we start rounds. We all go around to every patient in the hospital and each one of us presents our own cases. Luckily I had asked one of the interns last night to translate the history for me. The group was very accommodating and spoke in english for rounds so that I could follow each case. At 8 am they open the doors and anyone with a large animal in need of help comes in. It was steady stream of patients, lameness exams, large wounds, colics, neurologic cases, abscesses, and an array of other cases. Most were taken care of quickly and sent on their way. Those that needed extra care will be left to stay in the hospital. I mostly jumped from case to case helping out where I could and waited for translations. I was able to dive right in and clean and flush wounds, place sutures, change bandages and whatever else. At 12:00 they shut the doors, anyone that comes after that will have to come back tomorrow. After the doors are shut we finished up the rest of the procedures that needed to be done and stabilized the patients that were left in the hospital. The clinic provides lunch for everyone , so we stopped and gathered and I ate my first moroccan meal, cous cous (of course), roasted chicken, and lots of "du pain" (which is bread). You eat everything with your hands or scoop it up with the bread, which is awesome, I no longer feel improper for licking my fingers and picking at everything with my hands! The rest of the afternoon is spent finishing up cases and administering medications. Here is a run down of my current cases with pictures! (nothing gross yet...I forgot to take pictures of the gory stuff.)

The donkey in this pen has a sarcoid tumor on his sheath that we inject with an experimental chemotherapy drug and monitor the size. They have had good luck with this treatment.

The sarcoid tumor

This young filly came in with a large laceration wound in her arm pit, today I placed a few sutures to help keep it closed.

This horse came in unable to stand, they placed her in a sling and we will keep watching her. We suspect neurologic disorder or a fracture of the vertebrae compressing the spinal chord.

This donkey has a large abscess on his cheek that I scrub and flush daily. It gets pretty gross.

He likes to hide in here when I go to give him his medication.

This is the cutest think I have ever seen! His mom came in for colic. He is 1 week old and loves to follow everyone around.

There is a random turtle that I discovered today. He usually hides beneath the palm trees but occasionally ventures out to eat fallen berries. His shell is a bit malformed, I'm assuming from some accidental mule stepping.