Guest Lecture at Aberystwyth University

Just over a year ago the Aberystwyth Animal and Veterinary Society emailed me about giving a lecture on Studying Veterinary Medicine in Europe.

I did my Animal Science degree in Aber and lots of people on my course went on to study vet med, they’ve now started a Veterinary Biosciences degree so even more students are wanting to do similar.

I basically spoke about my experiences, the four or five vet schools I’ve visited in Europe and how the degrees overlap and getting compensations.

It was great to be back in Aber but so much has changed since I lived there!

Diseases of Small Animals State

WE DID IT!

Meet the latest Small Animal vets...

Smalls is "that" exam everyone talks about and once you've passed it, you're pretty much set. There are four rotation blocks we have to complete with lectures, trips and clinical hours then at the end we have a State exam so being in Group 4, I had Smalls last.
The format is the same as all other States, you go in and pick your questions from an envelope (Internal, Infectious/Parasites, Reproduction, Surgery & Orthopedics) then have an hour to prepare and half an hour to speak to the panel.

The pressure was really on as it's so close to graduation that if we failed, there was only one more chance to re-sit it, a couple of days before grad. I'm infamously a last minute crammer as I need stress to study but because of how big Smalls is there's no way you can do that. I started studying 5 weeks ago, just after we finished our clinic hours, and have been working pretty hard every day.
A few days before the exam I just wanted it to be over and the worst part is not knowing which questions you'd pick as some I could talk freely off the top of my head and other questions were horrible; I'm looking at you brain tumours!
I really felt like I couldn't have worked harder so would have been gutted to fail and have to go through it all over again.

Once I got into the exam I was fine and the panel were super nice. I got lucky with my Internal and Repro questions so that was more of a chat which I was really happy with. Surgery I got Brain and Spinal trauma which I think was fine and managed to answer all of his questions, then I picked my least favourite Parasites question but managed to get through it, Halan even said he knows it's not my favourite subject as I resat it with him.

I still can't believe it's over and hasn't sunk in yet. We have our Thesis Defense over the next two weeks and then we're done - graduation.

Cheers

Orthopaedic Surgery classes

Today we started our surgery practical classes which is pretty exciting as it’s one of my favourite subjects.

We started off with a lecture where they describe a procedure and then we practice performing the procedure on cadavers. We got to do fracture repairs with normograde and retrograde IM pinning, cerclage wires and plates.

All the best orthopaedic surgeons get their gloves stuck drilling IM pins 👨🏻‍⚕️🤦🏻‍♂️

Night shift with Gala

We have an American Staffordshire Bull Terrier in with us tonight as she was attacked by her daughter.

She has extensive wounds to her leg and an ulcer on her chest wall so that's all been cleaned and she's on pain relief. She's really timid at first but once we spent a bit of time with her she was bouncing around the room and playful outside - still not keen on seeing other dogs though!

Small Animal Hospital night shift

As part of our rotation block we have to do shifts in the Small Animal Hospital so we've done a week of 12hour days and tonight I'm on a night shift with Harriet.

We've been pretty Q-word (you're forbidden from saying it in practice as if it's muttered you just know an emergency will come in) so just looking after inpatients, given a few meds and taken everyone outside to pee.

We had a few hours sleep and got up at 5am to check on everyone and take them out again.

Diseases of Pigs State Exam

We’ve just sat our penultimate exam of vet school, the Diseases of Pigs State Exam.

After a month off for Christmas and a pretty chilled rotation block I found it hard to get back into study mode but in classic Lewis style I crammed it all and passed - with an A!

Last day on the uni farm

We’ve reached the end of an era, Group 4's last day at Zemplinska Teplicka the university farm.
We started off vaccinating and castrating a load of piglets and then did pregnancy diagnosis of sows and vaccinated some bigger animals.

The very last pig to vaccinate was the big boar so a few of the girls went in to do it together. As soon as he stood up they ran away scared so I (pretending to be) confidently walked in and (absolute fluke!) managed to do it first time.

One of the teachers was watching us and said I was excellent so I asked if it deserved an A in the State exam 😂

World Spay Day 2019

Today is the 25th anniversary of World Spay Day, held on the last Tuesday of February to raise awareness of the importance of neutering and the work that rescue centres and charities do.

Last year we held a Charity Bake Sale on campus to raise money and awareness, so did the same again this year. WVS ITC Ooty are trying to raise 30,000 rupees for an Oxygen Generator so I'm hoping the money we raise can go towards that!

Celine was an angel and greeted people to the sale with cuddles and even shared her special biscuits with visiting doggos.


Overall we raised €205 which is great going and will support WVS with the work they do.

This little piggy...

...got castrated.

This morning we headed to a private pig farm to do some pigs work and it was actually really fun!
We had to don these sexy disposable overalls which are one size fits all, so a little snug.
My group started with castrations which I've never seen done in piglets before, the best age to do them is younger than 7 days old but the ones we had were just over a week so that we could practice giving intra-testicular anaesthetic blocks and being bigger I think they were a bit easier.

It was the usual "no no you do first" with people nervous to do it so I went first and it was pretty straight forward - kind of like a cat (scrotal incision and exteriorise) and a calf (using emasculators).
Afterwards we applied a topical antibiotic powder, injected iron, vitamins E, D, K and vaccinated them.

We didn't take our phones in to the pigs because of biosecurity with African Swine Fever and zoonotic Salmonella etc so no photos of piglets!

Vets4Pets Workshop

I got an email from Vets4Pets in September to say some Košice graduates on their grad scheme had nominated me to be a Student Ambassador.
As part of that I organised a workshop with Cat Curtis from Vets4Pets to come out with Bobby, a Joint Venture Partner, and Niamh, one of last years graduates, to come and speak to us about Setting Up for Success.

The workshop covered everything from writing a CV and cover letter to selecting practices, interview technique and how to make the job work for you - there has to be the right fit for both the practice and the candidate.
Feedback from my yeargroup was really positive in that they spoke generally and inclusively of mixed, farm and equine practice even though they all work in a small animal environment. They really didn't push the graduate programme at all and while the session was meant to finish at 4:30pm, people were still there asking questions at 6pm!

We went out for drinks on the evening and chatted more about jobs, recruitment and Vets4Pets. To be honest I'd never really thought about working for them before as I didn't know much about the group but speaking to Niamh and Bobby has changed that!

Diseases of Ruminants State

Another one bites the dust! We all passed our Diseases of Ruminants exam and have finished for Christmas

To be honest I didn't really enjoy this block as much as I did Horses as we had a lot of free time (I was home for two weeks and went to the BVZS conference) which was great and we went on four farm trips which I really enjoyed, I just missed having a structure of daily lectures and practicals.
Anyone that knows me will know I need pressure to study and I didn't get "The Fear" until a couple days before this exam!

There were 'only' 17 questions for the Ruminants State so we are given 17 topics, study those, pick one from an envelope on the day and speak your answer to a panel of four examiners. The topics were really broad and of course I picked one of the topics I didn't want, Vitamins, but it was actually fine and I passed.

We're all heading home for Christmas over the next few days for some much needed time off.

4 States done, 2 to go before graduation!

Starting off the week right, rounding up 400 sheep and goats.

We rounded them all up for a quick health check and worming. It’s been years since I’ve done lambing and I forgot how heavy sheep are, especially after tipping hundreds of them!

Residential Ruminants Trip

As part of our Ruminants block we have a three day trip to the uni farm

We stay over in the dorms so we can get up bright and early to do work, then spend the evenings drinking in the local.

We got to do Repro, doing rectal examinations for pregnancy detection or parturition problems like retained placenta, metritis/endometritis

At the end of the day before we headed back we stopped at the calving shed to see if anything was going on, luckily there was...

A heifer was having some problems calving so we had a feel and found her calf had his head back which needed correcting and he was really big. At first we thought we might need to do a c-section but after correcting his position we managed to pull him out.

It’s always been on my bucket list so I’m really glad we got the chance to help.

Diseases of Horses State Exam

Today we had our Diseases of Horses State Exam which went really well; we all passed and I got a B!

I’ve never wanted to be an equine vet but I’ve really enjoyed this rotation and learnt loads from it.
The first horses I worked with were the Heavy Horses at Ash End Farm who, looking back, were amazing and really easy to work with. 

Final Freshers Week

We've just finished my final (hopefully!) Freshers Week and had an awesome time with the best people.
I usually organise the week for the new students, booking bars and events then we finished with a house party at ours on Friday night. There were a few hundred bottles to clean up the next morning so I think everyone had a good time!

This pair came to visit and I didn't take many photos but these sum up the week pretty well...



Reeya and Mairi, bae's from the beginning, moved into our house last week. We lived together for three years in dorms so it's been really nice to have them back!

New Bed

When I moved into my new house in September I had two single beds pushed together to make a double which had basically fallen to the floor with zero support so I bought myself a new bed on Amazon but as the saying goes; Buy cheap, buy twice ...and I did.

One of my friends is graduating so I bought her €600 bed for a bargain price. I've carried a double bed and two mattresses round the block. It’s too hot and I’m dying.

This is why I can’t be a large animal vet.

At least it's done now and I have two mattresses so I'm going to sleep like a king.

Contagious Diseases State

We’ve just had our State in Contagious Diseases and our group smashed it, we all passed and nearly everyone got an A.

I tried to study really hard for two weeks but the 30oC sunshine was a killer so most of the effective studying was done over the last four days.
I was a mess before the exam and being last in the alphabet meant I went in last but I picked a good question and the panel were really nice.
State exams for those that don’t know are the six final exams we have to do to pass vet school. We have two this summer and four next year which are split into species; Horses, Ruminants, Pigs and Small Animals.

One down, five States to go until we’re vets 🐶

Veterinary Endoscopy Weekend

This weekend we were lucky enough to be visited by this years BSAVA President Philip Lhermette come out to Kosice to speak about minimally invasive (keyhole) surgery and endoscopy.

Philip has practiced endoscopy since 1995 so perfected lots of techniques for diagnostics and surgery and lectures at Nottingham Vet School as well as all over the world!

Burtons Veterinary Equipment drove over from the UK with the latest fixed and rigid endoscopes for us to try out with some awesome gastrointestinal models which have pathology we had to find and foreign bodies to remove.


There was also a station with rigid endoscopes for laparoscopy training with different tasks to complete like stacking sugar cubes, peeling oranges, removing stones from a kidney (red pepper) and balloons filled with water to simulate hydropericardium.

Céline the wonder pup came along for the practical sessions and loved laparoscopy...

The lectures were great and loads of us are now itching to find practices who do laparoscopic surgeries to do EMS at and learn more about the procedures. I'm sure that during my career we'll see more and more laparoscopic surgery with the medical advantages (less hemorrhage and pain, faster recovery) and clients requesting it.
I've said it time and time again but the technology available to vets for surgery is amazing - I loved the EndoGrab for fixing ovaries to the abdominal wall before zapping off the ovarian ligament, artery and vein with a LigaSure tissue and vessel sealer.

Many thanks to Philip Lhermette and Burton's for giving up your weekends and coming out to speak to us - a great time was had by all!

Dobšiná Horse Breeding

We went on a trip to Dobšiná to a horse breeding farm where they produce Noriker draught horses which are used for working in the forests.

They’re big chunky horses with lots of muscle and a good temperament so ideal for their work.

The foals are kept with mares for three years before being broken at four years old for basic training.

They had wooden stocks set up into which they brought the mares for transrectal ultrasound for early pregnancy diagnosis.

We were able to determine the gestational age by measuring the fetus length and how the heart was beating.

Dobre Pivo

When I left before Easter a few weeks ago it was snowing and suddenly Spring has arrived and it's 28oC!

We've had a few credit tests this week and everyone's been stuck inside studying so we spent the afternoon on Hlavna drinking with friends and getting a tan...