It's been a somewhat stressful week. Monday we had our equine therio final. It went oddly... Our professor for the class ended up going into early labor with her human baby a couple of weeks ago so we have been having a few other house officers teach the class. So, for the final the head of the therio dept walks in (kind of an intimidating guy) and hands out the test and asks if we have any questions.  We all just took that as, if you need any clarification you can ask a question. So 8ne person asks about a question and he pretty much just gives us the answer. Then, I ask about 2 more and he flat out tells us the answers. It was weird and felt like cheating, but I wouldn't mind if that happened for all my finals. So I have 1 down, 9 to go for finals this semester.
Monday night when I got home my dog that was thought to just have pododermatitis and some arthritis was doing much worse. She could barely stand up and was just not doing right. So when I talked to my student Tuesday morning she and the clinician on the case said to bring her in immediately. So I skipped clin path and went home and got her. They drew some blood to recheck her values from last week (which were pretty much all in normal range) and did radiographs to rule out hemangiosarcoma. Luckily they didn't see any evidence and her hips didn't look too bad. So they started to lean towards pemphigus foliaceus, a rare autoimmune skin condition. I brought her in the next day so they could sedate and do a biopsy of her feet. I dropped her off and went to class, but when I came back they were in the middle of ultrasounding her liver and it was covered in lesions. Her blood work indicated a spike in liver enzymes, too from the wek before. Her lesions had also begun to spread to her lips and vulvar area. A new differential popped to the top of the list: hepatocutaneous syndrome. They think it was brought on by being on phenobarb for so many years. I haven't got my discharge papers back confirming the diagnosis yet, but for now, she is on a high protein food for her liver, we cut the phenobarb dose in half and hopefully be able to cut it all the way out, started on a new anticonvulsant levetiracetum, still on antibiotics, added a new pain control and took out the NSAIDS,  and now has twice daily foot, elbow, and vulva soaks. Needless to say, I have been spending a lot of time taking care of her. Prognosis is ok, since we can hopefully eliminate the source of the problem. She seems ok, but definitely not her normal self. It is really heartbreaking because she is my soulmate dog.
On to the rest of the week. We had a pharmacology quiz Wednesday that went alright. Friday we had a pharmacology exam... not really sure on that one. Then for a lunch meeting a guy from the Oklahoma aquarium gave a talk on parasites found in fish. It was actually really interesting. Then, we had clinical anatomy lab for the GI system and I got to put an esophageal tube in a cow so that was exciting. I can't really think of anything else, so I better get to studying for my bacteriology exam that's tomorrow.