Since Tuesday I have been staying at Nottingham University while I was attending the Vet-Medlink conference – an event organised for aspiring vets from across the country. I also got a place on the Pathology and Parasitology option – an extra day to the conference with lectures about; parasites, cancer, autopsies, abuse and case histories.
During the main part of the conference, experts in different fields of the veterinary profession talked to us (about 700 AS and A2 students) about a varied range of topics; from cattle pregnancy and small animal dentistry, to holistic veterinary practices and vet school admissions. Lectures started each day at 9 am and finished between 10 pm and 12 pm, after which we spent some time getting to know each other. During the 5 days (4 nights) that I spent in Nottingham we had over 38 hours of lectures. The early mornings and late nights began to take their toll and as the end of the week drew nearer I became increasingly tired. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the week and feel that I got a lot out of it, as well as getting to meet other people with similar interests and goals as mine.
On Friday evening, my mum rang me with the news that Ruby, one of my three pet rats, was not well. She had become very quiet and later started intermittently fitting and tilting her head. On Saturday morning – the last day of the conference – while my dad drove to pick me up, my mum took Ruby to the vet’s. When I got home my mum explained what the vet had said. Her initial thought, because of the head tilt, was that she had a stroke, but since she is still quite young the vet thought this would be unlikely. Her next thoughts were that Ruby had either a middle ear infection (which explains the head tilt but not the fitting) or a form of epilepsy (which explains the fitting but not the head tilt).
The vet prescribed antibiotics which she took quite well at 8pm and needs to take again every 12 hours. To make sure that she is alright during the night I am staying up with her, which is as tiring (obviously). Hopefully today she will make some improvement and I will have a relaxing day…
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Wednesday 13 August 2008 at 2:17 pm
[...] December I attended VetMed-Link and during this last week I was on a similar course, Vetsim. It was also tiring because it was so [...]