I have officially spent one week in Auburn, Alabama, and it is scorching! Monday, I started work at the clinic, and I was able to observe a standing surgery on a mare (female horse) with an infected bolis in her sinus. In order to clean out the infected tissue, a small incision was made medial to her left eye, and then a hand drill was used to break through the bone. From there, the bolis were lanced, and all the puss was drained. Another cool thing I saw was a mare getting chemo injections. This was when I learned that in horses, cancer stays localized, unlike in humans. The next day I observed plasma injections into inflamed joints. This is when they take the horses blood, run it through a centra-fuse and take the plasma and inject it into the joint. All the proteins like proteoglycans and aggrecan are now injected along with anti-inflammatories cytokines. Then on day three, I observed a reconstruction of a rectovaginal fistula. This was the most intense surgery that I have seen so far, due to the amount of trauma and tissue damage. After that, I went into a cartilage repair surgery on the right stifle. The other half of my time I have spent in the lab testing samples of cartilage. To harvest these samples, my lab partner and I go to necropsy (a place where they do autopsies on animals) and harvest the cartilage from the legs. From there, we take the samples to a mechanical engineering lab and test different amounts of force and find the coefficient of friction for each one. That is my favorite part, and we got two different samples this week. Then on Thursday, I went to Story Book Farm: a place where underprivileged and disabled youth go to ride horses. I helped out with 100 kids coming to see the horses. Then at the end of the week, my amazing host family took me to the lake. So far, I love everything, and I can’t wait to learn more!
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