It's Liquid! It's Pus! No it's... Inky Black Fluid?

First of all, I hope everyone's holidays went wonderfully, whatever they were and whomever they were held with. Mine involved a great deal of driving around, and included some interesting highlights, which I will refrain from truly extrapolating on. I had some very generous and wonderful family members (and not yet family members), who gave me some awesome presents this year. I got gift cards to TSC (chicken food), Rue 21 (my favorite store which I haven't shopped in in months due to lack of excess money), Sheetz (gas!!), Kennies Market for groceries and Outback Steakhouse so Jer and I can go out. I also got some beautiful and much needed sweaters, a pair of gorgeous cowboy boots, and two books by my favorite author (Iris Johansen). I was blown away by the amazing generosity of my family this year, as well as of Jared's family. All the things I got were very appreciated and more than I have ever received on a holiday.

The favorite gifts that I gave were two tiles I painted for my mom.

Her cat, Oreo

Her horse, Blossom

We also got snow on Christmas Eve (which I can tell you was a pain to drive home through). It was very pretty and all, but I really am not the biggest fan of snow. Remi
(or Rem-Dog as we have taken to calling her) absolutely LOVES snow more than anything else. If you can imagine a lab's normal enthusiasm and multiply it by about 3, you would have it right.  She belly-slides across the snow, burrows in and on it and under it, and would do it for hours and hours. That in itself is enough to almost make me like snow :)

Yesterday I  had a terrible migraine and my stomach was acting up. So I ended up calling Dr. C. and not going in to shadow. About an hour after I called him the snow and sleet started, and I was very glad that I had stayed home. I'm a bad driver at the best of times, and in snow I basically become a death trap. So I stayed home and played on the XBox that Jared got me for X-mas (breaking our pact of no gifts! > ( ), and let him take care of me. I've never had my own game system before (discounting the hand-me-down PS1), so it is pretty fun to be able to do what I want on it.

And that brings me to today (which I know you really want to hear about after the title of my post!). I shadowed at the small animal hospital starting at nine. I saw a spay and a neuter, and the usual vaccines for cats and dogs, skin allergies to fleas, cats with bad teeth, cats with dandruff and hair loss, etc. Under close supervision of a vet and a tech, they even let me intubate a dog today. I also met my first of three different purebreeds... a borzoi, a wolfhound and an elkhound. The most interesting case to tell about was an 18 year old cat that came in, looking absolutely beautiful in coat, color, teeth, what-have-you. It hadn't seen a vet since it had been neutered at a year old. I would never have guessed this cat's age.... it looked like a 6 year old! Anyway, they had brought it in for a strange lump on it's side which had marginally increased in size over the last few months. It looked like a strange nipple on his right side, with a sac behind it. We took the cat in the back to have a look at it, and Dr. H. poked a needle in to check the fluid color (clear is good, pus and blood is bad), and out squirts (literally), this black, thick, fluid. It resembled liquid charcoal. It didn't smell, and once she poked it it all wanted to come out, and you could hardly find the cyst when it was empty. It was rather bizarre. We made slides of it (just out of curiosity sake), and couldn't identify anything much in it besides what looked like fat cells. So it will probably stay on the side of the cat and continue to make it's strange product!

I left the hospital around 4 and headed out to get horse, chicken and cat food from various stores. Now I'm all stocked up for a bit, and when the predicted storms hits this weekend, I won't have to worry about feeding all my menagerie!

I'm headed out with Dr. C. tomorrow, so check back to hear about my day with dairy.

Thanks for reading!

Melissa