Hannover

Hannover

Just got back from the vet school yesterday, and it was so cool! We had German class and then a presentation on German history on Tuesday morning. After lunch, we left around 1:30 for Hannover. We didn't arrive in Hannover until 6:30! We toured the research facilities off campus, and got to see a cow giving birth, but I hadn't been feeling well all day, so I had to go outside and sit down for a while. After some ibuprofen I was feeling a little better, and we went to a local vet fraternity, where there were lots of vet students waiting with a full BBQ. It was really nice. I went to bed early, hoping to feel better the next day. There weren't enough beds, so we were all on various mattresses on the floor. I slept on a couch cushion with a blanket or sheet. Haha. Well, the party went on all night, and I didn't get much sleep. After breakfast, we visited the pathology department and got to see their facilites. Their classrooms were huge! I guess if you have 250 students in each vet school class, you need large classrooms. We got to go into the necropsy lab, where they were disassembling a cow and a vulture. It was so bloody, but very neat. We also got to see a stillborn pig with one head and two sets of ears, fore legs, and back legs and a dog head with its rubber ball stuck in the back of its throat. Very cool.

After pathology, we headed over to the farm, where we saw the cows, calves, pigs, chicks, and layers. That meant lots of disenfecting with "ant acid" (no, not the stomach kind, but formic acid!) We had lunch at the student cafeteria (very cheap), and then went to the large animal clinic, which was definetely one of my favorites. We toured the facility, got a lecture on techniques on how to remove a dead fetus from a cow and how to repair a twisted abomasum, got to see the actual operation of untwisting the abomasum, and watched an ultrasound. It was really interesting, especially the operation. They just injected a local anesthetic into the cow and performed the operation while she was standing up, mooing! However, it was really hot, and the full body suits and plastic shoe covers didn't help much. The surgeons had one girl whose only job was to wipe the sweat from their faces!

After the large animal clinic, we went over to the small animal clinic, which was very cramped. The building was old, and all the rooms were tiny. However, it was still interesting. They had an MRI and a CAT scan for small animals! We also saw an ultrasound being done on a dog. We toured the clinic, ICU, looked in the surgery suite, oncology, and the MRI and CAT scan rooms. The vet told us that they do have an isolation unit, and although we couldn't go in, it is where they put all stray animals brought into the clinic. When I asked about common diseases that might land an animal in iso, she said that they get parvo, leptospirosis, and upper respiratory, so not much is different from the U.S. (although we don't see too much leptospirosis) After our tour, we climbed back on the bus and headed back to Dusseldorf. It was a pretty quiet ride home, as everyone was sleeping, and we finally got some much-needed rain. I reserved my seat for my trip to Dresden and got back to my host family in time to meet their dinner guests. I excused myself and retired to bed around 10.

Today we had cultural studies and German, then we got the rest of the afternoon off to work on our papers. That was a big relief, as I know that a lot of us were worried about finishing them. Hopefully I'll be able to finish mine today so that I can enjoy my last few days in Dusseldorf with my host family. Tchuss!