Space Date 102502: Docking Bay OSU VTH, 0900-1200 hrs
Well, today was at least more exciting than Monday. I still walked a couple horses, but I also got to see a stomach tap and endoscopy. With the endoscopy a tube with a camera on the end is inserted up the horses nose, then down the esophagus into the stomach. It was very kewl to see. In the stomach of this horse were bots, ulcerations, and lots of fluid. The bots look a bit like red maggots. (For those of you who don't know wot bots are, they are the larva of flies. Flies lay their eggs on the horse, the horse ingests the eggs, which then hatch in the stomach and feast on the stomach lining. Once fed, they exit the horse through the endocrine system, to metamorphose into flies, and start the process over again.)
The stomach tap was done to see what kind of fluid was there, but since the target area of fluid was less than a half mm, the tap was unsuccessful. (To do a tap, they made a small incision in the abdomen with a surgical blade, then inserted a tube into the incision, and moved it up and into the abdomen.) Since both procedures didn't yield anything conclusive, the horse then went for radiographs, to see if any obstruction could be seen. (And btw, I got my x-ray badge thingy today, so now I can help with radiographs.) :) And that is all for today.
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