109. Seeing practice: Can't force a horse to drink

"Where would you incise the skin when you spay a cat?" I asked two vet students who had completed their first year at Murdoch University. They had passed some Anatomy tests on muscles and nerves and were back in Singapore.The girl would score high marks in Anatomy as she was very interested in Anatomy, the young man informed me.

So I expected the girl to give me the correct answer. The classmates hesitated. "Make a guess," I encouraged. "That is how you learn, by being hands-on." And making mistakes.

Spays are the commonest operations and both had seen cases of spay. So, this should be an easy question.

The girl whom all mothers would want as a daughter-in-law had a wind-swept natural brown hair parted with no fancy styling or make up pointed to the most posterior part of the cat's body off the midline, nearer to the tail area.

The classmate with the ear stud and reddish brown hair to make himself stand out from the crowd, pointed similarly but to the other side of the midline. They surprised me as they were miles off target and had just completed some Anatomy studies.

"The incision is about 1.5 cm from the umbilical scar," I showed them the almost invisible white spot on the cat's belly. Their incision would be 15cm away! I hope they learnt something.



The young man said, "Why do vets incise the linea alba during surgery?" This was an examination question in Anatomy.

The linea alba has no blood vessls and therefore no bleeding when incised," I said.

The young man was elated as he had got the correct answer. He would get 1 mark.

"1 mark out of 20?" I asked.

"No, no," the young girl sabotaged him from giving me a good impression. "1 out of 200 marks!"

I did not comment. This was a happy couple but they were just friends if you know what I mean. I continued my surgery. I said, "This is a human trachea hook to fish out the ovaries after the incision. I had just bought this hook as the usual veterinary spay hooks are hard to find in Singapore."

Unfortunately, I kept on hooking up the omental fat and the students were not impressed. The human tracheal hook is smaller and the hook is shorter too. I quickly changed to the cat spay hook and was successful in fishing out the right ovary.

Seeing practice can be quite boring if you don't know how to make the best use of the time by recording what you saw for your future years. Keeping a journal would be best.

I suggested taking pictures of the cat spayed for future reference. The girl did use her camera phone to take some pictures although the young man had to configure for her how to take pictures. If she could keep proper records of the good visual images, they would make her textbook studies come alive.

As for the young man, he was not that keen. One can bring the horse to the water but can't force it to drink!

I had a great roasted duck rice lunch with the couple at Blk 124 Toa Payoh. The young lady had a makansutra reference book with her and she drove us to this place. The young lady was as thin as a rake and enjoyed the duck rice while she chattered away about relationships. This was a new world to me as I had a glimpse into first year undergraduate life of young adults.

The young lady ate all the crispy duck skin, meat and poured the remaining black sauce onto her duck rice. Full of oil and cholesterol I presumed. As for me, I had to controlled my impulse to devour the crispy duck's skin, leaving them on the plate. I avoided pouring the black sauce onto my rice. The Singapore Health Promotion Board seemed not to have got its health prevention anti-cholesterol and anti-hypertension messages to the young chatterbox.