Lymph Nodes

One of the best things about working with a group of people is that you learn more easily, and it doesn't feel like you have to work at it! One thing that I learned today is the names of the lymph nodes that we feel for. I knew where the general location of most of them were and what some of them were called, but today I locked it in! For example, the submandibular lymphs are in the area where the jaw meets the kneck. We also learned to use the salivary glands as a reference point. Some of the lymps are super tiny (like the axillary ones) especially on puppies and kittens which makes them hard to feel. The important thing, though, is to make sure they are both about the same size and that they aren't enlarged. This could mean that the animal has lymphadenopathy which is basically inflammation of the lymph nodes. It was pretty fun pronouncing the popliteal lymphs. Some people say "pop-li-teal" and others say "pop-li-tea-ole". We decided that we liked the sound of "pop-li-tea-ole" better! 

Some palpable lymph-nodes.

We also talked about some other practices used such as collecting blood samples. There are many reasons to collect a blood sample for an animal including testing for heartworm, a standard procedure that all dogs and even cats should be tested for. We talked about the importance of flashing the needles used to collect blood with Heparin, an antiocoagulant. If blood were to clot, it would make reading test results difficult and may cause a false negative. This is because a clot could mask the presence of a protein that indicates heartworm prevalence. Overall, it was a successful learning day!