There's an old joke

It's a one-liner stating: The number one cause of death is living.

Sometimes, vet med feels that way. Especially as a new student without a lot of working knowledge. As vet students, we come in with some basic science and whatever practical knowledge we scraped up in our work experience and volunteering. So especially during this first year, sometimes, it feels like we're fumbling around in the dark.

The course that's supposed to teach us to think like clinicians is Structure and Function. We're given hypothetical cases (based on real cases) and slowly given the information needed to work through them. The format is thus:
1) Basic pieces of data.
2) Record data.
3) Record known problems - what body systems are involved and what might be affecting them (infection, trauma, degeneration, etc)?
4) What further testing and information is needed?
We get more information, add the new data in with the old, and then we can start eliminating things off our initial list of hypothesis. Now, this is problem solving, and I love it. What I don't love is when your initial list of problems consists of nothing but "lethargy" and "inappetance", as it did with this week's case. Do you have ANY idea how frigging long the list of possible causes for "lethargy" and "inappetance" is?? It goes on forever! It more or less includes everything that could ever possibly go wrong.

Eventually, it was immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. We think. No one's confirmed it for us, but after getting CBC values and a decent physical exam, that's what we came up with. My point, dear reader, is that your vet is not magical. When they say they need to run Test X, they mean it. There's a lot of symptoms that present with a lot of diseases. It's really hard to tell them apart with vague symptoms though.