Take Your Animals To Ohio State...

@TheeRoyalBee Oh no...I'm sorry you had an issue with a pet. 🥺

@SomeMichGuy it was really bad and I went to a few veterinarian specialists. Couldn’t really diagnose it.baffled I still think about it

@TheeRoyalBee I'm sorry. The university programs tend to have "referral hospitals": you get referred there by your pet's vet, with records being forwarded.

The strengths of these programs are several:

1) They see low-probability things ALL the time, whereas your local vet might NEVER see the given condition.

I had exactly that occur when a dog had a Ca problem: MSU sees it every week, many vets will never see the cause which my dog had (tumor on a parathyroid). Most vets would tell you it's cancer and not be able to diagnose what is going on, so there are likely many dogs euthanized who did not need that...

(The dog lived ~twice as long because I noticed a tiny shaking.)

2) If something is happening and you are being seen by one department, but another is implicated in your pet's diagnosis or treatment, they can pull in these other professionals as needed in order to figure out what is going on with your pet or help him/her.

This is a HUGE advantage of a large veterinary medical center, rather than a tiny "animal hospital", which might ha e specialists through on a rotating basis, rather than having all specialties housed on-site.

CAVEAT: One of my issues with MSU is that the ENTIRE ophthalmology department was gone to a convention in TX for a week. During that time, eye problems were NOT being seen in-house, as far as my experience showed. [i]The director of the hospital also told me that other departments did the same thing.[/i]

@SomeMichGuy yeah, i am very allergic to sumac and Buster and i reacted to that and some other poisonous plant that i never identified. but it was everywhere

@LILY61 My understanding is that all three have the same basic oil (urushiol, I think...let's see...yes, that's it) which is the issue.

I bet poison ivy is your other culprit, because it's so ubiquitous...but with these, the oil in question lingers even after the plant dies...

@SomeMichGuy i now use that crap to wash my hands to get the oil off. but i am not allergic to poison ivy. if i am than it is so slight that i can't even tell. the poison in question makes my hands burn.

@Colormegone Indeed it is. It's surprising how important a shortish drive can be in terms of the experience of local climate/weather through the year.

@SomeMichGuy Just north and south of Ohio!
All that lake effect snow you guys get!

@Colormegone In SE Mich, we don't tend to get that.

But Grand Rapids is nicely located within the standard swath of that sort of weather.

The normal strip for the Lake Michigan "lake effect" snow seems to be ~1/3 the width of the "Lower Peninsula" (at about Grand Rapids).

In larger storms, it might go through half of the "LP", i.e., to US 127, which goes up the middle of the LP through the Jackson area & Lansing up to the Mackinac Bridge.

For huge storms, we get show here, too, but I think that's more base storm than added lake effect by the time you are near Ann Arbor.

But this is why the S/SE/E side of Lake Eerie gets big snows, too, and similarly for the other lakes--Lake Ontario affecting New York, Lake Huron affecting Michigan's "thumb" and Ontario, Lake Superior affecting Michigan's "Upper Peninsula" and Ontario.

@SomeMichGuy I dislike them putting a “the” in front of OSU. It’s pompous

@AthrillatheHunt Yes. Like "The Getty", which made Henry Ford Museum call itself "The Henry Ford"...flex envy doesn't look good in museums...

@SomeMichGuy ever been to The Bronx? Haha