Spay, Take 2

Yesterday's morning of Community Practice/Surgery rotation included scrubbing in on a second spay, this time with a different senior.

The patient was an adorable little tan shepherd(?) mix, maybe 30 pounds and 6 months old. I'll be checking the humane society website over the next few days to see if they put up a picture of her once she's recovered a bit and ready for adoption.

Today's spay was my senior partner's first spay in which she was the primary surgeon. Like me, she had scrubbed in on several spays during her junior year, but had never done one on her own before. Hence, she was a bit nervous and had to ask a few questions, but I imagine I'll do the same next year, and she ended up doing a great job. It did mean that I didn't get to do quite as much of the surgery as I did on Wednesday, though.

I pretty much just ligated one of the ovarian pedicles, tied one of the transfixing ligatures on the uterine body, and sutured up the SQ layer again. The body wall and skin are the two most important of the 3 layers to get sutured really well, so I was happy to let my senior do those. The intradermal suture pattern meant to close the skin ended up leaving a small gap in one part of the incision, so I got to place a single cruciate suture over that -- my first time suturing anything in live skin, and wow does it bleed!

Puppy woke up MUCH easier than poor Research Beagle. She woke quickly, even though she was under for about 3 hours including 2 hours of surgery time. We didn't even have time to get her to the anesthesia recovery area before she started to come to, so she got to wake up in the surgery suite. She looked SO confused about what was going on, but was very relaxed and seemed nonpainful.

I visited the puppy this morning -- routine elective surgeries stay overnight two nights in the hospital; they are dropped off in the afternoon on the day before surgery, stay overnight to make sure they are fasted and seem healthy, then have surgery in the morning on Day 2, get the rest of the day to recover and be monitored for pain or complications, then get checked on in the morning of Day 3 and sent home later in the day.

I hadn't had a chance to meet this sweet girl before the surgery (our first encounter was after she was anesthetized), so it was fun to get to see her the day after surgery. She was SO needy, wanted only to snuggle up to me and be rubbed and petted (belly rubs, please!). She seemed very comfortable and didn't mind me palpating around her incision site, which actually looked really good -- some minor swelling, but almost no bruising, which I was worried about after doing a hack job on my poor banana during suturing practice in my first week this year. Her green tattoo ink (placed in the incision after it's closed, to identify in the future that she has been spayed already) had sort of smeared all over her abdomen and thighs, but oh well.

Here's hoping puppy gets a great home, and soon. It was really rewarding to see her after surgery and to see how well she was doing. A lot of people are concerned about doing surgery on young dogs (well, mostly on the pediatrics, like 6-12 weeks old -- this girl was a bit older). But once you see how quickly they get right back to normal, and act as if nothing ever happened, I think it's almost easier than doing it on the 1 or 2 year olds, who can tend to be real babies about this type of thing (case in point: Wednesday's Research Beagle).

All of the other surgeries (5 more) on Wednesday were cats and kittens from the same humane society -- 2 or 3 adults and 2 or 3 itty bitty kittens, maybe 10 weeks old. They were SO adorable! Especially after they had had their dose of happy drugs (opioids) before getting anesthetized...