Yesterday was my second Monday spent surgerizing at the county humane society. Actually, before we even got down there, we spent much of the morning at the VTH taking care of the patients who had dropped off from a different humane society for surgery on Tuesday. That meant walking, feeding, watering, setting up cages, weighing, doing physicals, taking temperatures, checking testicles, shaving for spay scars, and drawing blood on 6 friendly but exuberant doggies.
After getting those guys set up, we headed down to the shelter. Three of us went. We had 4 dogs on the schedule -- 2 black lab/pointer cross puppies, a tiny terrier cross puppy, and a large terrier cross puppy -- all spays. The lab/pointers were around 20 lb each, and nice and passive in their complete fear of everything (makes for cooperative patients!). The tiny terrier was, well, tiny (only 5 lb!) and wanted nothing more than to just be held. The large terrier was a complete nutjob (in a crazy happy sort of way), requiring just a "touch" of additional sedative pre-surgery.
Of us 3 students, I was the only one who had been to the humane society from Community Practice before, so I'll admit it was kind of fun to actually have a semblance of an idea what was going on and be able to answer the other guys' questions.
We started with anesthesia on my classmate's lab/pointer spay ("Annie Oakley"), which was relatively uneventful, then induced my lab/pointer spay ("Ariat"). This was my first time since junior year to be the one to do all of the induction stuff -- meaning premedication, IV catheter placement, induction with injectable anesthetic drugs, intubation, connecting monitoring equipment, shaving, etc. Since I've generally been a stress case about anesthesia stuff, and have had some struggles with technical skills like intubation and IV catheters, it was rewarding to do it all myself without any mistakes.
Ariat's spay went pretty well -- about an hour and a half in length -- and she recovered nicely (unlike her brother, neutered by the shelter's staff vet, who woke up screaming bloody murder).
Toward the end of my spay, the surgery instructor came by to ask if I was interested in doing the last spay (since there were 4 dogs and 3 students). I kind of didn't want to, but the answer to such a question is always "Sure!" -- I offered repeatedly to let my classmate (a general tracker with only 2 weeks on Community Practice instead of 4) to take the last spay, but the instructor insisted we flip a coin to make it "fair." Flip we did, and I was soon informed that I "won."
Sigh. Though I'm getting faster and more efficient in surgery, and gaining comfort with the procedures, I'm still at the point where a single spay (especially a dog spay) leaves me fairly well exhausted. It's partly physical -- standing over a surgery table, body tense with general worry about slicing into something that will hemorrhage everywhere, and holding arms and hands in a strange position to keep everything sterile -- and partly mental (that same sort of thing with the not wanting to cut a giant artery and watch the dog bleed to death).
But sometimes you've just gotta push on -- hunger, thirst, headache, and full bladder be darned.
So I finished up Ariat's spay, got her to the recovery area, and stepped out of the surgery suite -- only to find my classmate waiting expectantly with Shiloh, the tiny terrier, already premed-ed and out in the prep room, IV catheter and induction supplies at the ready. I did excuse myself for a big drink of water, but there wasn't time for much more than that.
It's been a long post so far -- so here's a cute puppy picture of Shiloh to keep you entertained:
So Shiloh was smoothly induced (again, a nice catheter placement and intubation) and I scrubbed in, again. Shiloh's teensy weensy ovaries and uterus were out and she was closed up and in recovery with a skin-to-skin surgery time of 1 hour on the dot -- my fastest dog spay yet! I started Shiloh's surgery well after one of my other classmates had started his spay, and I finished about 45 minutes before he was done. I don't mean to gloat or anything (keeping in mind that my first spay was at least 2.5 hours), but it was just a nice reminder of how far I've come surgery-wise with 2 more weeks' experience.
We got back to the VTH around 5:15, at which point I grabbed a quick bite of dinner, made some follow up phone calls from last week, helped out with a couple appointments (just restraint and that sort of thing), and did a proper PE on my surgery dog for Tuesday and got his paperwork going. I got home around 6:30 pm.
Today turned out to be a loooooonger day that Monday (even though I was thoroughly exhausted after Monday). I rolled into the VTH shortly after 7 am to get another good look at today's surgery patient and make sure everything was set up for his surgery before 8 am rounds. Today's doggie was a 6 month old red miniature Dachshund -- just about the sweetest and silliest hound dog you've ever met. His name is Mickey and if you sit on the ground he loves to race toward you and try to launch himself into your lap, but he just can't make it most of the time on account of his stubby little legs. He also loves to roll over and wait for belly rubs.
Anyway, Mickey's surgery and anesthesia were extraordinarily efficient today. I checked on him at 10:05 am, when the tech students had just brought him into the anesthesia prep room but hadn't started working on him yet, and when I came back 10 minutes later, he was catheterized, induced, and ready to be shaved for surgery. (And 10 minutes may seem like a plenty long time, but in the world of brand-new anesthetists, that's almost a world record.)
Mickey was in the surgery suite by 10:25 am and I started cutting at 10:35 and finished my last intradermal suture at 10:55 am -- a 20 minutes neuter, skin to skin, which totally beats my 40-60 minute neuters I've done previously. The nice thing about neutering young dogs is you can almost just rip those testicles right of them without having to mess with the scrotal ligament that attaches the testicle to the inside surface of the scrotum very strongly in older dog.
Mickey recovered well (though he was pretty chilly -- he got down to 94 degrees in surgery, with 100-102 being normal body temp). Since I had no appointments until 4:30 pm, I tackled about 8 phone messages that had been left over the course of the morning.
After all the lovely phone calls, it was a quick bite to eat and then a surprise 1 pm appointment. One of my rotation-mates has a dog of his own who has been battling lymphoma for a few months and recently going downhill -- the poor thing is only 4 years old -- and my classmate got some really bad news about his beloved doggie today, so he headed home around noon.
Which left me with his 1 pm surgery intake -- a client-owned animal dropping off for surgery on Wednesday. The patient is a pretty little yellow lab, about 6 months old, who's in for a laparoscopic spay and gastropexy. She's a bit shy, especially around men, but overall a good girl and very cute. And she finally went potty for me outside at her last walk of the evening!
Aside from the surgery puppy for tomorrow, I helped out with some blood draws, vaccine administration, nail trims, anal gland expression... basically a full afternoon of assisting with other people's patients when they were in the treatment room.
My 4:30 appointment was an 8 year old Chesapeake Bay retriever due for some vaccines, needing a nail trim and anal gland expression, and also with a long complicated history of urinary incontinence, right forelimb lameness, multiple skin and subcutaneous masses, etc. etc. etc. They also arrived at 3:55 pm for their 4:30 schedule appointment and seemed a bit put off when it was 4:05 pm before I came up to get them (my bad, I guess I should have been more than 25 minutes early to come see you).
My 6:00 was a sweet, happy 1.5 year old shepherd cross due for her annual boosters on her puppy vaccines. Her owner was super nice and signed her up on the VTH's wellness plan, started her on a lepto vaccine in addition to her DA2PP and rabies, consented to a heartworm test and sending home preventive, and allowed deworming and promised to bring back a fresh poop sample for a parasite screen.
When they left at 6:45, I was left with a couple records to write up, then feeding, walking, and medicating (ear meds) my lab spay for tomorrow, and feeding and walking my Dachshund neuter for today. With an arrival at home at 8 pm, it was nearly one of my longest days on Community Practice -- and there's no sign that the rest of the week will be any slower!
fav part: "The nice thing about neutering young dogs is you can almost just rip those testicles right of them"
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