Vacation and other things not related to clinics

Vacation is so much better than anticipated. Right now I'm sitting in the airport in Charlotte waiting for my connecting flight that will take me home to Connecticut. I am desperate to go back to New England. The south is hot, humid, and filled with people that hate Yankees. And let me tell you, I am a Yankee through and through. Born and raised in Connecticut, it doesn't get much more northern than me. I've also been desperate to run as far away from the vet school as possible. I think my soul is slowly being sucked out of me one SOAP at a time.

Don't get me wrong, I love vet school . . .

At least thats what I keep telling myself.

I mean, really, vet school sucks, there's no getting around it. But someday it will all be worth it when we've gone over the rainbow and can be called a doctor.

Enough of me trying to wax poetic.

On our last day of therio we made a video of a client stallion being collected. It was filled with Dr. Plain shouting things like: "He is a very dirty boy!", "His penis is very small!" and Jack
giving commentary with a helmet on on how the stallion was having difficulty with the phantom. You can't do equine repro and not have a sense of humor. Hopefully Amber will edit the video and we can post it or at least have it so we can show it for senior skits. I'll miss Dr. Plain, she was one of the only good things about being in the large animal hospital.

Saturday I got my vacation started off right. Jon just started a new club at the vet school called the Veterinary Sportsman's Club. Its a club for students who want to go out and do things not related to vet school. Our first trip was out to the Gulf of Mexico to go scalloping. It was awesome! We went to 4 different sights and caught our limit of scallops. It was just a fun day of hanging out with new people and old friends and just swimming and having a good time. One of our residents, an anesthesiologists, is from England and had never been snorkeling before. He apparently had also never seen the sun before because by the end of the day he was purple. One of our other attendants, a future clinician, updated me on all the administrative dirt in the hospital. It was such a good time, but I got so sunburnt. Apparently its advisable to wear a shirt when swimming in the Gulf because the sun is so strong. Despite putting sunscreen on 3 times during the day I still got a massive burn on my back. Its 3 days later and it still hurts.

It was nice to get away from the drama and high stress for one day. I hope there will be more chances to do that since I'm sure there will be more drama.

In other news I hung out with my ex-boyfriend Dave last night. We had drinks last week just to catch up. Last night though he was hanging out with a friend who lives in my apartment complex and I got an invite. Later he walked me home, met my cats and then proceeded to make out with me. As nice as it was to be kissed it wasn't right. We tried the whole 'friends with benefits' thing a year and a half ago and it didn't work then. I don't think it will work now. I think he understood.

Boys, who needs 'em right? I don't, I have Murry and Lexy . . .

High school has got nothing on vet school

No interesting cases this week from therio. Not surprising since the breeding season is over. Although we did have a mare that had an ovarectomy the other day. The biggest excitement though wasn't the surgery but the drama associated with it. This pony mare was scared to death of people. Dr. Plain had been working with her and I had gotten to know her a bit as well. When surgery came to give her an injection I held the mare for them since she knew me. Well the mare still acted up (which we expected) and all of a sudden everyone had to put in their two cents on how to make her stop. The techs got a bit rough but what could I do, talking back to the techs is a cardinal sin in the large animal hospital. Then all of a sudden one of my classmates, Tami, came and just grabbed the horse from me, as if I wasn't doing a good enough job at restraining it. I left the stall so that I wouldn't flip out. When we (repro) took the mare back I told Tami I could take it from there. Then she starts giving me this whole song and dance about how she took the pony so that I could go do other things. I just snapped. I basically told her that I didn't buy it and that I didn't appreciate having any animal grabbed out of my hands. Later I found out that the surgery techs were complaining that I was being snippy in the stall. That was when I really lost it.

I cried for a good 15 minutes in the bathroom.

You see, its been a whole month of me being told how to hold a horse, that you have to smack the horses around to make them behave, that all the horses in the hospital were stupid and ugly and I just finally had it. I can't take the bully mentality that most of these horse people have about the animals. This one mare I wanted to protect. And when she was grabbed out of my hands I just got so angry that I snapped. And even though all I was trying to do was protect her everyone made it look like I was the asshole. It didn't help that half of Tami's family is currently in the hospital and her horse died last weekend. All of which I wasn't really thinking about at the time. Yup, I'm that asshole.

Dr. Plain saw I was upset later and we had a talk. She totally understood and knew that I was just trying to do the right thing. I love Dr. Plain, she's one of the few genuinely nice people in the large animal hospital. She actually likes horses. You would think more people that work there would feel the same.

And then today Glen confronted me. Apparently I made a comment to someone about him being an asshole (which he is) and that person told Glen I was telling people that he was a bad person. Glen wanted to know why I was telling people this and why I didn't like him so much (as if cheating on my friend wasn't enough). He doesn't understand what he ever did to me or Haley. I told him that no, I didn't like him and that I didn't care to get into a conversation about why. I also told him that I wasn't going to lie to people when they asked me what I thought about him (although now I'll be more careful about who I say things to). It was then he told me that we weren't in high school and that I should be more professional.

We're not in high school? No, we're in something far worse than high school. Everyone knows everyone's business, even the clinicians and residents are involved. People talk about crossing a line but I'm not even sure there's a line drawn to cross.

I started vacation today. Not a moment too soon.

Look at me being all computer-smart! (There's a good medical story in this post I promise)

So when I was on large animal medicine this cow came in that had tetanus. She could walk when she came in but it was stiff and stilted, her ears were retracted, she couldn't move her mouth and she couldn't eructate which caused her to have horrible bloat. We initially managed her with tetanus toxoid, antitoxin, penicillin and acepromazine (to relax her muscles a bit). We even did a rumenostomy procedure so we could feed her directly into the rumen. She didn't get better but she didn't get worse. Until 3 days after admission that is. I found her totally recumbent with all 4 legs extended and having tetanic contractions every few minutes. We gave her IV magnesium sulfate to try and help relax the muscles but she didn't respond the way we wished she did. So I took some great video of this and finally figured out how to post it on YouTube. Take a look at it here. Tetanus is pretty rare in adult cattle. In this case we couldn't find any injury so we haid to assume she got it from a build up of the bacteria in her GI tract (which I didn't know happened until I had to research tetanus for this case).

This case didn't have a good outcome. The owners came to visit her a day after we found her like that. The owner was this old woman and her neighbor who took care of the cow (whose name was 'Boo' by the way). The neighbor was this little old man who was totally in love with this cow. When he got in the stall and started crying I almost lost it. It was so hard for him to see Boo like that. Later when we had to euthanize her Dr. Flip said "Here, go give this, I have to check that alpaca" and then handed me the 'pink juice' and left me. On one side of the stall my friends were chatting like nothing was going on and on the other side the animal techs were waiting with the forklift to take Boo to pathology. I was somewhere between crying and not knowing what to do. But instead of freaking out I collected myself and gave the euthanasia solution. How's that for a first euthanasia?

Some neat pictures of cases

So I realize that I've been very lax in posting pictures with my blogs so I'm making it up for it now with pics of some of the cases I've talked about.

This is Speedy. He's one of the resident gopher tortoises in the zoo med department. He had a broken ulna so we made a makeshift sling for him out of duct tape. He was not very happy about it!





The next few pictures are of Buddy, the dachsund who I wrote about earlier (under the post "Buddy's Story". The most recent news with Buddy is that he's home doing very well with very grateful owners!
This is the chop job that buddy had done by the emergency vet. You can already tell that there is something nasty going on with that skin.






The picture to the left was taken intraoperatively (duh). You can see we're holding back the liver and oh, whats that? Oh yeah, thats a rib in the abdomen. Not good.







Here is Buddy after the surgery. He had so many tubes coming out of him for a few days. He basically just stayed like this for 3 days. It was heartbreaking.








This is after we removed the vacuum bandage. Look at the beautiful granulation tissue!









And then this is Buddy a couple of days after we removed the vacuum bandage. Look at him standing all on his own!!





And now for my favorite picture yet! A pic of me doing CPR on a foal. I was such a rockstar!

Makin' babies

LA Medicine has come and gone and I'm now about to start my second week of LA Theriogenology. We basically spend our days palpating mares and collecting stallions. Its very easy going, we get out early, and we have a bit of fun. I'm enjoying it actually. We've taken a couple of repro courses during the first two years but I never understood anything from them. But on this rotation I feel like I really do understand everything we're doing. Everything they talked about in class all of a sudden makes sense. Its a good feeling. I've also started improving my palpating skills and do pretty well with the ultrasound. The joke around the barn is that I'm a rockstar, which started with the CPR I did on that foal during medicine. Dr. Chris calls me Shakira.

We also get to play with the mare's babies all day. Which is awesome.

Why am I not one of the pretty ones?

We went out last night. I started off the night confident and cool, nonchalant, looking hot, and just wanting to have fun with some friends. And then the same thing happened just like every other night. Soon I found all the guys paying attention to all the other girls, I was being pushed out of circles, dancing by myself. My ex-roomate, who was with us, was getting all the attention. There was this one resident, a nice guy, kind of a dork, smart, funny, cute accent. He wanted to be hooked up with her. Her. Of all the people. A girl who thinks she's too good for anyone and the hottest shit on the planet. She wouldn't appreciate someone like him. She's too superficial. Not that I really would be interested in dating a resident or clinician myself but its nice to get some attention once in a while. Just once I'd like everyone to pay attention to me. I want to be that girl just once.

Some of my classmates told me today that I just have to be confident. I am confident. At least, I usually start off the night like that. But when I see all the guys going after the skinny girls with perfect hair and perfect smiles that sort of throws me off a little. I just wanted to tell them that maybe if it hadn't been for perfect plastics like them treating me like crap my whole life maybe I would be more confident. Most of us can't be born with perfect looks and smiles and amazing confidence. Some of us can't play "the game". Some of us are just trying to get by and want just one person to think they're cute every now and then.

She's giving boys what they want, tries to act so nonchalant,
Afraid they'll see that she's lost her direction.
She never stays the same for long,
Assuming that she'll get it wrong.
Perfect only in her imperfection.

She's not a drama queen,
She doesn't want to feel this way, only seventeen but tired

She would change everything for happy ever after.
Caught in the in between, a beautiful disaster,
But she just needs someone to take her home.

One more down.

Large animal medicine is coming to a close and I don't really know how to feel about it. There were a lot of positives. I liked the medicine and the procedures we got to do. CPR on Sarah's foal, a respiratory function test on Smart Sugar Badger, converting atrial fibrillation in Ball in the Family. Even treating tetanus, and eventually failing, with Boo.

I loved working with the horses. I'm happiest when I'm with a horse. Always have been.

I got to make new friends. Who knew that I would get along so well with Veronica, or that I would find a new friend in one of the seeniors. I even got along with Kristy.

Unfortunately, there were also a lot of negatives. For as much as I love horses I hate horse people. Being around that environment again brought back memories and feelings I never wanted to have again. The politics and the negativity surrounded me. I hadn't thought this much about Rich and Jay in years but everyone seemed to remind me of them. Everyone had to put in their two cents. Everyone knew better. And no one really treated the horses right. Even Haley. My best friend. I couldn't stand her during this rotation. She was the worst of all of them and the biggest suck up.

As a result I changed my tracking. I am now on the small animal track. My goal is to work as a small animal vet and own a horse someday. Not make horses my whole life. I think things will be better this way.

I need to capture this feeling

Tonight I did something amazing. A mare with a ruptured prepubic tendon was induced to foal and out came a 1 month premature foal. After Dr. Flip and Veronica intubated her we realized her heart wasn't beating. When someone asked who would start CPR I just jumped right in and started compressions. Veronica and I got a rhythm going and amazingly enough the heart started beating right under my hands. It was amazing. I brought her back from the dead. And then her heart stopped again. Without even being asked I started compressions again. And miraculously we got her beating again. I started her heart not once but twice. Twice. I can't even begin to describe the feeling of accomplishment that I got. Unfortunately the foal didn't make it. She couldn't breath on her own. But I still think I did something amazing and I'm never going to forget that feeling.

Buddy's Story

This is just one of those crazy stories that has to be told. Bear with me, its a long one.

Buddy is a Daschund that came in on Tuesday as an emergency. He had been attacked by a dog (a German Shorthair Pointer) the past Saturday. The owners took him to the vet on Saturday night. This vet diagnosed a diaphragmatic hernia and decided to fix it. Buddy had a large wound on his back. The vet made an incision into the thorax that extended from the dirty wound. He fixed part of the hernia but couldn't reach to other part and since Buddy started crashing he felt it best to close and send him home. Couple of problems. The wound on Buddy's back had been sutured but not clipped or properly cleaned. The incision site now looked necrotic. Buddy was sent home with nothing but an NSAID for pain.

When I saw him Buddy was surprisingly still walking. His blood work showed a degenerative left shift. We immediately realized that this was an emergency and that we had a septic dog on our hands. After negotiating with the owner and deciding to make him a teaching case we went to surgery. We clipped and scrubbed the area of the wound and then went in through the abdomen to fix the hernia. During the exploratory that we did we found a severe case of chronic pancreatitis. We also happened to find one of Buddy's ribs protruding through the diaphragm into the abdomen. We fixed the hernia and moved on to the wound. The skin over Buddy's back and left side was necrotic. We also found that the vet had only done a one layer closure on the skin and underneath there was still a gaping hole in the chest cavity. We could see the heart and lungs. Not good. So after we debrided and flushed the wound and chest cavity thoroughly we apposed the ribs and put a vacuum bandage over the open wound.

Buddy lived with the vacuum on for three days. He had 4 syringe pumps attached to him at all times, sometimes 5. He had fluids and a urinary catheter. He also had a jejunostomy tube with all of his nutrients being pumped directly to the small intestine. We measured his CVP, intra-abdominal pressure, systolic blood pressure, PVC/TP, and urine specific gravity several times a day. He was on 2 antibiotics, 2 constant infusions of pain meds (fentanyl and lidocaine), plasma, anti-emetics, heparin, and even got a dose of packed red blood cells. We also had a chest tube in place so we could drain the fluid for him. Long story short: Buddy had tubes coming out of everything. Oh, and how could I forget the nasal oxygen? It was an intensive case to manage.

Finally we were able to take Buddy back to surgery on Friday. The wound looked amazing when we took the vacuum bandage off. There was just granulation tissue everywhere. During surgery we were able to completely close the wound. Since then Buddy's care has gone down significantly. He is no longer on any pain meds, we pulled the chest tube and urinary catheter, discontinued the plasma, discontinued the nasal oxygen, and stopped all of his intensive monitoring. He is definitely feeling better. He tries to bite the techs when they mess with him. Not out of pain, more out of being pissed off that he's there. We went on a walk today, it was amazing. And I think we have the sepsis under control now.

Unlike everyone else he rarely tries to bite me. We've gotten used to each other. I move slow and in return he lets me do what I need to. I also spend time with him when I don't have to do anything to him. I think we bonded on the very first day. Dr. Lemming wanted to see how he walked so she got down on the floor and called him to her. He looked at her for a moment and then trotted right over to me. I feel like his guardian angel. He is doing so well now. I thought for sure he was going to die as soon as he got here. Now it looks like he's going to make it. Words can't express how happy it makes me.