8/1/07

Wow. What a day.

Not sure where to begin...so how about the beginning?

Another dental today, golden retriever with some serious mouth funk. I did my first extractions too! I got to use the drill, elevators, extractors and everything. Exciting!

I was busy with my dentals, but early on two quill dogs came in...followed right by another one. I admitted the lone dog, and it was a huge Rottweiler that weighed about double my weight and was strong as an ox....but really sweet. The other two were a German Shepard and another Rott.

Halfway through the second quill dog (the Shepard), and right after I was done with my first dental, there was a bit of a scene. The head surgery tech, after quite a while of being upset with some things at the clinic, quit in the middle of the day after a heated discussion upstairs with a doctor and the office manager. There has been a lot of changes with the way things were run (mostly before I got there, I'm not really involved), and both sides have some issues with it. I won't talk more about it since I don't think it has any pertinence on a school journal recount of my externship, but since it effects the rest of what I'm going to tell, I thought I'd mention it as it changes quite a lot in the hospital.

So, suffice to say, the rest of the day was quite stressful. Being down a person, and especially this person, put us all on double time. There rest of the day was just stressful and busy, but the quill dogs were the main event medicine-wise. The first two, who came in a pair, went down all right (it definitely took a bit of work since you can't muzzle them and no one wants to take on a Shepard and a Rottweiler in pain and unmuzzled when you poke them with sharp pointy things when they are already filled with sharp pointy things), but the third dog was a handful and a half. Since this one's quills were mostly inside the mouth, anything around there was just too painful, and we couldn't restrain without a muzzle or really even just hurting the dog. We tried leashes, pinning in the corner, but nothing worked. The dog was really good through all of this, never tried to bite, just whined and moved away too quickly for us to do anything, and we tried for a LONG time. Finally, the dog had just had it with us, and half-heartedly snapped at one of the other techs. It was nothing major, not even a real show of intent, but the poor guy had just reached his limit of us man-handling him and I can't blame him. Eventually we went back into the kennels, threaded the leash through the bars of the kennel and pulled him tight against them to give him his little sedative in the rump. It worked really well once we did that, and he didn't even flinch, just whined a bit.

Did bills in the afternoon and some go homes. What a crazy day.