6/06/07

First day as surgery/kennel. I got there about 7 am and another tech and the head receptionist to let me in about 10 minutes later. I let out the dogs for their morning constitutionals and fiddled with Max's catheter for a better part of 10 minutes. I got to play with his catheter a lot that day, as he was on massive fluids and had to go out quite a bit.

An interesting case was a hermaphrodite pug that came in with bladder stones to be removed. The poor dog also had some fairly extensive hot spots, so she had shaved patches all over, including one on her head. Poor dog! She was very nice, though.

Kobie, the tech who I was shadowing, went over how to hook up animals to all the monitors, such as where to attach the heart monitoring probes, the co2 tongue clip, the o2 machine and how to watch and deal with the gas and check the ace levels. How to clip and set up an animal in the proper arrangement, scrub properly, and things like that. She also went over the medications and the criteria for giving them. We give a cocktail to dogs to sort of take the edge off, since it's rather stressful to sit in a loud and busy kennel (it's abbreviated BAG, but there are three components of it), but only if they don't have a history of seizures or anything like that (the A stands for acepromazine). We give dogs rimadyl, and cats metacam, and will only do post op antibiotics if it was for something that might have introduced a lot of bacteria, like a dental or something slightly 'dirty', such as a cat neuter. Patients also go home with some sort of pain management, again rimadyl for dogs and metacam for cats. Usually about 3-4 days worth, depending.

Notes!
-Max is still there, and I am becoming very familar with catheter techniques through his constant adjusting, hooking up and disconnecting. He's looking a bit more spry, but still a very mellow and good patient. Apparently a cat killer, though.
-Had a very high strung and a bit people agressive german shepard come in for a lump removal. His disposition was made better by a bit of sedation and was very agreeable when he woke up (but kept howling in the kennels, yeesh).
-Washed a bunch of instruments and make a few packs, which is good practice.