6/28/07

Good day! Interesting. A few different things happened, so I'm going to list and then elucidate.

-Did some admits and a pre-op medications. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with admits. Today was a lot of spays and one declaw (kitten). For cats, we give metacam when they first come in, and usually use telazol or propfol to knock them down. For declaws, they'll use a ketamine/xylazine mixture.
-Helped hold dogs and give pre meds. Ran bloods (the vet test is my friend....when it doesn't freeze). Did my very first vet cyte test! Extremely simple, so much so that I wasn't sure I had done it right. You just put the sample in a hole, check the reagent, and close the door.
-I learned an important lesson today: ketamine does not make kitties happy. I have a few new scars from a 3 pound kitten to prove it. I felt so bad for her, though....she was tweaking out after she started to wake up from her anesthesia when I tried to clean up her belly (spay) and calm her down. Had to give her some acepromazine.
-Did another dental today! Scaling and polishing and then some xrays (regular ones, not dental ones). Learned how to figure out the 'heat' to use, measure the area, run the machine (the little pedal and the overhead light), and a bit about their measurement chart.
-Got snapped at by a yorkie. Ankle biter.

There were two big cases today and I'm going to go through them individually.

-First was Kayla, a 2 year old spayed female shepard mix. Came in presenting vomiting, lethargy. Admitted, took bloods, had some high creatitine, but otherwise within normal limits. X-rays revealed large amounts of gas in the intestines. Went under for exploratory and in the abdomen they found the omentum and mesentary stuck together and to the side of the body wall, twisting into knots and obstructing bowel flow. They removed some necrotic tissue, freed the intestinal loops, and closed. She was recovering when I left.

-The next case was a golden retriever, Baxter, approximately 5 years and with a history of vomiting. Came in because owner saw that the dog had eaten a tarp (found bits in vomit), and was lethargic. He came in last night and was on fluids, but no improvement. Did bloods, but I didn't get to see the levels, x-rays revealed no blockage, but they did find something a bit more interesting: strange lumps on the liver. On speaking with the owner, they elected euthanasia since dog was not improving and the lumps were thought to be possibly cancerous. Necropsy results showed large angiosarcomas on spleen and one on the heart approximately the size of a golf ball. Blood was not clotting, and the thorasic and abdominal cavities were filled with blood.

On a more personal note, while both cases were fascinating, it brings home just how lucky we all are (both animals and humans) to be healthy and alive. Both of those dogs were young, geriatrics were not a factor here. The golden was born with this, and the shepard mix probably picked it up during her spay (so says the doctors). Hopefully her thread is a bit longer than the golden's, though.

I didn't know that they had euthanized Baxter until one of my coworkers asked me to move a body and I went into the room and there he was, on a stretcher with a blanket on him in a dim room, lights off, and the sun shining down outside. I've seen a fair number of euthanasias since I started here. My first was an older lady with a very old cat. I helped hold off the vein, although that cat would not have been able to move if it wanted to as she was already on her way out, but she was just skin and bones, nothing left. I know that they are never easy, but I had to count to ten, twice, in order to not start crying along with the lady. She was funny, though, crying and laughing in that really tragic way that people have when they're sad. She said that she was crying because the cat had hated her ex-husband, and the damn cat was right about him all along. I felt for her, talking because she couldn't bear not to, telling a little ball of fluff that couldn't hear her that it was okay, it was all right, she could sleep now.

Going into that room, picking up the dog and taking it out back....only to go right back into that room to clean it for the next patient waiting in the lobby just seemed so wrong. It was a beautiful summer day, sunny and green, and that golden should have been playing out somewhere, not lying dead while I cleaned its memory out of room two.

Sigh.

Just one of those days.

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On a different note, the necropsy was fascinating. I assisted (held the dog, basically), while Colleen was elbow deep in the rib cage. She hauled out the omentum, broke through the diaphram and took out a very bloated pericardium, which bled something fierce. After, I tried to put the intestines back in and sort of tidy up, but when the dog went back down on its side they fell out again in a lake of blood. I've heard that humans have 2 gallons of blood in their bodies, and after seeing how much came out of a dog, I can believe it. It went all over the floor in the kennels horror-movie style in a big lake. Gross, but really interesting.