RAVS Trip Day Four

I figure a picture tells it all.

On the third day of clinics I started becoming delirious. I was reminded of my internship the first year out of vet school. At that time, a normal day was 9 hours long, but 2-3 days of the 6 day work week were 13 hours long. And every 6 weeks, I rotated into the emergency shift, which was a six day, 99 hour week. Or, when I was at home with newborn twins. Or newborn twins coupled with toddler twins. But I was much younger back then.

Back to the present. I was able to function and I didn't make any big mistakes, but I feel like I was a bit slow on the uptake and maybe even slurring my words on occasion. During the times between surgeries I would sometimes just sit there with my eyes closed. I did try to do some teaching rounds with the students and they seemed SO eager to learn. But that was challenging because many times we would get called away to do a surgery just as the discussion was getting good!

Every time we moved the clinic, it was a 2 hour process to pack up and another 2 hour process to set it up again. It was good to be in one place for 3 straight days - the community center at Eagle Butte, the largest town on the reservation (and only a 5 minute drive from our dorms!). But today we had to get there early in order to set up. The day started at around 6 am and ended with rounds at 10 pm - they let us off early so we could get some sleep!

I will take this paragraph to talk about some of my mishaps. There was the matted dog from day one who bled like crazy! She was in heat and probably had some tick-borne disease that affected her clotting ability. Then there was a Chihuahua spay the next day where, when I broke down the ovarian suspensory ligament, I also tore through a large vessel. Then there was a cat on the third day (today), who was bleeding from some unknown region (I think it ended up being from where we tied off the uterus), so I had to dink around trying to find the source. Oh, and the worst was the first clinical day when they had me neuter 2 cats and I didn't really know how to do the figure 8 self-tie! (I use suture material in my practice.) They would have been better off having a student doing them! In fact, after that I pretty much let every student do the entire cat neuter if we were assigned one.

So basically my days went like this - drink some pop, do a surgery, sit with my eyes closed, have a snack, drink some more pop, do a surgery....

RAVS Trip Day 3

Oh my freaking God!!!!!!!!!!!!! @$#%*&^ Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! That was my internal reaction when my alarm went off at 4:45 am on Tuesday. 4:45!!!!! So not fair!!!! Remember, I am a sleep baby and I was already at a 6 hour sleep deficit and it was only day 3. How will I get through the day? My only remedy was soda. I couple of months ago I gave up soft drinks, but since I don't drink coffee and did not have any energy shots with me, Coke and Pepsi became my drug of choice for the week. However, while I had a bunch of cash, I had only $5s and $10s, which the vending machines did not accept. And no time to even walk across the street to the gas station to get change. Ever. So I became a sort of beggar that week, bumming change off of the other vets. I'm not ashamed.

After my cold water sponge bath and a small breakfast, we left the dorms at 5:30 am. The clinic started at 7:30 or 8 and we still had to set it up! The facilities in the new place were so much more awesome than the garage from the day before. This was a clean, spacious gymnasium. Look at all the room!

Since I was so eager to get the day started, I was given the first surgery, a young-ish, large-ish dog spay. And it must have gone well because I really don't remember it! Yay!!!

This was the second day of clinics, so I still looked pretty BAR (bright, alert, and responsive, for you non-medical types).

In addition to routine vaccines and surgeries, the group saw other interesting cases. Two dogs were hit by cars during the week (both ended up being euthanized), several were diagnosed with distemper or parvovirus (diseases that can be prevented by vaccination), tons of cases of mange, and a few dogs who had run-ins with porcupines. This poor dog also had puppies a week ago!

 

I was getting pretty confident with my surgeries, but again one of my spays decided to take forever to wake up and AGAIN they pulled out the ultrasound to make sure she wasn't bleeding internally after the surgery. I was beginning to get a complex! After getting the all-clear, we were able to break down the clinic to move to Eagle Butte. We ate dinner sitting on the floor of the community center, and were dismissed back to the dorms at about 10:30. But wait! I had a professional meeting to attend so I didn't get to bed until about 11:30.