On Call (again)

Looks like I am going to be on call on Christmas eve after all. We start work at midday and hopefully finish at 9am Christmas day.

Hope everyone has a nice day! Look after your pets.

Cat Castrate

Today marked my return to small animal surgery. It went poorly.

Thomas probably had no idea what his owners planned when they stuck him in a basket this morning. A young healthy male cat, he had no reason to be concerned.

He arrived at the vet surgery - probably not the best way to spend the day, but how bad could it get?

Little did he know he was about to be handed to....the vet student.

It all went well to begin with. He was examined (again) and weighed, then stuck with some magic sleepy drugs. Ketamine! Woo!

After a bit of preparation the nasty vet student dived in. He had performed this operation quite a few times and was fairly confident, except this time it wasn't to go quite a smoothly. Thomas wasn't built like other cats and the normal anatomy didn't quite appear as it should.

Some swearing later the nasty vet student gave up trying to figure out what was going on and asked for help. He placed a ligature on an offending blood vessel and snipped.

The ligature slipped.

The vet student's blood pressure spiked and the swearing returned. Luckily for Thomas so did the hero of this tale, our vet, who placed another, better ligature. This stopped the bleeding and made Thomas much more comfortable.

The nasty vet student has learned from this day. The most important thing is to never take anything for granted, even the anatomy we have learned from day 1.

But the most difficult lesson is that these things happen, and will probably happen again, even with the most simple of operations.

Thomas survived almost intact, with the lack of testicles as his only lasting mark.

Day 1

Day 1 of EMS and I'm already exhausted! Here are some highlights from the past 24 hours, bearing in mind I have had maybe 8 hours sleep in the past 5 days.

Thursday
1800 - Arrive back in Wales. Say hi to parents
1830 - Get call out to see a sick cat. Say goodbye to parents
2000 - Walk the puppy around the park in between cat watching

Friday
0100 - Visit sick cat again and give it lovely painkillers. And some food. Cat has had an ENORMOUS abscess under its chin that has burst. We debrided bits away ("What's that pulsing thing?" "Carotid artery" "Oh......shit") and thus cat is feeling very sorry for itself.
0200 - Dog still barking outside. I'm still awake.
0630 - Phone!

The rest of the day blurs in to one big mess, but I've done loads of consultations, vaccinated a whole flock of puppies, observed a caesar and cared for 8 puppies, killed a dog*, took blood from a cat, been pissed on twice, killed another dog*, nursed sick cat.

Lunch consisted of a bread roll between killing dog 2 and walking puppy at 3pm.

It's been a really long day week. And I still love it.
Except the killing things, they were quite sad!

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* - These were euthanasia cases that came in to be put to sleep, I didn't screw up and accidently kill anything. Yet.

Panic

The panic phase has come early this year, mainly due to the sheer volume of work I'm trying to cram in to my small and feeble brain. Still haven't covered pigs or any of the state veterinary medicine stuff, and not long to go.

I suppose it could be worse though - the final years have a synoptic exam tomorrow morning and have been given no time to revise for it. Then they are back to rotations in the afternoon! It's a wonder we don't have more people go crazy.

Back to sheep lameness!

Procrastination

I'm procrastinating again. So far this week I've spent 3 hours climbing, gone for a run or three, a couple of pub quizzes and just generally not done as much work as I should have. And it's great!

In just under a week I will have finished with exams and should be packing to head back to see more clinical EMS in Wales. Can't wait!

Not Alone

Glad it's not just me having exam stress. A few of my friends are entering exam hibernation where they won't see the outside world for a few days at a time and mainly survive off caffeine and biscuits. It's not healthy! It may be an interesting study to monitor the cortisol levels of students around exam time to look at levels of stress, I'm betting they are fairly high.

Had a lovely chat with a friend from Wales about the scary prospect of having completed the farm animal and cat and dog courses. Apparently we learn loads more in final year, which can only be a good thing!

Sheep revision now. Good luck to everyone else revising.

Realisation

Today it became apparent the amount of work that I have to learn over the next week or so. There is a scary chunk! In a few days I will be examined on sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, birds and fish.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say "AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Exam stress.

Even more scary is the thought that after that I'm apparently able to treat these species. Definitely worrying for all involved.