Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Day 14: Huskies!

I got to watch three surgeries this morning: two dog neuters and a cat dental. I can't say that before today I've ever seen a dog neuter! It was a lot quicker than I expected; it only took about 20 minutes from the time he cut the dog open to the time that the dog was completely stitched and glued up.

Bunker (a Springer Spaniel) was the first dog Dr. Bart neutered. As he went through the surgery, Dr. Bart explained to me everything he was doing. He made the incision, took one testicle out, ripped off all of the unnecessary connective tissue, clamped the blood flow three times, cut the testicle off, then stitched it up. He repeated the process for the other one, then stitched up the incision (with dissolvable stitches) and put glue on the outside for good measure. He did another dog (Bilbo) right after that.

Bunker

Bilbo

The third surgery was a dental for a cat who also had to get three teeth extracted. The dental was just like for people, just with a little less teeth. One of the technicians cleaned her teeth, polished them, and put fluoride on them, then Dr. Bart pulled the three teeth. One that he needed to pull was a lower canine, and he was telling me that it is really easy to fracture the jaw when pulling a lower canine. Yikes!



The very first appointment to come in was a cat that had to be euthanized because she had a tumor around her nose and eyes. I was not in the room with the patient, but Dr. Bart only sedated the cat in the room then brought her to the back room where I was allowed to watch him euthanize her. Because she was sedated and unaware of what was going on, he injected it right into her heart to make it go faster.

After lunch there was an alaskan husky that came in (they're SO pretty!), but he was bleeding a lot out of one of his ears; he had blood all over his ear and neck and was getting it everywhere. Dr. Bart couldn't tell for sure the cause of it, but he found a lump in his ear canal that should not have been there. Later I saw ANOTHER husky! I'm not sure I've ever even personally seen one before today.

You can even see the blood on the wall.


Two extremely cute puppies came in today from a breeder, and they were almost as small as the chugapoo puppy from yesterday! Both of them had roundworms, but again it's pretty common for young puppies to have parasites. Right after those puppies, there was a four-month-old hairless chihuahua puppy that came in for a regular appointment. It must have weighed two pounds max.



I also saw a dog that had pneumonia, along with a very overweight yellow lab (160 pounds!) who would not put weight on his front right leg. They did X-rays on him, but it looks like it's just a soft tissue injury.

The last patient of the day was an interesting one: it was a bulldog who had recently had a huge cyst removed on his neck, but there was a huge pouch full of fluid and one spot where it was leaking out. He still had the stitches in from his previous surgery, so Dr. Bart took those out, then decided to remove the bulge where it was leaking so that he could drain the whole thing. He took Daisy the bulldog into the back, numbed the spot, cut it out, drained the pouch, and stitched it back up. It was very disgusting!

I helped out today by holding dogs, running and getting supplies, and drawing more vaccines--they're so trusting! Alicia, one of the techs, came out of a room and said, "Grace, I need you to draw the two vaccines in the fridge for the blue room." During surgery, Dr. Bart asked me to control the oxygen machine. I'm happy that I'm actually able to help and not just following people around doing nothing all day.

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