I don't feel like being creative, so I'm just gonna call this post 5/21/2014.

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. I don't really remember much about the last month or so that would be interesting enough to put on here, so I'll just tell you about the awesome day I had today.

For starters, I was on a surgery shift, which means I have to be at work at 6:30. Usually not a good start to my day, considering I'm not a morning person. EVER. And today was worse, because this was the third day in a row I had to be awake before 6. But I generally enjoy surgery shifts, so it's kind of bittersweet.

Once I got all of my surgery pets dropped off, we ran bloodwork on them and placed IV catheters to prepare them for anesthesia. The surgery doctor usually arrives by 8:30. That didn't happen today. So she was running a little late. It happens. 9:00 rolls around. Still no doctors. By now, all of us techs were starting to worry because neither of our 2 scheduled doctors had shown up, and we had appointments beginning at 9:45. We tried calling them to see if we could find out why they weren't there, but had no luck. Now it's 9:15. Still not there. One of the techs thought maybe they got into a car crash with each other. I was starting to think we would have to call all the appointments and say, "Our doctors have disappeared, so we can't see you today." We were all freaking out and becoming very frustrated because none of us knew what was going on. I had all of my pets ready for surgery, and was running out of things to do. Finally we were able to get ahold of our third doctor (who wasn't actually scheduled), and she told us they had a meeting this morning and were on their way. Yeah, that would have been nice to know earlier. So we got a little bit of a late start.

Most of the surgeries went pretty smoothly, with only a couple of extractions on a very angry cat. Also, I did something today that I've never done before. I placed an IV catheter in this very angry cat while it was laying on its side. It wasn't easy, but somehow I was able to do it. Well, the cat was sedated at the time. So that made it a little bit easier....but it sounds more impressive without that little detail. Another first for me was this cat's owner pre-approved extractions for the cat when he dropped off in the morning. Apparently it wasn't really a big deal for him to pay $600, so he was just like, "I'm busy all day. Don't call me unless it's an emergency. If he needs extractions, do it." So that made our job a tiny bit easier.

We finished with surgeries around 4:00, and I finally got to eat my lunch that Bre bought me from Subway. Well, I bought it, but she was nice enough to go get it for me. She also bought herself a sandwich with my money, so it was more like I bribed her. But either way, I got Subway for lunch. That made me happy. We also had a meeting from 6:30pm-8:00, so we ordered pizza. That also made me happy. Plus, another tech I work with brought me a Dr Pepper. For no reason. That just made my whole day better. So yeah, I was at work literally all day, about 14 hours.

One upside to my freakishly long day: I met Tigger's twin. This isn't like Sprite's twin who is evil. Tigger's twin is a sweet old cat with hyperthyroidism who comes in about once a month for a thyroid check. He's very nice. And they're literally identical.

This is Tigger.

This is Tigger's twin. He's a lot skinnier, but otherwise identical.

So yeah. That was my day. I now have about 35 hours for the week, and I have 2 more days to work. I'm so ready for this week to be done. Cuz then I get to go on a 2 week vacation.

And with the ending to my day, I will leave you with this cute picture of Sprite sleeping on a kitty pillow.

Update on Sam (and other random thoughts)

We recently got the results back from the U of M regarding the necropsy (autopsy) of Sam, the dog who died from cardiac arrest. The results showed that he had a large tumor--most likely cancerous--on his spleen that ruptured following anesthesia. We never saw it coming! I mean, this dog's bloodwork was completely normal, he wasn't acting out of the ordinary, or anything. He seemed a perfectly normal healthy dog. But it kind of made all of us feel slightly better about the whole situation. Not that we're happy about what happened, but at least there was a reason for his passing; it wasn't anything that could have been prevented.

In other news, I met Sprite's evil twin today. Literally, these cats look almost identical. The only difference is that Sprite has a half white/half black nose, and a gray spot on her head, whereas her twin's face is all black. Oh, and her twin is seriously evil. I couldn't come within 10 feet of her without her hissing. Even 10 minutes after she woke up from her spay earlier today, she was growling and hissing and freaking out, trying to lick at her incision. For the most part, she was fine until you went near her. Otherwise she wouldn't make a sound.

Work is making me exhausted, guys. I'll be honest, I need like a week off right now. I've been working 50+ hours a week for the last 2 weeks, and I'll probably end up getting at least 60 this week. On the bright side, I'm still getting 2 days off. But the days I do work are super long and tiring. For instance, today I was on a surgery shift. I was scheduled to work 6:30-4:30. I ended up going on my lunch break at 4:45, and worked until 7:00. I went 11 hours without eating. It wasn't pretty. One positive note from today: we might have had to do a foreign body surgery today, but didn't do it because the owner couldn't afford it. If we did the surgery, I might have stayed til 9. So that's a plus. Although, in a way I wish we would have done it, for the sake of the dog. Poor guy.

One of the most adorable puppies came in yesterday. She was a corgi/border collie mix, but she looked like a full-grown long-haired dachshund. 12 weeks old, black, long silky hair, the cutest little puppy. And smart, too. Her owner said she was already potty trained and knows how to sit. She didn't bark or whine at all while she was at the clinic, and she liked to cuddle. Overall, I'd say she's a perfect puppy. I wish I had a picture of her so I could show you guys. Cuz she's adorable.

Perspective

This is the story of how I got peed on by a dead dog. Before you start laughing, it's not as funny as it sounds. Sure, the end is funny, but the story leading up to it--not so much.

We had always been taught in tech school that you should have a fear of anesthesia. But not like a phobia or anything, a healthy fear, a respect, the type of fear instilled in you when driving a car or handling a gun. One of my instructors always said that the day she stops having that fear in her is the day she stops monitoring for anesthesia. Why? Simply put, when the respectful fear is gone, it becomes more of just a routine, you get too comfortable, and that's when mistakes happen.

I know what you're thinking, and no, we did not lose a patient under anesthesia. But what did happen was almost worse. Almost.

It started out as any other busy day at the clinic. Full appointments, numerous early morning drop-offs, seven surgeries, 3 techs and 2 doctors. This was my fourth day in a row out of five, and I was pretty exhausted from the three days before. Even so, I still had to do my job and help out everyone else where I could. The morning went pretty smoothly in spite of being crazy busy, but it was just one of those days where you could feel something was different. Something in the atmosphere wasn't quite right, and you knew something bad was about to happen. Around 3:00, I came out of a room and noticed a lady sitting on the bench with her dog. This dog had just had a dental cleaning and was being discharged to go home. He was a bigger dog, about 105 pounds (his name was Sam). He was still really sleepy from the anesthesia, and didn't look like he wanted to move. I offered to help the lady take him out to the car, and she thanked me for the gesture, but she thought it might be better if he just stayed at the clinic for another hour or two to give him more time to wake up. I thought it was a good idea, and she helped me take him in the back and put him back in his kennel.

He laid in the kennel for a while, and as we walked by we would check on him to see how he was doing. This has also become a routine for most of us, and we don't really think much about it, especially when we're so busy doing other things, and sometimes don't even notice the dogs in the kennels unless they're barking at us. It sounds horrible, but that's how things go. (It doesn't help that we've been short staffed lately, so everybody's kind of stressed and trying to focus on what needs to be done.)

Shortly after Sam was put back in the kennel, the surgery doctor had just finished with a cat spay and was putting her in a kennel to recover. She noticed something wasn't quite right with Sam. He was breathing heavily and not responding to any noises. So she opened the kennel to look at him. His gums were a very pale shade of pink, and he had a slow blinking reflex. Immediately she got the other doctor to help put him on the stretcher to bring him over to the table and get him on oxygen. At this point, I had just walked into the back, so I didn't know what was going on. The first doctor shouted out that they needed help lifting him onto the table, so I grabbed the sides of the stretcher and lifted him up. I still didn't know what was happening, but both doctors and another tech were scrambling around, turning on oxygen and feeling for a pulse. That's when it hit me: Sam was crashing. We tried to intubate him but failed, so we just put a mask on him to give him oxygen. He had a steady but faint pulse, and low blood pressure. Doctor #2 grabbed a vial of glycopyrrolate and told me to hold off his vein so she could inject the drug. No luck finding the vein, so we attempted to place an IV catheter. His blood pressure was so low that we couldn't get a catheter in either of his front legs. Eventually we ended up successfully placing it in a rear leg, where we were able to give glycopyrrolate and epinephrine. After each time of injecting a drug, his pulse would get stronger and faster, but would grow fainter after about a minute. We decided to try to intubate him again, so that oxygen would be going straight to his lungs. I pulled out his tongue and it was cold and purple. We successfully intubated him that time, but he wasn't breathing on his own. That's when Doctor #1 made the decision to start chest compressions. Between the 2 doctors and 3 of us techs, we tag-teamed CPR for about 10 minutes, stopping after several compressions to check for a pulse. It was getting fainter every time. Our last hope was to inject epinephrine directly into the heart. For a few minutes after the injection, we continued with CPR. But Sam could not be revived.

We took x-rays afterwards and determined he had gone into cardiac arrest caused by anesthesia. It's a rare occurrence, but things like this happen. That's something that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and has really made me stop and think every time I monitor anesthesia now. This was the first time I was actually involved with something like this, and it's incredibly stressful. No amount of schooling can prepare you for these situations, and after that happened, guess what? I had to keep working. I didn't have time to relieve my stress. I had the worst headache for the rest of my shift, but for all the appointments I had to see, they didn't know what had just happened, so I had to act like nothing was wrong.

After we closed for the day, we had to transport Sam to the U of M to have him cremated. He was too big to fit in one bag, so we put a bag over his front half and one over his back half. As we were lifting his rear legs to put him in the bag, I was putting pressure on his abdomen and inadvertently squeezing his bladder. So of course that caused urine to go all over the table and my arm that was wrapped around him. And that's how I got peed on by a dead dog.

When I got home from work, I ate, I showered, I cried a little bit, and I slept it off. Unfortunately, I had to work another 12 hour shift the next day. That wasn't easy, but I got through it. I think that situation caused me to have a different perspective on the medical aspect of my job, not just for anesthesia, but for all of it. I also have a new-found respect for people who work in emergency medicine, both human and veterinary. It's not easy to go through those situations, and often we take for granted the routine of medical care without really thinking about the real-life risks of some of the things we do every day.

Finding humor in unexpected places.

For some reason, a lot of my interesting stories this week involve euthanasias. I'd really like to share them, because they're actually kind of funny...in a weird kinda way (but hey, if you work in vet medicine long enough, you find humor in literally everything). So if you don't want to read about death, you should probably just leave this page right now.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #1:
An old black lab came in to get an exam on her eye that was red and swollen and looked kind of gross. She also had a sore on the back of her leg that looked like a ruptured mass. Turns out, she had severe glaucoma in that eye, and the mass that ruptured was on one of her several swollen lymph nodes. Long story short, the owner couldn't afford the diagnostics and treatment that we recommended, and decided not to make the dog suffer anymore. But the owner didn't want to be present for the euthanasia. That actually turned out to be a good thing, because the dog was really anxious and flinchy, and didn't want to lay down. As the doctor was injecting the pentobarbital (euthanasia solution) into the IV catheter, the dog jerked, the syringe came out, and pentobarbital squirted everywhere. This happened twice before the dog passed. I now know what pentobarbital tastes like. It's quite disgusting.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #2:
We had to euthanize a snake. I volunteered to help, because I was the only tech at the time that would handle a snake. It's basically the same as euthanizing a dog or cat, except you inject the solution into its heart. And you have to sedate it first. It just makes things a whole lot easier. As the doctor and I were watching the snake slowly lose consciousness from the anesthetic gas, we noticed how cute his little face was. And we both actually started getting sad. Then we disconnected him from the gas, felt for his heart, and stuck him with the needle. We both shed a tear or two while watching the snake take his last few breaths. It was sad, guys. Fast forward 2 days....we walk into the treatment room in the morning, and the smell of death is in the air. We have no idea where it's coming from, until one of the techs discovers something in the back kennel. It's the dead snake. On a heating pad. And it had been there for 2 days. Yeah. It smelled pretty bad. Don't ask me how we forgot to get rid of a dead snake, but somehow it happened.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #3:
It was another old dog. He had several cancerous masses all over his body, arthritis in all his joints, and had a really hard time getting around. He was also a very sweet old dog. Oh yeah, and he weighed 130 pounds. This dog wasn't terribly huge, but he was definitely solid. So we went through the procedure, and afterwards we had to transport him. (We store them in a big freezer in the back until they get sent out to be cremated). We have this stretcher that's supposed to help lighten the load a little bit with such big dogs. After we managed to get a black bag around him, we rolled him over onto the stretcher, and proceeded to lift him off the floor to carry him into the back. We made it probably 10 feet, and I hear this big crack simultaneously with 130 pounds of dead weight being pulled down to the ground. Our one and only stretcher broke. Apparently it wasn't meant to hold that much weight. So we got a third person to help us drag the stretcher back to the freezer. Two people were pulling, I was pushing. If you can picture it, I was pushing this huge dog with my rear end sticking up in the air, slipping on the hard tile floor and trying not to run into walls. One of the techs working just looked at us and said, "Never a dull moment."

Hope you can find at least one of these stories as funny as I did. Otherwise, I'll just feel like a horrible person for laughing about dead things.

Cats are weird.

It's amazing how many different personalities of cats there are. Not even dogs, just cats. And their personalities usually change when they're at the vet versus at home. For example, I have two cats. My older cat, Tigger, an almost 10 year old 12 pound orange tabby, is more laid back. He occasionally gets a spurt of energy, but will spend most of his day laying in a sunny spot on someone's bed. Sprite is younger, not quite 2 years old, 8 pounds. She is very active. She's also very vocal and food motivated. She always greets me at the door when I come home, meowing and whining like crazy out of excitement because she expects food. This happens every time I come home, even if I was only gone for 2 minutes. And she doesn't do it for anybody else, just me. I've even taught her how to sit. Kind of. Anyways, she has such a different personality when she's at the vet. She just sits there, not wanting to move out of fear, she doesn't vocalize at all, and just clings to me. Tigger, however, will roam around the room and check everything out. Very different cats.

There was a cat in to be spayed today. She was weird. And slightly psychotic. When she was in her kennel, she would chew on the door, wrap her paws around it, and put her hind legs in the air, while screaming quite loudly. After her spay, she kept getting her cone off and licking at her incision. I could only wonder what this cat is like at home.

Other cats are really sweet when they're at home, or even with their owners at the vet, but the second you take them in the back, they turn into spawn of Satan. And then you can't do anything with them. You even look at them and they flip out. This is where a little miracle called DKT comes in handy. It's a mixture or "cocktail" of drugs that is the greatest thing invented for angry cats. It consists of dexmedetomidine, ketamine, and butorphanol. Within about 10-20 minutes of injecting the drugs, the cat is out. At this point, we can handle the cat and do whatever exam or diagnostics we need to do. We had a cat last week that came in for a dental, and as soon as I went to pick up his carrier, he started hissing and growling and just freaking out. We gave him DKT, let him sit and calm down for about 15 minutes, then took him out of the carrier. We drew his blood, placed an IV catheter, performed the dental cleaning, and then started waking him up. We didn't expect him to wake up so quickly, and as I was taking out his catheter, he growled and bit me. He was still pretty out of it, but awake enough to be freaking out again. I'm sure he's nice and sweet at home, but polar opposite while at the vet.

My least favorite cat breed is Siamese. Sure, they're intelligent, but they're loud and obnoxious and quite frankly, rather psychotic. My favorite breed is Maine Coon. They're big and long-haired, which is the main reason I probably won't actually get one, but they have the most mellow, laid-back temperament of any cat. And they have awesome green eyes. But, my overall favorite type of cat is a polydactyl brown tabby. For those of you who don't know what polydactyl means, literally it means "many toes". Polydactyl cats have extra toes, which means they have huge paws. I love it. And it's most common in brown tabbies, which I like even without 28 toes.

This is a picture of polydactyl cat paws. Aren't they awesome??

And this is the cat those paws belong to. He's a cutie. :)

This job gives a whole new meaning to "Blood, Sweat, and Tears"

I'm sure you guys are tired of hearing about my long days, but I just have to vent about this one.

I was on surgery again today. I don't know why, but I always seem to end up with the difficult surgery days. Five were scheduled: 4 dentals and a spay. Now, surgery appointments are supposed to drop off between 7 and 7:30 in the morning so we have plenty of time to run bloodwork and the doctor can do her exam and call the owners with any questions or concerns. Three of them showed up by 7:45; the other two didn't come in until after 8:30. The owner of these 2 pets told me, "I'm in a hurry, I really need to get going." Which really makes me want to question him as to why he decided to show up an hour late. --Frustration number 1.

Frustration number 2 begins with the scheduled spay. To start off, this dog was a 7 month old, 70 pound lab puppy. What's wrong with this picture?? a) Dogs and cats should be spayed or neutered by 6 months at the absolute latest. This is when they reach sexual maturity, and several complications can occur. For instance, if this dog we spayed today had been in heat, not only does that mean an additional charge of $65 for the owner, but a lot of extra bleeding in the abdomen, which can and will extend the time of the surgery. b) Performing abdominal surgery on a 70 pound puppy is not an ideal situation for many reasons. The larger the animal, the longer it takes for the incision to heal, allowing for opportunities for infection to occur. Also, the fact that this is a lab puppy (and a very untrained one at that), it will be very difficult to keep her from jumping and running around, tearing the incision open, thus allowing for even more opportunities for infection to occur. Infection means extensively longer healing time, pain and discomfort for the dog, being on antibiotics for several weeks, and more money spent by the client.

Part B of Frustration number 2: I mentioned earlier that this puppy is very untrained. I'm saying, like as untrained as a dog can be. First of all, as I was talking to the owner about what to expect for the surgery, the dog isn't sitting nicely beside him. Of course not, why would she? Instead, she is jumping up on me, thrusting her whole 70 pounds and long nails on top of me repeatedly while her owner just sits there and laughs. It's not funny. I wanted to tell him to get his dog off of me, and make her sit like she actually has some manners. Also, this dog hates going in kennels. It's not exactly easy to force a 70 pound dog into a kennel. Needless to say, I got my workout early in the day. To top it all off, these people have her littermate, an intact male dog, running loose in the house with her. They are so oblivious that they think just because their dogs are brother and sister, they won't make puppies. I mean seriously, do they know NOTHING about dogs?!?! It pains me to think about it. So we were worried that we might find little tiny puppies when performing the spay. Fortunately, though, we did not. Even so, the spay took almost 2 hours.

Frustration number 3: After our surgeries were finished, I was helping out everybody else around the clinic. One dog came in for a nail trim. I was thinking, this is gonna be quick and easy. Little did I know the dog had something different in mind. I was trimming the nails, and I quicked one of them. (For those of you who don't know, there's this thing called the quick inside of dog and cat nails. It's basically the blood supply. To quick a nail means to cut the part and make them bleed.) So I got some quickstop (powder to stop the bleeding), put it on the nail, and continued trimming. A couple minutes later, I noticed the nail was still bleeding. This dog was really worked up, so she probably had high blood pressure at the moment. I put more quickstop on it and finished the nail trim. When I was done, the nail was STILL bleeding. So what did I do?? That's right, I grabbed more quickstop. This time, I held it on the nail for a good 2 minutes before walking the dog back to its owner. No more bleeding, but by this point, half of the treatment room looked like a crime scene, as did my scrub pants. 

4th and final frustration of the day: We were so busy, I offered to stay past my scheduled shift and help people finish up things they needed to get done. I didn't mind, but I ended up staying until almost 7:30 after arriving at work at 6:30 this morning. 

So that's my day in a little more than a nutshell. Hopefully my future posts won't have as much venting in them. Also, I discovered this today and it made me laugh:

Conventions 101

I went to a convention today. The MVMA convention, to be exact. What does that stand for?? I'm glad you asked. The MVMA is the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association. I've never been to a convention like this before, and I figured I would get a head start on my CE (continuing education) credits. I don't even have my paperwork for my certification yet, but it can't hurt to start early. I had fun, I learned a lot, I even saw a few people that I know. Plus, I got all this cool free stuff!

This is some of the cool stuff I got. Can't beat free!

I also got a leash. I put it on Sprite's collar to see how she would react. Let's just say she didn't really catch on to what it is and how to use it. Currently she is running around the house trying to figure out why this weird red string is chasing her.

I like conventions. Not just because I get free things, or because of the muffins (free muffins!). The whole point of this convention was to learn something. I learned quite a few things. I won't bore you with the details, but the classes I took were about how to handle aggression in dogs, and client education on preventive care. I'm so glad I went, because now I have learned several important things that I can implement in my clinic, and hopefully lead my co-workers to implement those things as well.

I've also decided that I need to be better about brushing my pets' teeth and giving them heartworm prevention every month. You people should do the same. If you want to know why, I'll be glad to start  a conversation with you via facebook or email, because it would take up way too much space if I wrote all my thoughts on the subject on here. 

Me with my name tag, just in case you didn't believe I was actually there. I was.

I had this incredibly good pizza today. Maybe it was so good because it was made by hand and it had all the natural grease that a slice of pepperoni pizza is supposed to have, or maybe the taste was amplified because of the fact that I wandered around for half an hour getting lost in the skyway system to find it. Either way, it was pretty darn good pizza. It was also the size of my face, which definitely helped with the taste factor. I had 2 face-sized slices. They were good.

One thing I learned about conventions: if you're going to one downtown, go on a Friday. Traffic is generally lighter than on any other weekday, especially around rush hour. Also, have an idea of where you are and what street you need to be on BEFORE exiting off 394 and hoping for the best. Downtown metro areas have WAY too many one way streets. And bad drivers.

Anyways, those are my novice convention experiences. Hopefully I'll be going back next year, and not just because I'll need 20 more free pens!