Today we started our three-day refresher for the vet hospital attached to the course. We spent three weeks there over the course of last year, and we have a short three-day stay this year to refamiliarise ourselves with the routines, as we have to supervise first-year students later on in the year. Today was ridiculously busy - we had four scheduled surgeries, plus three emergency dropoffs, plus a full booking of consults in every available time, PLUS a few boarding patients, a euthanasia, and two stitch ups, only one of whom we could fir in. Luckily there are ten people in our groups, so there were enough students to get almost everything done, though we did stay from 8 until 6 and even went overtime by half an hour - and there were still two patients to finish up, plus the last of the cleaning to do.
Today I was acting as the Clinical nurse, who is the nurse that helps out in consults (holding the animal and such) reception, and general stuff around the clinic, like filling orders or restocking shelves. A friend of mine was acting as Receptionist, but we swapped back and forth a little since the rules for our refresher are reasonably loose. We'll be working together tomorrow as well, but as Hospital nurses - so we'll get to prep any surgery patients, and recover any patients undergoing anaesthesia. Then, on Wednesday, we'll be acting as Surgery nurses, and scrubbing in to any sterile surgeries, as well as helping clean instruments and assisting the anaesthetic nurses with their areas.
Some of the highlights of today were:
-the 12 week old Golden Retriever puppy that visited, who was absolutely adorable and well behaved.
-the red tipped Husky that had a dental, with really soft fur. She was a bit of a wimp (wanted to be back in her cage, wouldn't leave her owners, etc) but really unusual in colouring.
-the pair of 12 week old kittens that came in for vaccinations. Brother and sister pair, and purring like anything.
-the litter of kittens plus wild mother that one of the vet nurses had set up in the break room - didn't have much to do with them because the mum is quite feral, but had a peek from a distance, and the kittens are about palm-size, being around a week old.
-Holding a grumpy DSH for subcutaneous fluid therapy and NOT letting her bite anyone, not even when we had to rip off some of the tape holding in her catheter.
We also had a few not-so-fun cases today, like we usually do.
-The first one was one of our major surgeries, a leg and tail amputation. The cat in question had been found on its owner's doorsteps with a mostly severed back paw, and had had infection set in, which made amputation necessary. That was one of our major surgeries today, though apparently it was quite successful. They're a little worried about septicaemeia, but are hopeful that antibiotics will help counteract that.
-We also had a few remarkably unhelpful clients, who just didn't understand what we were trying to ask. One of the staff nurses was talking to them, and asking if their cat could walk - to hear that he wasn't right now. Asked if he HAD been walking - gingerly. Was he weight bearing on all legs? No, none. So he wasn't walking? Yes, he was. So he COULD put weight on all legs? Yes. Client also asked about rabies (not present in NZ) and asked if he HAD to bring his cat in (it hadn't been eating anything except gravy for three days). Another client was a backyard breeder who was deliberately trying to foist a puppy with a several thousand dollar urinary problem off for 'free' to people, knowing that the puppy had the issue. That's just plain irresponsible, especially since no one's really going to shell out several thousand dollars for a risky sugery that could lead to lifelong complications. The puppy should have been euthanised as soon as the issue was evident, and it's a little sad that the breeder didn't seem to get that. Nevertheless.
-Our last interesting case that I was involved in was a DSH whose owner rang up for a consult because his kitty wasn't breathing very well (huge respiratory effort), and had lost a lot of weight very recently. She'd been a small cat to start with, so the weight loss brought her down to a mere 2.3kg, and she was almost painfully thin to look at - you could feel her pelvis clearly just by stroking her back. The vet took her temperature and got a massive 41 degrees celsius, which is two degrees higher than normal, so we put the kitty on some ice packs covered by a towel to try and bring the temperature down while we got ready for some radiographs. She was a really sweet cat, but she did seem quite disoriented, and when I offered her some water, she took a few moments to orient herself, realize what I was offering, and remember what to do with it. Unfortunately, the radiographs showed that her lungs were filling with pus and fluid, which is a very expensive thing to fix, and has no guarantee that it would even work on a cat in her condition. The owner didn't have the money to install a chest drain, so unfortunately she had to be euthanised. I think it came as quite a shock to the owner, who sounded like he thought it was a case of "take these antibiotics and she'll be on her feet in no time", but instead it was more along the lines of "Sorry, there's nothing we can do". I was quite sad, because I'd been hoping she'd pull through, though I had a bit of a suspicion from how she looked that it wasn't going to be very positive news.
Regardless of the mixed bag we got today, I'm back in tomorrow in Hospital, so that should be interesting to see what we have happening - hopefully it will be slightly less busy than it was today.
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