Winter Break 2012-2013, Part I--Beauty Is Only Skin-Deep

I was hoping to only shadow Dr. J on Wednesdays this break because those are her long days when I get to see more. However, with my work schedule (which I didn't feel like fighting too much), I ended up with most of Thursday off, so I could go with her on her short day. I started off in surgery with Dr. N and Mrs. J, her tech. Mrs. J has been very influential in my pre-vet clinical education. She really makes me work when I am there, and for that, I am very grateful to her. She started me off with making up a bottle of cefazolin (an antibiotic) and filling a syringe with it. She then instructed me on how to set up new bags of IV fluid, which I was pleased to see is something called lactated Ringer's solution, something similar to what we have been using in Physiology lab for our frog dissections. It's just cool when I recognize terms like that. She also showed me how to use a Doppler to assess blood pressure during surgery. That was a new thing for me to consider on top of writing down numbers for anesthesia monitoring. Later, I got to help Mrs. J catheterize and intubate a young dog. He had a brother with him, and I got to walk the brother outside for a bit. He had had an accident in his kennel, so I was instructed to take him into the snow to wipe his feet off. Of course, the minute we were out the door, he assumed it was puppy playtime and wouldn't hold still for more than a second at at time. This made trying to clean his feet something of a lost cause, but I did the best I could before bringing him back inside.

However, all of these activities sort of paled in comparison to what I got to do late in the morning. A certain Dr. M, a veterinary dermatologist, came to do an allergy test on a French bulldog that belonged to another one of the techs, Mrs. B. I thought I would just get to watch--it's not often you get to learn about veterinary dermatology! However, Mrs. B told me she was feeling too nervous about the test to help the doctor, and no one else was around, so I became his assistant! In an allergy test, the doctor marks three rows of 10 dots on a shaved spot on the dog's side. Then, he administers 60 subcutaneous allergens and watches for a reaction. I could empathize with the dog in this instance because my mom took me in for allergy testing when I was about 10 or so because of persistent phlegm. I got 27 pricks in one arm and three in the other--only about half what the Frenchie got--but it was still unpleasant. Anyway, the dog was sedated for the procedure, so my job was to hand Dr. M each syringe as he needed it, and the whole test went really quickly. I had to juggle taking the old syringe from him with picking up the next syringe and making sure it was in the right orientation for him (bevel up). I had to tell him when each 10 had passed so he knew when to start a new row of intradermal injections. It was a bit nerve-wracking because I didn't want to mess up, but everyone told me later that I was doing a good job. Mrs. B was especially thankful that I was there because she was too addled to be able to help Dr. M like I was. I also got to write down numbers for him as he assessed the relative reaction of the dog to each of the allergens, which ranged from cotton to human dander (yes, animals can be allergic to us!) to dust mites to mold. Each reaction is rated from 1 to 4, with 4 being the most severe. Those with no reaction are not noted at all. Those with a reaction are noted with a plus followed by the number. There are two controls in the mix, just for good measure. The positive control is histamine, and the negative control is a simple saline solution. Overall, it was so cool to watch Dr. M at work and to hear him talk about skin scrapings and Gram staining to look for cocci as well as immunotherapy, both of which I sort of understood from Microbiology and Immunology. I love applying what I learn in school to what I see at the clinic. I've probably mentioned it before, but it just gets truer every time I go in.

This is an image that might give you a good idea of what an allergy test looks like. This animal seems to have a reaction to just about everything on the list (not fun). Photo courtesy of www.gcvs.com.

I was just starting anesthesia monitoring on the first puppy when Dr. J came to tell me we were leaving for the day. It was only 12:30, which is such an early time for me to leave. I was honestly disappointed. There were about three more surgeries that day, one of them a TPLO, which I wanted to see, but Dr. J is my ride, so I could not say no. This day was really significant for me because I was honestly doing something every minute I was there. I felt like a real tech, even though I am nowhere close. It means a lot to me that they treat me like that  because it means that they trust me to do a good job and know they can count on me to give reliable help. I feel like a vital part of the practice when I am there, instead of a passive, unhelpful bystander.

I am taking a week off shadowing because Dr. J does not work much this coming week, what with it being book-ended by two holidays (Christmas on one end and New Year's on the other). So, I will return to the clinic next Wednesday for a long day like I am used to. I will get to do a full half-day of surgery with Dr. K and Miss H, who is one of my favorite people at the clinic and the tech I spent most time with this past summer (since I only shadowed on Wednesdays during the summer). I am quite looking forward to it, as you probably can imagine by this point. With any luck, I will have heard from Kansas State by then!

In the mean time, Merry Christmas and Happy 2013! I hope you get everything on your list and that you ring in the new year with joy! It's gonna be a good one. :)

Merry Christmas from the Hart Family and our little tree!