Least Fun Thing to do at Work

I know you've been in suspense since my last post. Considering my BFF is the only one who reads this - that is a lot of suspense in the world.

Let's continue where we left off shall we? The end of the surgery had arrived. One doctor and one tech stayed behind to close the foal - I left with another doctor to tackle the next emergency. The mini horse came in and she was obviously in distress. I think she'd been in labor for about two hours at that point. For point of reference - that's too long for a horse. They should be making good progress within 20 minutes of their water breaking. All we could see was the tail of her baby sticking out of her va-jayjay (thanks to Oprah for putting that word on the map).

We tried very hard to get the baby out as fast as possible. Lots of lube and pulling and still the baby wouldn't budge. He was all turned around in there. Butt first, legs underneath him, it was a mess. Not surprisingly he was already dead.

Finally the doctor had to make a decision. Get the baby out - save the mom. He gave the mare a sedative to lay her down and relax her insides enough to pull the baby out. He quickly realized that our next, and only option, was a fetotomy. That involves cutting the baby apart while it's still in the mom, and pulling it out piece by piece. Gross but necessary.

We got to work and quickly cut off one back leg with gigli wire. I couldn't any good pictures to post but basically it's wire that you pull back and forth and it acts as a saw. We then cut the other back leg off and wrapped chains around the "stumps" that were left. It took both of us to pull the baby out. We were pulling as hard as we could and the baby finally slipped out.

I haven't described the conditions we were working in. Imagine lots and lots of blood and baby juice, combined with the slippery stuff we were using to lubricate the mare. All over the floor. All over our hands. All over our clothes and shoes. Every few steps I would slip. It didn't matter if I fell because I was already covered with the stuff.

The owners, surprisingly, handled the whole thing well. They watched the entire process and weren't at all fazed when we pulled their mare's baby out in three separate pieces. They couldn't afford to leave the mare overnight for observation so we sent them home with instructions and a butt load of antibiotics. We never heard from them after that, despite numerous phone calls to see if the mare lived.

This process isn't pretty but I felt lucky to be involved. Some of the techs who have worked at the clinic for years have never seen a fetotomy and I got to witness and get in on the action. Just another day on the job!

P.S. I posted a picture of Rob and his mini-horse just so you can see how cute mini horses are. You know Rob - from Rob & Big.

Pepperchini Update

Pep has officially lost ONE pound!

Next up - nine more.

A Weekend in the Life

Weekends at work can be one of two things: incredibly boring or insanely busy. Last weekend was the busy kind. With nearly 10 horses in the hospital requiring treatments, I was on the go for 10 or 12 hours at a time. Combine that with the 100 degree desert weather and you've got a tired little technician.

I was busy all weekend monitoring our ICU cases, hanging bags for the horses who were on IV fluids and dealing with owners who didn't quite know when to go home and let us do the worrying. I got through Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The real action started on Monday.

A three week old foal came in with signs of colic. Rolling, depressed and diarrhea (P.S. If you work in the medical world you should know how to spell diarrhea). The doctors did everything they could to make the filly feel better but at 5 o'clock we got the word - set up for surgery. Officially our crew consisted of two doctors and two techs. We also had a peanut gallery in the room with us - two more doctors, a vet student and an assistant from the barn where the baby foal lives. The room is small and we were cramped but it was fun having a large, and surprisingly joyful, group on hand.

My official job during surgery is scrub tech, same as the human world. I get our equipment ready and hand instruments and supplies to the doctors. There is a technique to handing doctors sterile equipment and it was nerve wracking with the owner of the clinic sitting in on the surgery. Luckily I didn't contaminate anything!

Let me back up and explain how large animal surgery goes. The surgery takes place in a padded room with a table that moves up and down. Once the horse is knocked down (a nice term for putting the animal under anesthesia) we use a hoist to lift them up and set them down on the table. After the site is prepped, the doctors go in and start sifting through their guts. Next is time for the colon lavage. Sounds glamorous doesn't it?

The guts are laid out on a sterile table and one doctor makes a small incision in the large intestine and we run garden hoses up and down the inside, where it's definitely not sterile because of the manure. The tainted water runs down into a large bucket that we like to call "the shit bucket." One lucky person's job is to stir the bucket so the drain stays clear. We like to reserve that job for tech students who are getting surgery hours, affectionately of course. My job during this process is to run the hoses and keep the colon tray clean with sterile dump saline. It's fun except sometimes I get splashed with poop water. Once the colon is clean, the doctors push everything back inside and close the incision. FYI - this is the quick and dirty explanation of surgery. A lot of time and effort goes into this process to make sure all persons and horses are taken care of.

In the case of the foal, a small impaction was found and the doctors were able to break it up and move it out. At about 9 or 10 o'clock that night the surgery was nearing it's end when one of the doctors got paged. A mini horse was almost at the clinic. She'd been trying to deliver her foal for a couple hours and so far only the tail was visible. Like humans, butt first is the wrong way to enter the world.

I left surgery with one of the doctors - leaving the other doctor and tech to close and wake up the foal. With all of our surgery gear still on, we tackled the next emergency. I'll save the story for my next post but I'll leave you with one word: fetotomy. You can google it.

I've been Goosed!

I've been pondering a new post these past few days. I was considering a story about how I got fired from one of my pet sitting jobs, maybe introducing you to my horse or writing about a neurotic family of animals that I take care of on the regular. All that got put aside this morning during a trail ride.

I was up early to take care of the aforementioned family of animals. Since it was cool outside, I decided to visit the horse for an early morning ride. I grabbed a Starbucks and drove to the barn (while listening to the new DMB, which is rad BTW). After I saddled up the beast I hopped on and we rode out the gate. We do this often. The neighborhood is horse friendly and close to BLM trail riding.

Instead of going my usual route, I decided to switch it up. One of my friends lives close by and I wanted to see if she was outside messing with her horse. As we turned the corner near her house, Watson's ear's perked up. I knew something was coming because he had the same look the time the coyotes circled us in Colorado. We were riding by the 10 acre property. They have all kinds of animals including donkeys and reindeer. I assumed he was trying to catch a glimpse of Santa's steeds.

Not so. From across the street we heard a loud honking. I looked over and a giant goose was running down the driveway! Watson did a double take. He was shocked. He's never seen a goose and now he'd come face to face with a big one. The goose stopped at the end of the driveway and continued honking at us. Watson stopped and continued looking baffled. I couldn't stop laughing.

After a minute I thought, okay, ha ha, we saw a goose in the desert. Let's move on Watson. The second we started walking the goose started running across the road! He was really going to take on the 1000 pound horse. I started yelling "Go home Goose!" but he wouldn't. He was all honkey and flappy waddling across the road. I made Watson stop, the goose stopped. We started walking, the goose started chasing. This went on the entire length of the street. The goose ended up herding us off his street.

I need to give credit to Watson. He barely flinched. I was the one who panicked. I was yelling / laughing / trying not to drop the coffee that I had brought along. Yes, I was enjoying my coffee on the leisurely stroll. If you knew Watson, you'd know this is know big deal. He doesn't move fast. He meanders (most of the time).

The goose got me riled up, but I'm proud to say my horse was not impressed.