Another long day. It started out with a surgery dog that had died overnight. Never a good start. Plus the owner was an older lady who had lost her husband last month, her ex husband dropped dead in her driveway two weeks ago, and now her dog died...puts a different perspective on your own problems.
Busy surgery day. First was a black lab with mammary tumors. That turned out to be a pretty bloody surgery but I think "Ebby" will be ok. She's a brood bitch for field trial dogs (show). The owner brought another black lab for OFA radiographs (x rays). This has to be sent in to a special lab that reads it and your dog can be "certified" as having good or excellent hips and elbows. The good dog breeders do this to try to eliminate hip displasia and other genetic problems in their breed. Any dog that has "fair" or "poor" readings,a should e fixed and never bred. The bad dog breeders never spend the money on this test and can really ruin the health of a popular breed.
The second surgery was a straight forward chocolate lab neuter name of "Chevy". He's been in quite a bit of trouble due to chewing things. The last straw was eating the seat off the owners snowmobile. People should know that labs in particular are prone to chewing to the point of destroying property for up to 3 years before outgrowing it!
Then came my big surgery for the day - an ACL on a Golden Retriever. The owners came for an appointment yesterday all the way from St. Cloud! Unknown to us, he planned on leaving the dog for surgery at the same time. Well, we did squeeze him in since he had driven all that way but it seems strange that people don't realize they can't just drop in and expect you to have time for a 4 hour surgery! The surgery went well but Mike, who's my only vet who does this surgery, had farm calls all morning so we didn't start until noonish.
That kind of put a kabash on lunch but Karla was nice enough to offer to run to the nearby "GopherStop" which is a convenience store. She brought back a personal pepperoni pizza and pop and I literally ate half the pizza in the surgery room while waiting for the neuter dog to wake up enough to pull the endotrachael tube out. At the same time I was setting up for the ACL surgery which has a lot of special instruments to lay out.
Still had one last surgery , a pregnant cat to spay. Often it's hard to find a time to fix a cat when it's not either in heat , or pregnant. This was a nice little calico named " Sadie". She was alarm cat, but one of the lucky ones since her owners decided to spay her so she could put some weight on. There were four fetus, so now there's four less cats to add to the overpopulation.
Finally got done with surgeries about 2, owners come to pick up around 3. So it became a mad dash to get charges in the computer and meds ready. Also to catch the doctor that has done the surgery to ask about charges, and meds. That is usually the hardest part!
Cleaning was started but not totally finished. The surgery room is all ready for tomorrow's one surgery but I didn't get all the instruments washed or sterilized. I spent 11 hours at work today with no break so I figured Indeserved to go home at 6! Besides, the poor puppies at home had their legs crossed and needed a break to!
I'm going to try to take it a little easier tomorrow. We'll see how that goes!
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