After Bear, the neutered rabbit
from yesterday was brought back in for examination because he still wasn’t
eating, and he wasn’t moving around very much.
We kept him for the day and observed his behaviors, and once the
afternoon came around he began to eat a bit, hop around, and began to act more
and more like a normal bunny would; so it seems that it just took longer for
the medication from yesterday to wear off on him than it normally does for
rabbits, and luckily it doesn’t appear that anything became wrong after the
surgery. There was another rabbit that
was brought in today with a huge bladder stone (it was so big it could be felt
while simply holding the rabbit), but from what I know no surgery had been done
yet because they were still waiting for the okay from the owner.
A little later in the morning,
there was a black cat named Sylvester who had a lump on his side. In order to make sure it would be okay to perform
the surgery to remove the lump, Pat (one of the Veterinary technicians, who has
been mentoring me quite a bit the past two days) took me to the laboratory area
to check Sylvester’s blood. She showed
me how to draw blood from the jugular vein in the neck, and then how to place
it into a vial (to mix it and prevent the blood from clotting). The blood was then separated into smaller
containers and tiny little tubes. The tiny tubes were placed in a centriguge that spun in order to seperate the whole blood from the plasma, and then the little tube was placed on a chart and lined up with values. This process checks for dehydration. The larger tubes were placed in a different centrifuge to spin down the red blood cells and
white blood cells, and the solution that rises to the top during the spinning
is poured into an even smaller container to go into the blood chemistry machine. The use of this centrifuge and chemistry machine allows us to check the different enzyme and protein values in the blood and organs. When the blood chemistry machine was done, all of the values
were in the normal range—which of course was good. To make sure the platelet count was normal,
Pat showed me how to smear a slide with some blood and stain it with the dyes
that would allow us to see the platelets and cells. After the slides dried we looked at them
under a microscope. From AP Biology in
high school, I already knew what red blood cells, white blood cells, and
platelets looked like under a microscope, so I had no problem understanding
what I was seeing when it came to this part.
Again, all the counts were normal, so she updated his information in the
computer and told the Veterinarians that surgery would be okay.
The centrifuges. The one on the left of this picture holds the teeny-tiny tubes that seperates whole blood from the plasma to check for dehydration. The one on the right spins down the red and white blood cells and holds the solution that goes into the chemistry machine to make sure the body's enzymes are working properly.
These are the dyes that the microscope slides are dipped into so we can see all the cells, platelets, etc.
The surgery was a fairly simple
procedure, because luckily the lump wasn’t attached to the skin, nor to any
organs or muscles other than the thin top layer of some muscle tissue. Dr. Roberta, the Veterinarian who performed
the surgery, made a simple, small incision above the lump and began to poke it
around to figure out what she’d be working with. The lump sort of ‘peeled away’ from the muscle
tissue as she moved it around, and she only had to cut through the last bit of
thin tissue that was clung on to the lump.
After she was done she showed me the correct way to sew animals up, and
after Sylvester was sewn up we woke him up in the recovery ward and then placed
the lump in a container to be sent off to the laboratory to see what exactly
this lump is; results should be back in about five days.
Another
procedure I witnessed was a dental cleaning on another collie. The procedure is pretty similar to the
procedure done on humans (teeth cleaning, polishing, and fluoride rinse), with
the exception that the animal has to be unconscious so we can access their
teeth safely and get the procedure done quickly and efficiently. The only problem with this collie’s mouth was
that one of his front right incisors was loose, and it had an extremely deep
pocket—so the tooth needed to come out.
Again, not too difficult of a procedure, so the tooth was pulled and the
hole sewn shut for more effective healing.
Mid-afternoon
was when we received some emergency cases: the first a pitbull named Arnold who
had been in a car accident, and the second a pug-beagle mix who had a door slammed
on her tail. The car that Arnold had
been in had rolled, so he had been flipped around the backseat a little
bit. His paws were injured a bit, and
the poor pitbull had lost the outside toe on his front left paw. Firefighters had been at the scene and
wrapped his paws for him, and when we unwrapped the wrappings, his paws (in
addition to the missing toe) were a bit bloody and he had some road burns as
well, but he wasn’t too bad for being in such an accident. He was scared and probably still in shock,
for he was shaking a lot; but he was very sweet and very well-behaved the entire
time we were with him. We gave him some
warm fluids and also petted and talked to him a lot to try and warm him up a
bit and calm him down/make him feel comfortable. The veterinarians took some x-rays of him to
make sure no bones were broken, and after that Arnold was placed in the
recovery ward and fed some antibiotics to help him feel better. Surgery still hadn’t been performed when I
left for the evening, so I’ll have to see tomorrow what has been happening with
him and how he’s doing.
The
last surgery I witnessed for the day was on the pug-beagle mix whom had her
tail slammed in a door, and that surgery was a simpler surgery as well. About half of the tail had been caught in the
door, and the two pieces of tail were connected by a thin piece of skin. The tail couldn’t be reattached, so the thin piece
of skin was cut and the part of vertebrae that was sticking out was
disconnected at the joint, and the tail was then sewn up and bandaged; another easier
but unfortunate procedure. After
cleaning up the dog was woken up and moved to recovery, and she seemed to be
recovering okay when I left. Again, I
will find out how she is doing when I go in tomorrow.
