More firsts (and another funny question)

Last week I dropped an ovarian pedicle for the first time. They say it happens to everyone sooner or later and I had been dreading it, so I guess it was good that it finally happened?

For those of you unfamiliar with what I mean, this can happen when you are performing a spay surgery. You basically have to tie off 4 big arteries in order to remove the uterus and ovaries – one at each ovary and two that travel with the uterine body. I had clamped the first ovarian vessel and was trying to break down the suspensory ligament to better expose the area and ligate it when boom – the ovary and its supplying artery tore away from my clamp and sucked back down into the abdomen.

Fortunately it was a small dog and it hardly bled, and fortunately my training kicked in (extend the incision – make it longer – so that you can move the other organs out of the way to find the tissue, then retrieve it and ligate it). With shaky hands I managed to do that. Then I retrieved and ligated the other ovarian pedicle no problem. I inspected the abdomen before closing and saw no bleeding.

However … this was yet another dog who had a lot ofsubcutaneous bleeding and FREAKED OUT on recovery so the incision kept oozing. I was absolutely terrified that somehow my ligatures slipped and that the dog was going to die.

To make things worse, the owner had never had a dog before so I knew they would freak out with any little issue. I spent a lot of time at discharge explaining the subcutaneous bleeding, that it was imperative to keep the dog quiet and calm to avoid more oozing, what the signs of shock were, and of course the name and phone number of the night emergency clinic.

I hardly slept that night – felt totally sick to my stomach. The next afternoon the owner called and said the dog’s gums were pale and that she was not moving much. I told her to bring the dog down right away, but then the owner backpedaled and said maybe it wasn’t that bad after all. I prepped the techs for potential emergency surgery and tried not to crap myself. About an hour later the dog comes in and looks fine.

That. Sucked.

I also had my first ear hematoma last week. Decided I hate them because they seem to take multiple treatments before they go away (unless you get permission to anesthetize the dog and suture the wound open, which the clients never want to do first) and the dog always has some horrible underlying allergy that the clients are frustrated with.

Today’s stupid question:

Receptionist: “Doctor, you wrote that you want to recheck Fluffy in 1 week but you’re not working next weekend – what should I do?”

Me: “Why don’t you schedule the recheck for the next day when I am working?”

In other news, we visited our wedding and reception site and got a lot of details nailed down such as the menu, flowers, photographer, and minister. That was a huge relief!