Starting surgery (again)

I've been getting 1-2 surgeries per week fairly regularly at work now, which has been nice. The past 2 weeks I've had 1 kitten spay with 1 kitten neuter. I have the same on the schedule this week, and then next week ...

... a mastiff puppy spay.

I vomit a little in my mouth every time I think about it. As long as one of the boss doctors is in the building at the time I should be fine. I seem to be able to tackle tougher surgeries if there's a senior doctor on site, even if they don't scrub in. There is comfort (and confidence) in knowing that help is available, even if you don't use it.*

*Key point that ex-hairdresser-practice manager at my old job never understood!

Good surgery day

I performed my first cryptorchid (testicle(s) not in the scrotum) surgery on a kitten today! I'd done one before on a dog but:
a. Dog testicles are WAY bigger than kitten testicles
b. The dog at least had one testicle where it should be so I only had to locate the other one (the kitten did not have either testicle in the scrotum)

Fortunately I have an awesome mentor at the shelter who talked me through an approach that worked like a charm!

All in all I performed 7 surgeries in 2 1/2 hours. That's not impressive if you're a shelter vet, but for me it's pretty darned good.

Conquered

Dr. Boss asked me to spay and neuter their foster kittens since I have a lot of experience with pediatric surgery - I did and they went well.

Today I did 6 rope climbs (20' high) in crossfit. Did I mention that I'm terrified of heights?

It's been a pretty good week for doing things that I'm afraid of.

Burned, Murph, and lots of neuters

Last week's surgeries went well. I performed 6 uncomplicated surgeries at the shelter on Tuesday morning and one uncomplicated spay on a fat 6-year-old dog at work on Wednesday! The one at work had me sweating quite a lot. When a dog is older and has a lot of fat in the abdomen it is very difficult to see important things like arteries. When you tighten your ligatures they disappear into the fat and it's disconcerting when you can't SEE your knots tighten nicely. Your gloves get covered with a slippery oily film so you have to keep wiping your hands on a towel. They have more vessels in the broad ligament you have to deal with. All in all it's a huge pain in the bee-hind.

Over the weekend we went to the Crossfit regionals. It was SO fun! Several of our coaches competed, and 2 of them are going to the Crossfit Games this summer, which is a big deal. Our region is a notoriously difficult one with a ton of good athletes so it's even more impressive. I ended up getting quite the sunburn while spectating, however. Should have applied another layer of sunscreen, I suppose.

Monday I had the day off and for Memorial Day we did a hero workout at Crossfit. This one was called "Murph":
1 mile run
100 pull-ups (I used an assistance band)
200 push-ups (I did them from the knees)
300 air squats
1 mile run
At the 40 minute mark they had us stop our pull-ups/push-ups/squats and go for the second run, so in 50 minutes I did:
1 mile run
95 pull-ups
190 push-ups
285 air squats
1 mile run
I'm a little bit sore today :)

Yesterday I went to the shelter again and lost count of how many kitten neuters I performed. We totaled 50 surgeries for the day, which is a record. They are trying to get as many surgeries as possible performed before this weekend because they are having a huge adoption event.

Fear

Last week I went back to the shelter again as a volunteer surgeon. It went well, except ... as I was closing my last spay a loop of the animal's small intestine popped up riiight as I threw a suture and my needle hit a mesenteric artery. It's a one-in-a-million thing (ok, maybe one-in-a-thousand?) but it freaked me the heck out. I pulled out that loop of intestine and applied pressure - fortunately the thing stopped bleeding and the intestine stayed nice and pink.

Now I'm scared about going in again this week. I KNOW it's not entirely rational. That doesn't matter. Every time I have a rather large issue like that it takes me several weeks to get back on the metaphorical horse.

I used to like surgery much more when I was still in school and not expected to do a good job at it.

In unrelated news, our group ski trip in February will be to Steamboat! I've already been ogling the trail maps.

Shameless plug

I bought a spay retractor recently and used it for the first time this week. It's a little bit hard to explain, but essentially it's a device that acts like a 2nd pair of hands to hold things up so that it is easier to place ligatures.

I LOVE IT.

It cut 15 minutes off my dog spay time - from 45 to 30 minutes. Nice!