Second Day of Surgery Was Also Butt

Apparently I get all the butt-dogs, and it's pretty much my own fault for signing up for those cases. Today's butt-dog was actually a vag-dog, but that's close enough.

I don't know why, but I was on top of it today. Man, I was getting everything done, immediately, which is totally not how yesterday went. It's also not how today went for my classmates on my roster, but I think that has to do with the timing of the various surgeries. Instead of describing my day like a story, I'm going to try a different approach.

My Patients
- Butt-dog: Yesterday's surgery (they stay the night in hospital), this guy was a huge sweetie. He was always friendly and cheerful, wagged his tail and sat down when I approached with a leash, and never tried to eat any of the other patients.
- Vag-dog: Came in for emergency (same-day) surgery due to a vaginal prolapse. Ouchie. Despite her situation, surprisingly also a sweetie. She was pregnant with puppies worth $10,000 each, so even though they usually get speyed to help prevent recurrence of the prolapse, that was not going to happen here. We had to confirm that was the case, so we did a quick ultrasound, and found at least two live puppies by their heartbeat. We only checked one side, so there are likely several more puppies.
- Fluff-ball spinal-dog 1: There are actually two small fluffy dogs that are spinal patients (both have paralysed hind limbs), and one of them is mine. I actually confused them when I signed up so got the less-cute one, but she's still very silly. I have to walk her with a sling under her hind end, like a wheelbarrow. It's kind of bizarre walking a spinal dog and then a normal dog right after, because you get used to managing the spinal dog's disability.

Responsibilities
(1. Do the consult - I haven't done any yet)
2. Perform physical exam and write up paperwork for findings
3. Fill in "patient management sheet," which is basically setting out a plan of what needs to be done when, like walking, feeding, meds, etc, for that day and the next day
4. Scrub in on the surgery
5. Decide and calculate post-op analgesia
6. Call owners
7. Write a surgery report explaining the procedure
8. Write a discharge sheet for the client, explaining what happened in hospital, what/how to give meds, and home care
9. Take care of walking, feeding, meds, physiotherapy etc during the day, as well as the next morning (surgery patients stay overnight)
10. Meet with client by yourself, go over everything and send animal home

In Between
- Rounds every morning and every afternoon, where we meet as a group and tell each other about our patients, and usually discuss aspects of those diseases
- Homework - we're supposed to present some topics on thursday
- Explain things to other roster students that you've figured out, like how to work the computer system
- Get assigned new patients

Apparently some of the other rosters, like the non-referral medicine, don't have much to do and just sit on their thumbs all day. I had absolutely no idea that the rest of my classmates are not nearly as busy as the four of us on referral surgery.