My First Day On The Job Involved A Proptosed Eye

One of the reasons I took the job that I did was that they were interested in hiring a new grad, and willing to give me training wheels for my transition from vet student to actual vet. For my first month, I was never alone in the clinic, so no evenings or weekends, and I was paired with the most experienced senior vet techs. My appointments were all scheduled for 30 minutes instead of twenty, and I was given extra "block off" time for work-ins. My first few days, I didn't have any scheduled appointments at all. I was meant to observe, familiarise myself with where everything is, and maybe jump in on work-ins or walk-ins.

As life would have it, there was a work-in at 8am that first Monday. A dog that had gotten into a fight with its larger friend, and may have gotten a laceration above one eye. "Redness" above the eye, they said. Perfect first case for the new grad, they said.

So in I go and as soon as I lay eyes on the dog, I know exactly what happened, and that I have no idea what to do about it. It wasn't a laceration. It was a proptosed eye.

Small, buggy-eyed dogs like pugs and shih-tzus already have their eyes halfway out of their heads. Therefore, it's pretty easy to pop them the rest of the way out. A solid squeeze or bang on the head could do it. If you catch them straightaway, you can push them right back in. Naturally, this happened the previous afternoon, so the eye had been bulging out exposed to the world for more than 12 hours.

In typical new grad fashion, I gave an excuse to bring the dog out back ("have a look at it under the bright lamp in treatment"), found my boss, and promptly went, "What do I do, what do I do!"

Long story short, we admitted her to the hospital for mini surgery to put the eye back in and suture the eyelids together to hold it. All went well, and I saw her every week for a month or two. The eye retained some function to it and time will tell what happens to it in the long run.

It turns out this was a prelude to the theme of my career. Nothing normal happens to me. It's only the wacky, you-don't-see-that-every-day cases, time and time again.