ExoticsCon

 

When I was reading on VIN what people recommend for getting started in avian practice, the biggest answer was "Get yourself to the annual avian conference." So I did. And it was awesome.

ExoticsCon was in San Antonio this year, and it was a combination of the avian vet association, the reptile vet association, and the small mammal vet association. There were lectures for all three going on at once, so I could go to a half hour about avian viruses, then switch to a case study of cancer in a hamster, then check out research on reptilian pain perception, if I wanted. I was worried the experience would be too similar to school--flashbacks to 8 hour days of lecture--but it was SO much more fun. All the pressure of exams and assignments was gone, and I could pick what I wanted to learn and when. If I didnt want to go to anything for an hour, I didn't have to. But I had the opposite problem: I was usually choosing between two or even three simultaneous lectures that I wanted to see. And there were some big names there. I went to talks by people like Brian Speer and Thomas Tully--guys who wrote the textbooks on avian medicine.

My hotel. I was very important, being a 

doctor and all. 

I made some friends, too. Everyone was so easy to talk to, happy to give advice and interested to meet a new grad. I had my "first time attendee" badge and that made for a good icebreaker topic. Even before that, five minutes off the plane and standing in line for a taxi, I met a vet student on her way to the same place and we shared the cab. She was even going to intern at Wildbase in a few months--small world!

Being in San Antonio was something else, too. For a small town girl, it was like complete sensory overload. There was more stuff within a thousand feet of my hotel than there is in like my entire home town. I mean, there was an IMAX attached to my hotel, for crying out loud. There was also a spy exhibit, with lots of history about intelligence operatives, neat artifacts (like an enigma machine), and simulations of stuff like a laser maze or a room with a bunch of hidden cameras. If I wasn't so busy with the conference, I could have spent hours sightseeing or shopping (apart from the slight detail that Texas in August is like the surface of the sun, and I couldn't go outside for two seconds without melting). I simply had to take the boat tour down the river, which was amazingly gorgeous, but my poor old camera wasn't up to the challenge so I couldn't get a lot of worthwhile pictures.

Pigeon carrying spy cameras.

 

 

 Laser maze! I failed horribly.

A neat thing about the conference was how... sciencey everything was. There was a giant room set up with booths for vendors, including lots of free stuff (candy, free samples, stuffed animals), and tons of handouts. When trying to sell to vets, I guess, the thing to do is print out journal articles that support your product, and talk about all the studies and science that prove why I should by it. I also go try to some fun demos, like cutting a piece of meat with a radio-scalpel.

My favourite part was the keynote speaker, who is avet for NASA and has been in space a whole bunch of times. He had videos and photos of him actually in space and on the ISS. Most of his talk was about the physiological side effects of space travel, and the history of animals and space travel. Normally, my love of sci-fi is a completely separate part of my life to the work part, so this totally blew my mind. Completely starstruck. And it turns out, in a room full of hundreds of vets, there's really quite a high percent of sci-fi nerds!

The other exciting thing that happened was zoo day at the San Antonio zoo. Because in my profession, a professional conference can include zoo day.

 

 Left: Reptile house. Right: Feed prep area.

 

First Dropped Stump

The surgical emergency every new grad fears.

For the non-vets, a "dropped stump" is when a particular artery isn't well tied off when you let go of it (usually accidentally), so uh, blood starts pouring out of it into the abdomen. Pretty much every vet student's nightmare, and inevitable at some point in your career. I've spent years dreading it, being extra super paranoid in every surgery, and it finally happened in August.

Naturally, it was on a day when I was the only surgeon in. And naturally, they had booked a large, deep-chested dog spey for me. It was like looking down into the grand canyon and trying to work with a grappling hook attached to a helicopter. I managed to get my ligatures on, half-blind and up to my elbows in dog abdomen, and, ironically, I wasn't quite confident in them so I wanted to add a third. Just as I lifted the pedicle up to tie another knot, poof, the pedicle was gone. In my hand, securely in the clamp, were the two original ligatures, nice and secure... And attached to nothing.

Sometimes in these situations, blood starts welling up in the abdomen like someone turned on the tap. Fortunately mine didn't bleed all that much, really. I still had to stand there for ten minutes with a fistfull of swabs pressed into the general area, while one of the other vets drove in to help.

At the discharge, I had to figure out how to explain to the client that surgery wasn't exactly routine, but the problem was resolved. I went with "there was more bleeding than usual." At the recheck a week or so later, she mentioned she'd heard a "sloshing sound" the first night. :S

Considering in the very next surgery I did, a cat spey, the clamp cut clean through the uterus and I had to go fishing for the severed end, I was put off surgery for a little while...

"I Was Worried, So I Threw Out The Meds"

"I'm so worried about my dog. She's just wasting away and not herself at all anymore. Hasn't changed at all since 2 weeks ago."

"Did you give the meds?"

"No. I didn't like them so I threw them out."

To paraphrase the rest of our conversation:

"She's got diarrhoea."
"Do you want a probiotic?"
"No, she doesn't have diarrhoea. She's really painful."
"Do you want pain meds?"
"No. Her skin is so bad."
"Do you want to try some oil supplements?"
"She's just wasting away and I'm so worried."
"That's what the pred is for."
"I really don't want to use the pred."

And around and around we went.

Freedom!

A client made an appointment to be seen because her cat is "emancipated."

Reception Borrowed My Dogs When I Wasn't Looking

My dogs came to work the other day. They periodically do, and spend the day in the doctors' office behind a baby gate, often with 1-3 other doctors' dogs, and my bird. They know their way around the clinic pretty well: break room = crumbs and table snacks, treatment area = needles, nail trims, and other scary things.

This time around, at lunch time, they wandered off while I took a phone call. Turns out they went up front, and the girls up there were trying to guess what tricks they know. (One of them is a dog behaviourist who runs training classes) The conversation went something like this:

"I think she taught them some things."

"Hm... Do you guys know spin?"

*Dogs spin*

"Oh! Uhhh, how about down?"

*Dogs do 'take a bow', which is their default since it's the most recent trick they learned*

"Wow! Look at that! What about 'touch'?"

*Dogs frantically paw at her outstretched hand, since several tricks (like shake, wave, high five) combined in their heads into "smack the human's hand"*

"You're really good at that! Sit pretty?"

*Perfect 'sit pretties' as she holds a treat over their noses.*

I show up to find out what they'd wanted to ask me while I was on the phone--which was, "Can I give them more treats?" After being impressed at how "well trained" they are (i.e. extremely food motivated), they'd started teaching them new tricks. In particular, they were trying to get Tempest to jump over Shakespeare. They were having an issue with Shakespeare standing up the same instant she jumped over him, so they learned to anchor him down by putting treats on his front paws (he's good at "leave it"... in this sort of situation, anyway. Not if he thinks he can get away with something naughty).

Another day in the office, really.