Hello all!!

Hello to everyone!

Well, it is a Wednesday night and I am not studying!! That is exciting but I feel a bit guilty at the same time. This begins my eighth year of higher education and some habits are hard to break! I think I will have some interesting stories to tell you this year so I finally got on the bandwagon and joined the family blog.

This is my second week of clinics and I am already halfway through the dreaded anesthesia rotation. This rotation is feared because of the early and long hours, and two of the three clinicians can be very direct and blunt. I have to say it isn't nearly as bad as I expected. We may have it a bit easier because nobody really expects us to know anything during the first rotation!

So far I have been in charge of anesthetizing 7 dogs, 1 cat, 1 horse, and have helped out with several other cases. Most of the cases we see here are not the usual run-of-the-mill surgeries. Since K-State is a teaching hospital we get mostly referrals and they can be difficult cases. I haven't had a tough case until today. My patient was a German Shepherd who was hit by a car over the weekend. He came in with both front limbs fractured at the radius and ulna as well as the left hind limb fractured in several places on the femur. They did manage to put three large bone plates in with many, many screws to hold it all together. Radiographs (x-rays) were taken both before and after the surgeries, so all-in-all, he was under anesthesia for 6 hours. I know it's not that long compared to some complicated human surgeries, but let me tell you, that makes a long day for the novice anesthetist! Hopefully I did a good job with the analgesia because I have a feeling he will be hurting tomorrow! Anyways, I will try to keep everyone updated on the cool stuff that I get to see (at least stuff that I think is cool!!)

Joan