#futurevet

Here is the story of my first day of surgery which happened last week. I thought I would share it today because I normally volunteer on Monday mornings but I had to work this morning at the lab (yay being a student on stat holidays). 

I think I witnessed more surgeries in one day than I have in all the years I have been working/volunteering. I got to work with 2 different doctors  that I normally don’t work with and it was really interesting to see how they different from the other doctors at the practice. 

I was taught how to monitor vitals and assist the surgeon by a technician during the first two surgeries, and then after those it was just the vet and myself in the OR. I also got to help assist with inducing patients and prepping them for surgery.

We did 5 cat neuters, 3 cat spays, 2 dog neuters and 1 dog spay. 

The thing I found hardest about monitoring was when we were neutering/spaying the kittens from the rescue program. They are so small that I found it difficult to check their respiration rates as they were not taking big enough breaths to move the bag on the machine and their chests were covered by the surgical drape (not that they moved much). The techs helped me with this for a while but eventually I was able to do it on my own. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon working with all the animals that had surgery. Feeding them recovery food, administering pain meds, lots of cuddles and walks later in the afternoon. 

One of the things I think I will remember most about this day was when I was in the OR with a doctor I will call Dr. Hippie. It actually has nothing to do with the surgeries themselves but the conversation we had. They straight up asked me what my grades were and how confident I was about my application. This has never happened to me before it was really refreshing to just be able to discuss it. We spent the rest of the surgeries discussing how I could be a better volunteer and make my application stronger.