I surgerized today! My patient was a dead pig so I couldn't kill her no matter how much I screwed up! Lauren did a gastrotomy, Bobbi did a cystotomy, and I did a resection and anastomosis of a section of small intestine. Mine took forever because I had to do a simple interrupted suture pattern to suture the two sections of bowel together. I misjudged something and the two sides weren't lining up properly but I knew how to fix it! I spatulated the too small part so it would line up with larger section. And it worked! I was also using suture that was a size too big, so I think it would have gone more smoothly had that not been an issue. Still, I'm proud of my work. One of the surgeons supervising us said it looked good so huzzah! After doing the mandatory surgeries, we also did a tracheostomy and a nephrectomy. We also wanted to do a gastropexy and splenectomy, as their somewhat common emergency surgeries, but pig anatomy is different enough from dog and cat anatomy that it wouldn't have been worth our time. The doctors brought in one dog they were able to obtain from animal control that had been euthanized as he was unadoptable. Dr. K opened him up so we could compare dog vs pig and this dog had a splenic hemangiosarcoma! What are the odds?! It made me feel a little less bad about him being euthanized because it likely would have lead to him bleeding to death sometime in the nearish future.
Look at all the doctor words I used! Yay doctor things!
I am exhausted and still need to take yet another Radiology quiz before bed and maybe go over what I'm doing in my Musculoskeletal lab tomorrow. We're going to be practicing cranial cruciate ligament repairs and it's going to be amusing and possibly a huge mess. I love the way this doctor approaches things. He told us that we won't have any idea what we're doing but we'll get into the knee joint and dig a round and come to the conclusion that we may actually be able to perform the surgery for real someday with lots of practice. I know that's true of all surgeries but it feels good hearing a professor tell us that it's ok to be terrible at first. Oh! And apparently one of my classmates in the previous lab accidentally got stabbed in the hand with a scalpel blade. Yikes!
Note to self: Don't stab hand in lab.
Must go study, feed dogs, and sleep!
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