I am so full of feels! My surgery partner’s roommate texted her about SCOTUS’s ruling on marriage equality after our first surgery yesterday morning and we both just about lost it. There was much happy dancing and cheering! And I have encountered absolutely no asshole, anti-gay comments on my facebook feed yet. It’s just been a wall of ecstatic, loving positivity. So beautiful :)
In other news, there are four less sets of gonads in the world this week, thanks to me :P I have to say, I have been rocking my surgeries. We all have, on this rotation. There are six of us and, in addition to me, two others also have extremely minimal surgical experience. We have all been getting great feedback from the doctors and technicians and they have been such wonderful, patient teachers.
On Tuesday, I did my first cat neuter. It was a good starting point since cat neuters are a pretty simple procedure. Despite being a little shaky on technique and how exactly you tie things off (tissue kept slipping off my hemostat!), I was in and out in 13 minutes. Not too shabby :)
I did my first spay, on a puppy, on Wednesday. I was so, so nervous. It went really smoothly, though! Dr. S (who actually lives a few blocks away from me! Small world!) stepped me through the process and I did not feel scared at all! And I did such a good job closing her up! I used a subcuticular pattern on the skin layer, which I had never tried before, and it looked beautiful when I was done!
Thursday I did my first cat spay, on a cat who had recently weaned her kittens. She was more challenging because she had enlarged mammary tissue (which you want to avoid cutting into so you don’t get milk in your surgical field) and her uterus and surrounding tissues were more vascular and more fragile. Once I was done tying my uterine pedicles and uterine stump, we saw more blood in the abdomen that expected. At first Dr. S and I were concerned that maybe one of my ties had slipped from a pedicle but both looked fine and it was a smaller amount of blood that would be expected from that. We did finally find the culprit and it was a vessel from the round ligament, which has to be broken down during surgery. Because she had recently had kittens, it was more vascular and had more bleeding than normal when broken down. However, it had clotted off by the time we found it. I was just happy that I hadn’t done something wrong :) Her skin closure didn’t go quite as smoothly as my puppy’s. Cat skin is more fragile and thinner than dog skin. We supplemented with a little tissue glue just to make sure that her skin layer was aligned. Both spays took about an hour and a half, which I think is pretty reasonable for first spays, especially since we’ve had only one doctor and we have an number of checkpoints where we need her approval before we proceed.
Yesterday I did my first solo dog neuter (during my 2nd year surgery lab, I did the first half a dog neuter) and it also went really well! He was a youngish dog, so his testicles weren’t fully developed, which made them a little challenging to hold in the correct place for a pre-scrotal neuter. I probably could have gotten away with a scrotal neuter, which is more like a cat neuter, but the doctor wanted me to do pre-scrotal for the surgical experience. Getting to the testicles and then suturing my incision back up took up more time than the neuter itself! I was in and out in 41 minutes which I think is acceptable for a first dog neuter.
Running anesthesia has been going really well too! Intubation has gone smoothly and I’ve been rocking all my IV catheters on the fist try! Feels so good! Monitoring anesthesia still freaks me out. I mean, one of my anesthesia professors defined anesthesia as “the art of lovingly, carefully, and reversibly poisoning your patient.” It’s scary stuff. We have a lot of monitoring parameters, but I really like to sit and listen to my patient’s heart rate with the esophageal stethoscope when I’m not scrambling to do/record other things. It’s comforting. The technicians are so good, though, and very good at reassuring us when anything seems off. Lots of the time we’re just panicking and overreacting, which is definitely better than missing something important.
I love this rotation. It’s been so helpful and the staff is so good at creating a relaxing, laid back, safe learning environment. Plus, I feel like we have a really good mix of students. Lately, I’ve come to the realization that I’m more and more OK with being in this new class. There were so many people in my former class that I just did not like or felt uncomfortable around. With this new class, I don’t really know them that well or know of any past drama, so everyone more or less has a clean slate. I know I won’t get along with everyone, but so far it’s been going really well and everyone has been kind and welcoming. I’ve also been doing really well with my social anxiety issues. Yes, I feel anxious, especially when starting new rotations with people I don’t really know, but I don’t feel like I’ve been allowing it to hold me back. I have my moments when I want to go hide from people but I don’t. Instead, I take a breath and maybe make a weird comment to whoever is around, and do what I have to do. I’m honestly pretty proud of myself :)
It’s been a good week! I’m happy and feeling a little more confident in my surgery skills! And I got to sleep in today, which is always glorious, especially when having to wake up at 5:40 am all week. It’s time to find me some breakfast, I think.
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