Going solo, sort of
Day 13- April 26
Eleven surgeries through the clinic today- 3 neuters and 8 spays, including one very pregnant girl. I guess I cursed myself with my comment yesterday. As I was closing I noted she was bleeding more than I was comfortable with for a local dog- Ehrlichia infection slows their blood clotting time, so they tend to bleed more than we western DVMs are accustomed to. I re-opened the partially closed incision and went hunting, finding the source at the last sutures I had tied- I hadn’t incorporated a fairly significant vein into the knot, and it was pumping away quite happily. I placed another couple sutures around it, rechecked it a couple times before recommencing my closure. When I was convinced all was okay, I closed her up and moved on to the next one.
Isabelle, Jackie and Lazarus are an amazing team, and without my saying so (even though I do) they always seem to know when to start getting the next patient ready for surgery. Being the only vet on duty, I just moved from one end of the long surgery table to the other, and happily let them clean up my mess (previously, when two of us were doing surgery, we were responsible for cleaning up after ourselves. I feel spoiled).
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful- no other surprises, and the pregnant girl recovered smoothly. I just saw her in the back of Nation’s truck (I’ve dubbed it the Nation Wagon) with the other 10 dogs, on their way home.
After we cleaned up from surgery, we grabbed a quick lunch, then returned to the clinic to pack up for our outreach project in Boro tomorrow and Saturday. Nation has already been to the area to let people know we’re coming, and KC, who knows the elders there, will also be joining us to help drum up business. From the sounds of it, this won’t be necessary- apparently we have “around twenty” surgeries lined up tomorrow (could be 18, could be 23- we won’t know until tomorrow). We’ll do as many as we can before we run out of surgery packs or energy.
Amongst numerous other benefits of this trip is that we have 3 new temporary pets. On last year’s visit, we stayed off the property upon which the clinic is situated. Each morning we’d drive in from Jann and Virginia’s, about 8Kms away. There is a gate at the entry to the Palmer property, and each morning we’d stop the car and one of us would hop out to open and close the gate (we have the remote this year- woohoo!!). This plus the noise of our approaching vehicle would stimulate an attack by a Border Collie and a Malinois who would lie in wait behind the bushes by the road, then vault themselves at our tires and run alongside the Venture barking their fool heads off until they reached the invisible perimeter of their territory. This year the Border Collie, Pye, the Malinois, whom we have dubbed ‘not Pye’ because we haven’t yet found anyone who knows his name, and a new stooge, Scruffy II (there is already another Scruffy on premises) have become our close friends. We are greeted with tail wags instead of barks when we walk or drive up, and they have made themselves quite at home both on our verandah and in the cottage. They are great replacement pets for the ones we’ve left at home.