Well, I’ve been down in Aurora since Wednesday. I’ve seen so much and I’m getting the hang of the veterinary medicine aspect of this whole thing. Not so much of the family life. Its just hard to know where I fit in. What do I do? What do I say? Am I allowed to eat leftovers? Or are those just for the family? I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch today because I didn’t know. And because I didn’t get up in time for pancakes and then felt too dumb to be like, well, I’m going to McDonald’s for pancakes.
Anyway, Wednesday I worked for like 12 hours. I saw two RDA surgeries. I’m pretty sure that the young guy that hauled the cows in was flirting with me. I still am not sure what flirting entails, but I think it involves being overly nice and asking lots of questions about the other person and then laughing where appropriate. There was a lot of other things that weren’t so nearly so interesting that happened too. Martha said that I looked older. I don’t really know what that means (wait, maybe it had to do with my birthday?) but you know, I feel prettier. That’s dumb I know but I do. And I feel fat too so it evens it all out. That morning on the drive down, I saw the Playboy bus just outside of the Lake of The Ozarks. It was like 5:30am. I can understand it being there in the summer but why winter? It was shortly there after that I remembered that my winter coat was still hanging from the closet door in Columbia. In my defense, it was 53 degrees when I left home. Luckily, I got it in the mail just the other day.
Thursday, Dr. Mike wasn’t around so I hung out at the clinic. I closed the sub-q layer on a dog spay. I saw a dog with a neurogenic licking thing. That night we got called out on a farm call for a dystocia. The heifer was this little thing and happy as could be. (As compared to the one the day before that kept charging the fence but luckily didn’t need our help with the baby.) It was owned by an Amish guy and the parlor was pretty dark. The calf was backwards (bad) and took us forever to get the first leg out and even longer for the second (really, really bad). We pulled and pulled with no avail. We decided to cut off the hind leg and part of the pelvis but couldn’t get the gigly wire in the right place (horrible). We would do a C-section but didn’t have the surgery pack on the truck (devastating) and had to go back to the clinic for it. We started the C-section and the cow was bloated from being down so long. You could hear the air reverberating when I clipped her hair. Dr. Mike reached in and pulled out a front leg from the abdominal cavity (the nail in this poor cow’s coffin). We sedated her and she began to regurgitate rumen fluid, out her nose, out her mouth, pretty much everywhere (the worse synonym for bad you can think of) and then we euthanized her. As the Amish man and his wife dragged the poor cut up dead cow out of the barn with a skid loader (I don’t pretend to understand how that whole Amish thing works.). I noticed in the other room, a tray containing coffee, coffee mugs and a plate of what appeared to be some sort of buns/rolls/doughnuts brought out for us because of all of our hard work. (We had put in at least three hours at this point.) But alas, these would not be consumed because after killing their cow, we packed up and left. But I mention this to prove that as a veterinarian, you have the potential to be fed well. In fact, I think we were offered a sandwich tonight.
Friday, we preg checked a bunch of cows and one at that farm had an LDA that we would later come back and fix. When we did come back, I was allowed (or allowed an attempt) in doing several things for this cow. I think the best part was when I was trying to guide a tube with a large needle back over to the abomasums to deflate it. This was the best part because in addition to having Dr. Mike coach me, the farmer was standing at me right shoulder giving me turn by turn directions of the cow’s abdomen. He was the MapQuest of the cow’s abdomen, turn right at the kidney, etc. Eventually, the cow won out and I was unable to finish the job. I did sew up her skin and got the farmer’s seal of approval. Dr. Mike said that I had won them over very quickly but I had said the right thing by wanting to be a dairy vet. I can’t help it if its true.
Saturday, I saw an alpaca that was sick. And all of his adorable herd mates. Tonight, I was called out for another dystocia. This one much more simple. The Bloss’ invited Erick Lutzeier over for dinner and then he hung out for a while playing pool. It was good for everyone involved to meet another vet in the area. I didn’t have much to say. As excited as I was to see Erick, I guess I didn’t know what I planned on talking about with him. It also sort of was like having your boyfriend over to meet your parents for the first time. Erick later sent me a text message asking me if I was okay because I seemed sad and uncomfortable. I told him that I was still uncomfortable but getting better. I also spent much of yesterday and today doing nothing and being slightly regretful for it.
[Originally, posted to Blogger on March 5, 2011.]
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