This Week

This week was fairly interesting.
Monday, I went out to see a sick cow and she turned out to have a twisted stomach (LDA). I haven't cut one for a couple of months at least; the summer transitioned into fall and then into winter very nicely. This one was in a heifer in a tie stall barn so she didn't have many reasons to have one but she did anyway. Monday, luckily was the warmest day of the week and luckily, this twist went very well.

Tuesday, I got in a very pissy mood as I was very busy in the morning, then more appointments got added on and none of the techs wanted to work. It just is so frustrating. You think you have everything all planned out then things go awry so very quickly.

Wednesday, I did surgery and had a high school student shadowing me in the morning. Everything went pretty well that day.

Thursday, it was sort of snowy.

Friday, I was called at 6:30am about a gilt farrowing. Unfortunately, the gilt had been farrowing since about noon the day before when DE pulled the first offending piglet. She hadn't managed to have any on her own. I worked for an hour and was making absolutely no progress so I told the owners to send her to slaughter. A tough choice that I felt bad about but sometimes things aren't going to work out. I absolutely hate farrowings (I always want to call them piggings, too.). I just can't figure them out.
As I was pulling into the pig place, one of our largest dairy clients called for a calving. I would head out there later with a high schooler tagging along. The calf was breech and nothing I did would bring the legs up. I ended up cutting off both rear legs then pulling the calf from around the middle. It was a tough pull and required an episiotomy but we got it out with minimum damage to the cow. I finished afternoon appointments before staying late to help CB cut a dog. Last week, I had cut this dog for a foreign body. The owner started freaking out about mid-week and worrying about it being painful. We later learned some interesting information about the owner. Anyway, when wen took the dog back to surgery on Friday night, her belly was a mess of adhesions and fluid. The surgical site had dehisted and leaked food into the belly. She then started to bleed and then she started to do poorly under anesthesia. We told the owner that euthanasia was probably the best option for her. It was a sad end but for the best. Its a shame these complications occur.

Today, I slept in late and it was fantastic. I woke up and it had snowed and snowed. It snowed on and off all day-probably like 6" total. I did the laundry but very little else. We had pizza day! When Joe and I were dating, we would occasionally have make your own pizza day where we would go to Wal-Mart for premade crusts and toppings. Never just pepperoni either but exciting stuff. This time I chose to make a Thai Chicken Pizza-I mixed rice wine vinegar, lime juice, sracha sauce, ground ginger and garlic powder and soaked some chicken strips for fajitas in it. On to the crust, I used peanut sauce as the sauce then topped with a couple handfuls of cheese. Then I added the seasoned chicken, red onion, broccoli slaw mix (carrots, red cabbage and broccoli), cilantro, green onion and peanuts. Then into the oven for 10-12 minutes. It was really yummy. Very spicy!

I'm off Monday and have to go see the insurance agent again. I'm not looking forward to it. Insurance makes my head hurt. I'm probably also going to get the oil changed in the car and go shopping.

Holidays

Hello 2014!
I'm sorry for the dreadful lack in updates. I've been busy working and while I wanted to do lots of blogging, my blogs were intended on being long and having lots of links so I couldn't easily do them on my phone.

I think I will concentrate on the holidays for this blog.

First, Thanksgiving.
I hate Thanksgiving. I always have. I always will. I went back to Missouri solo this year. Joe couldn't get any time off and I promised my Grandma that I would go. She's 91. You can't go back on promises to her.
It snowed the night before I was due to leave. Not just a little, like six inches. And I was on call and had my vet truck that had to be returned to the office before leaving. I talked to my mom and she wasn't sure she wanted me to come home with the weather. I woke up an hour earlier than intended and it took that long for me to decide what I was doing. It was no longer snowing, ODOT deemed the roads in Ohio to be clear and I could actually hear that the road in front of our house was clear too. I finally decided to get out of bed, pack and take the truck back. When I was ready to leave, Joe was only about 15 minutes from getting home so I waited for him. Then finally, Riley and I were on our way. We stopped at a rest area in Ohio and then for an hour after that we had some bad roads and snow to contend with. It significantly slowed us down.
So Thanksgiving, I had offered to make something providing that my mom would get the ingredients needed but she declined saying that my sister-in-law was bringing some things and they had plenty of stuff. Mom had made mention that they had gotten a Thanksgiving package from a local grocery store. I didn't realize this included pre-cooked turkey. Seriously. Then we also had mashed potatoes (they were okay). Microwaved stuffing-because boiling the water on the stovetop would have been too hard. Yams from a can. My mom isn't a good cook. While, I've made this vow before, I'm making it again-never home for Thanksgiving again unless I get to cook. Even my dad, the typical turkey maker, rolled his eyes at it being precooked.
I went through some stuff with my grandma and ended up bringing tons of stuff home. Too much stuff.

Christmas
Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. I like decorations, presents, food, everything!
Joe went home to St. Joe and I was on call so it wasn't going to be the best Christmas but still a nice one.
Joe and I cut down our own Christmas tree. It was a snowy cold day but we had so much fun doing it. We bought so many nice decorations for it too. It was beautiful.
We opened various presents throughout the month because the perk of being adults without kids is that you can open presents whenever you want! No need to wait till Christmas!
I took Joe to the airport on Christmas Eve morning (his birthday) and came back to go to work. I had two emergencies that night and diagnosed three bad diseases during appointments that morning-pyometra (I did surgery in the afternoon.), mast cell tumor and immune mediated thrombocytopenia. Christmas Day was pretty quiet until late in the evening when I had to see the IMTP dog again. She was very pale and I suspected bleeding into her abdomen. I couldn't get her to calm down enough to radiograph so elected to give her a blood transfusion. Enter Mary! With some major trouble, I managed to give this pug a blood transfusion from Mary all by myself. This is a pretty big deal. I'm very proud of myself.
When Joe got back, we opened the remainder of the Christmas presents. I'm always sort of disappointed when the presents are done. Also because invariably there are presents I hate. I'll be returning some stuff.

New Year's
New Year's is the next most hated holiday for me. I can't stay up late, I don't really drink and being on my couch isn't thrilling. Until I go out and finally watch one of the many exotic things that Pennsylvania drops, New Year's Eve sucks.
And as usual, I plan on making resolutions that I don't intend on keeping...
-Weight loss
-Run a 5K
-Save $5000
-Have a baby/at least get pregnant-as part of this, I think we're facing months of doctors and fertility testing. Boo.
-Vacation?
-Write a novel during NaNoWriMo, spending the rest of the year doing research


In a couple of other, non holiday related areas, when I went Christmas shopping several weeks ago, I went to buy my bridesmaids dress for Martha's wedding. Well, the day before, it was revealed that XS, S and Medium dresses were in short supply. Luckily, I needed an XL. So there was some trouble about was this the dress we were going to wear or what? I risked it and bought the dress and luckily my gamble paid off.
Apparently, I might have forgotten what else I was going to say.