Heading Home

Well the trip is officially over. I am back home as of yesterday afternoon and pretty well caught up on sleep and hot water showers!

Friday morning was our last day in Eagle Butte. We had to cut the clinic off at about 11:30a because the facilities needed to be used that evening for a wake. We saw 120+ pets that morning though! Lots of vaccines and wellness along with some sickness. It was a hot day so we had to work quickly to get clients and patients in and out so as not to heat stress anyone too badly! That afternoon we broke down the whole operation before saying our goodbyes and parting ways. Some of us headed back to Bismarck, but most of us were starting long roadtrips back home.

It was a 3 hour drive back to Bismarck that evening and with some finagling, we managed to get everyone back in one piece. We went back to Olive Garden for another delicious dinner for 8 to enjoy final company and say farewell wishes. The food was awesome and we split some pretty tasty desserts!

Saturday morning I had to be up bright and early (5:15a) to head off to the airport. Coming out of mountain time zone, it felt like 4am and I was so exhausted. I slept the entire ride to Minneapolis, slept another 2 hours in an opportune spot in the airport, 2 more hours on my second flight, 4 hours at home, and 12 hours over night! I think I am pretty sufficiently caught up at this point!

I am sad to have left my friends and this amazing experience behind, but it feels so good to have a hot shower and to catch up on sleep! It is a trip I will never forget and something I hope I will be able to do again in the future! Next up - specialty externship #2!

Surgery Day #2

I did end up getting a second day in surgery on this trip. That evens it out to 3 days of anesthesia, 3 days of receiving, 2 days of surgery, and 2 days of wellness.

I started my morning off helping receiving out while the rest of the clinic got started. I planned on taking histories from families to help out, but ended up finding a special client and two pets to take care of instead. The client was a wonderful person who cared deeply for the dog and cat that lived in her home. Some special circumstances and understanding clinic staff made sure she got the wellness appointment she desired for her animals despite it being a surgery only day (her animals were already fixed). I am so glad I got to help someone like that. It really was one of the top highlights of my day, getting to work with this client and her animals.

My surgeries consisted of a cat neuter, a dog neuter, and a dog spay. I got to do a majority of the first two surgeries which was really cool and a good sneak peak at what I will be doing this fall in junior surgery lab!

In the middle of the day, we had an emergency come in. I got to help the doctors and technicians triage and stabilize the patient in small ways. Unfortunately not a happy outcome for the patient, but ultimately a very good and loving decision was made. I hate seeing animals suffer and the trauma this patient had sustained was very heavy. A very long, expensive, and cautiously optimistic recovery would have been in store. It was so good to be in an emergency setting again though, I really enjoy it!

Tonight for dinner we had indian tacos. This might seriously be the most delicious meal on the planet! Our amazing cook Annie is phenomenal! Indian tacos are made with fry bread (a delectable bread patty fried in peanut oil) with the normal taco fixings on top. Words simply cannot describe how amazing this combination is (and yes I was skeptical before I tried it!). I will definitely miss the delicious homemade meals our hardworking volunteers have provided us with!

Halfway Through the Week

I can’t believe we’re already halfway through the second week! The time has gone so quickly and while I’m ready for a break, I’m not ready to leave my new friends!

Tuesdays seem to be the hardest day of the trip for me. I remember being dead tired last Tuesday and yesterday was no exception. Something about piling lack of sleep, heavy work, and the time zone change on top of each other I suppose. I had another day of anesthesia. We were in Dupree for the day meaning that we had to leave extra early in the morning to get to our location and set the whole clinic up. We were at the multipurpose facility in Dupree which was actually super nice and new inside. Much to our dismay, we discovered they had showers but everyone’s stuff was 30 minutes away in Eagle Butte. Not that we really had any time for it, but having water was a wonderful thought.

The day was long but everything went really well. All the teams worked well together to make the clinic as efficient as possible. For the most part my anesthesia cases went well and I continued my bathroom trend by recovering a feral animal in the men’s restroom for nearly two hours. It’s a quiet place! At the end of the day we broke the clinic down and came back to Eagle Butte to set up our next and final location. It was so late by the time we were all done and even though we were treated to running water again, I certainly didn’t relish the idea of getting into freezing cold water being so tired!

Today I was in receiving. We started the day early again and managed to get the clinic up and running an hour earlier than expected! We were busy all day long and saw quite a few sick patients in addition to our surgery patients. One of my patients ended up being euthanized due to pretty complicated and extensive disease processes. She was so sweet with us and it was sad to say goodbye, but ultimately I am very glad she is no longer suffering, because she was certainly suffering before we met her today. She was super hungry all day and got as much yummy wet food as her heart desired all day long so she definitely had a “good” ending. I really like it when we are able to provide delicious treats to our patients before a euthanasia because the ones that are hungry for it really enjoy being spoiled. I hope that we don’t need to euthanize another patient this week, but I am really glad we were able to offer this comfort to an animal that was suffering. She deserved the dignified and graceful death she received today and I’m grateful to know she won’t suffer a long and torturous end.

Tonight I finally get to get some sleep and I’m super excited!

La Plant

Our first day on the Cheyenne River reservation was spent at a little auto garage in La Plant. Yesterday we cleaned and set the whole clinic up so that we would be ready to go this morning. I must say, 6am came much too early today. A quick breakfast and off we went for a 30 minute drive to our location (which happens to be in the middle of a cell phone dead zone it’s so remote).

My official assignment for the day was in anesthesia, but I was loaned to receiving for an hour to help get some shelter pets on the board brought by one of our volunteers. They were all so sweet!! It was heart breaking to see these poor animals come in and know that no one was attached to them. They were loving and cuddly with us and trusting despite being so scared. I hope their families find them soon or a new family gives them a forever home, because the thought of these sweet dogs living in cages at a shelter or being euthanized makes me want to cry.

I had two hectic anesthesia cases today in 15 hours that we were in La Plant. Most students end up taking 3-4 cases a day depending on how the animals recover in case that gives you a better indication. I spent nearly 5 hours recovering the second dog. It’s not that they weren’t waking up well as much as they were cold and not able to properly regulate their body temperatures because of the drugs. My first patient somehow managed to extubate herself in the last 10 minutes of surgery after having a smooth 1.5 hours prior to that. Really bizarre because the ET tube was secure, leak-tested, and inflated during surgery.

At the end of the day, we packed our entire clinic up and are moving to a new location tomorrow morning. We got back to the reservation dorms well after 10p to a continued lack of water (makes toilets interesting!) but thankfully our amazing cook was kind enough to have our food sent over to us from the community center. Very very thoughtful of her! Tomorrow we have to be ready to leave here at 5:30am to head to the next section of the community for another 16+ hour day. It certainly is going to be exhausting!

Off to South Dakota!

Today we met up at 10am to head on to South Dakota for the second half of our RAVS trip. My roommates and I had planned to get up at 9am to get ready, but we were all so well rested that we ended up waking up earlier than that! I accidentally looked at a clock still set in eastern time zone and panicked for a second, but was glad it was a mistake!

The drive to Cheyenne River took about 3.5 hours. We saw a lot of the same scenery on the way down, but South Dakota is a bit more hilly. A little ways into our drive, my car hit a skunk. Looking in the rearview mirror, she commented that piece of her car had fallen off and that she hoped it wasn’t important! A little while later, my foot slipped in the foot well and something splashed up at me. I was surprised and quickly felt up the suitcase I was sitting next to for a leak. Upon finding nothing, I became alarmed that we had done some important damage to her car and that we needed to have it looked at ASAP!! As I was putting in a phone call to one of the trip leaders to have them stop the caravan, we realized it was spilt laundry soap. Crisis averted!!!  I was so relieved (as was she) and felt a little bit silly, but I really know nothing about cars and was pretty darn concerned!

We a currently set up for tomorrow in a mechanic’s shop. We pulled up to a rather small building and as the garage doors opened, quickly realized just how spoiled we had been last week. We immediately set to work emptying, rearranging, and cleaning the building and then unloaded our rig into the sparkly space. It is super impressive and cool looking. This truly is an amazing mobile operation!

We had indian tacos prepared by the community cooks for dinner tonight. Fried bread topped with ground beef and taco fixings was super delicious. They also had my favorite peaches and nectarines! To help remind us of our rolls in the clinic this week, we each had skits for the various section of the operation (receiving, anesthesia, surgery, recovery) that were hilarious! We have a ton of awesome and fun people on this trip!

We are settled into smaller dorm rooms for the week now. Rooms have 3-4 beds in them and a small bathroom. We were lucky to find an awesome floor fan to run for the night that makes a big difference for how it feels in here! Our window doesn’t have much of a screen so we’re really hoping the bugs stay away! It should be a very interesting week of sleeping! I am super grateful to have a bed, but I kind of miss sleeping amongst my peers! We've all become so close during this trip that it was cozy all sleeping together in the same small floor space. 

Weekend Break

We successfully finished our first leg of the trip yesterday! It was an intense and exhausting week, but I think everyone would agree that it's an amazing adventure that we are loving.

Thursday I was in receiving again in the morning and then I spent the afternoon in anesthesia. I got to play with some pretty cute pediatric patients as well as some super hyper puppies! My only anesthesia case for the afternoon ended up being cancelled for surgery due to complications associated with the pre-medications administered. His heart rate and blood pressure became low with drug administration so I ended up monitoring and treating him for the next 6 hours. Not my favorite breed of dog, but this little guy for sure won a spot in my heart! He was super sweet with me and when he had finally metabolized most of the drugs out of his system, he popped right back up to normal and was ready to go home. No neuter for him! I think he secretly planned it that way haha.

Yesterday was a wellness only clinic and the goal was to see as many patients in 6 hours as possible. We ended up vaccinating and treating over 150 patients! My partner and I saw 13 patients total. One of our families had 9 cats! Each animal received vaccines, deworming medication, and flea/tick preventative and any other medical treatment needed. We started packing up at 2p - a lengthy and somewhat challenging process. We left around 7p for good and headed back to Bismarck. I miss that place though!

We checked into a hotel last night and headed to Blarney Stone's Irish Pub for dinner around 10p. Turns out they stopped serving dinner then, but we ordered a bunch of appetizers for the table to split and that ended up working out really well. Sleeping in a real bed last night was wonderful and I love the memory foam the room has. So comfy!

Today we slept in late and just kind of hung out. We went to brunch at Perkins where I had delicious blueberry pancakes with blackberry topping. Next up we went to a laundromat to wash all our stinky, dirty clothes from the week. Being stingy students, we managed to cram 5 peoples' laundry into the biggest washing machine I've ever seen! Our folding party was pretty funny - each item got folded and called out for claim. Lots of "mine, mine, mine!" going around! 18 of us ended up at Olive Garden for dinner for an awesome "family" dinner. We get along so well and I'm already dreading having to say goodbye at the end of the week! These people are so much fun and super awesome to hang out with!

Surgery Day

Whew I am exhausted! 16+ hour days and just constantly going has really started to wear us down. Yesterday I was in anesthesia all day. I planned to write a little bit about it last night, but at the last minute I found out my schedule assignment for today was changed to surgery and decided that I had better spend that time practicing sutures and sleeping instead. Anesthesia was fun. I feel pretty comfortable with monitoring now that I've taken the class and have had some field experience in vet clinics. Hopefully my skills continue to improve over the next week to make me an even better anesthetist this fall. My first three patients were challenging anesthesia cases but my last case maintained vital signs and appropriate anesthetic depth really well. Often times we are spending 3+ hours with our cases from when we are assigned to them through recovery, because it tends to take awhile for them to wake up using this particular drug protocol.

Today was my RAVS surgery day. There are 5 students assigned to surgery per day and all surgeries are done with the supervision and assistance of a surgeon. My three cases were a dog spay, cat spay, and dog neuter. I got to practice my ligatures today which was really helpful and I think it has set me up well for this fall. It's pretty unlikely that I will spend another day in surgery before the end of the trip, but I don't mind. Give the nature and complexity of some of our patients, we often seem to have a lot of down time between surgeries and I really enjoy interacting with clients.

Clinic Day 1

Gosh I am so tired! We were given an early start time of 6am today, but silly me used my Grenada phone as an alarm clock and forgot that it doesn’t recognize different time zones so it went off at 4:15 local time instead of 5:15. Yay.

We had two hours of orientation and breakfast before officially opening our doors to clients and pets this morning. We were split into groups of three and each respective group went through procedures and processing in further detail from yesterday. After that, we paired up and it was time to begin!

I spent my day in receiving/discharge. My partner and I took turns taking a history on our patient, educating our clients about various health issues, vaccinating and deworming and then preparing our patients for surgery. Some families came in with multiple pets and then we were in charge of all of the animals from the same family. All in all a lot of fun. I really enjoy interacting with clients and patients together.

It was a pretty long day with clean up beginning at 7:30p and rounds ending at 9:15p, but we learned a lot and got to practice a lot of “doctorly stuff” along the way! So far I am surviving my vegetarian diet. Turns out that’s not nearly as tough as taking an ice cold North Dakota shower haha. I do mean ice cold! If it was any colder the shower would be sleeting! I had to be very creative about washing without really getting wet (I’m a huge wimp) and I am certainly going to work harder in the coming days to take showers at “better” times when perhaps the water will still be warm? Maybe I’ll just get up at 3am instead!

Tomorrow is another 6am morning and this time I’ll be in anesthesia. Very much looking forward to seeing the next step of patient processing for the RAVS clinic!

Arriving at the Reservation

We finally made it! Our location at the reservation is a big gymnasium and that’s where we have set up the clinic and will be sleeping until Friday. Upon arrival, we immediately began unpacking the HSUS trailer. It was packed to the brim with boxes (“action packs”), tables, carts, and tons of other supplies. It’s an extremely impressive organization. Once the materials were inside and in their basic starting places, we sat down to a little bit more orientation. Next up we were each assigned a couple of boxes to inventory before the whole clinic was unpacked and set up. My boxes consisted of catheter supplies and fluids. Once my boxes were inventoried, I assisted another student inventory the front third of the trailer full of vaccines, SNAP tests, and liquids (like bleach). When we came back in from the trailer, the whole clinic had been set up! All of the surgery rigs had been assembled, all the cages and tents were in place, and it looked like a full and complete clinic!

The rest of the evening was spent running through orientation powerpoints and procedures. Our dinner consisted of a potato and chickpea curry with rice. Our last activity of the night before assignments was our surgery practical. I passed but by the skin of my teeth! We had to perform a modified millers knot and figure 8 knot at the first station and then 2 inches of simple continuous pattern. Apparently I need to watch my knots for slip knots.

Tomorrow my assignment is in receiving. I am very glad. I was really hoping to not start out in surgery and I am glad to have the chance to get to know the intake process before treating patients for surgery. We are currently all spread out on sleeping bags and air mattresses in the corner of the gym ready for bed. Tomorrow morning will certainly come very early with a start time of 6am. I’d be happy to get up at 5:15am, but I know there will be people up long before then and I know that will wake me up. Ick. Not looking forward to so little sleep before such a long day! 

Welcome to Bismarck, ND!

Time for trip number 2 of the summer! I left for North Dakota yesterday afternoon. A quick layover in Minneapolis and I found myself flying over tons of beautiful, green farm land. We landed at the tiniest airport I’ve been to in the US. Not smaller than Grenada, but it certainly gives Roanoke a run for its money. The airport had four small gates and two tiny luggage carousels. I called my hotel upon arrival and they promised to send a shuttle over soon. Our flight of less than 50 people quickly cleared out of the terminal and I found myself sitting out front in the warm evening sunshine at what felt like a completely deserted airport!

When my shuttle arrived, I loaded up and headed off in a minivan with the words “Comfort Inn” emblazed across the back. Kind of strange since I was booked at the Ramada Inn, but you never know! Well, as it turned out, the taxi driver had somehow been contacted through a central agency, but was unaware of the Ramada Inn part of my trip as made clear when we pulled up out front of the Comfort Inn haha. A quick laugh and jaunt across the road brought me to my hotel.

My roommate turned out to be one of the vets on the trip. She was very nice and offered a dinner reservation with a few of the other people on the trip. They had decided to scope out a restaurant across the street called East 40. Since we are kind of in the middle of nowhere North Dakota and it doesn’t strike me as a very wealthy area (although apparently there is a huge oil boom currently), I was definitely not expecting every item on the menu to be $25+! Crazy! Lucky for me, there was an $11 pizza and as we went around the table placing orders, I was able to split it with another girl. They messed up the order pretty badly but when we did finally get our food it was delicious!

This morning we met as a group for the first time. After doing roll call and getting trip instructions, we had an hour break to grab some food for the day. As it turns out, neither Walmart nor Kmart open until noon on Sundays! There was a 24 hour grocery store just down the street though so we were able to stock up on food and snacks for the week. We met back up and formed a caravan to drive 3 hours out to the reservation. We are currently still driving along and the landscape is a lush green, dotted with cows, and rather flat! We are passing tons of little ponds and it slowly dawned on us that these are actually areas of flooding! We’ve passed a few roads under water already along with many fences and utility pole. We just drove over a one lane dirt bridge that looks like it is made of packed dirt over a flooded highway road. Crazy! We have just over an hour left on our drive, wonder what else we will see!