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!