Days 5 and 6: small animals

We took off our 3rd day and went sightseeing: hiking around a volcano and lounging by a warm beautiful lake.  Then we got to work for our last two days in the clinic.

The last two days at the clinic were full.  It started off slow, with only 6 or so animals around, so 3 of the vets and 2 students went off to the horses.  It was nice having a slower morning because I got to learn and try out some new skills. I started placing IV catheters in the dogs (to help fix the earlier problems of starting to wake up during surgery) and I got in my first 3 on the first try! I also helped hand instruments to the drs, and worked the pre-surgery table, to keep the animals coming.

                                            Animals recovering from their surgeries

But by noon we somehow had 20 animals left for surgeries, so things picked up. In the afternoon everyone came back from the horses (they saw 80!) and we sped up and got through everyone, though it was a long day

Other than spay/neuters, they also performed one more leg amputation and removed some tumors in a dog. We got in a little, tiny, skin and bones dog from a village a few hours away. The dog couldn't keep any food down and basically hadn't eaten in a week - he was very sad looking. The Drs. figured he must have a foreign body in him, but doing a surgery was risky, due to his state of health. They decided to re-discuss the case the next day.

                                           Trachea dog a few days later, looking good!


Day 5: Our last day in the clinic was a short half day, we did about 10 surgeries. I got to be Claudio's helper, and placed many of the catheters - it was exciting to get better at it and feel useful. We had 4 or 5 cats to neuter, and we each got to help out with another one or two. I enjoyed seeing each dr's different approach to tying the knot.

After the spays/neuters they decided to try an abdominal exploration on the skinny dog - he'd spent the whole morning on fluids. They found his organs full of air, but no blockages and looking for the most part healthy. His airways where also clear (they stuck a tube down to check). So they sealed him up and put him on a plethora of anti-parasitic drugs.  I heard in the evening he looked a tiny bit healthier, and actually stood up and walked around a little.  We heard a report a week later that he was doing much better.

Amputee dog from the first day, looking good!

That wrapped up the vet work for our trip. Overall I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Everyone (vets, students, volunteers) were very helpful and willing to share tips or teach and I think we all worked well together and got a lot accomplished. Personally it was also exciting to gain some skills (like placing ivs, more practice with Ims and Subqs) and actually feel what it was like to neuter a cat or tie a suture. I hope to help out on another world vets trip in the future - hopefully as a vet student or vet!

Day 3: equine

I spent today at the equine coop.  In Granada there are many work horses - they pull carriages around town for tourists, they transport materials (they wait in lines outside "home depot") and they help out on farms.  The Coop is a building the owners can bring their horses to for work for example shoeing, or vet work.

                        On a previous trip one of the vets had given a halter to this horses owner.He was very proud of it, though didn't quite know how to put it on.

Almost all the horses that came through got vaccinated (west nile, tetanus etc), dewormed, and vitamins-  I got lots of practice giving IM injections to horses.  Communicating with the owners was our biggest difficulty, as none of us spoke fluent spanish and the people who usually helped communicate where busy in the morning, but we did our best.


Many of the came in with bad tack wounds, and we tried to tell them how to keep the horses healthier - changing the padding more often, or using padding (some didn't). 
It was sad seeing the condition of some of the horses that we could do nothing about. We saw a few very bad cases of laminitis - the owners think it is from a spider bite.

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We had a very good turnout, by the end of the day we'd vaccinated 95 horses! The vets performed two castrations. Many of the locals and owners gathered around to watch the castrations. They were all male, and it was amusing to me to watch them flinch and look uncomforatble throughout the operation:

We had one horse came in with a sarcoid tumor on its leg.  Apparently it had been cut off before but grows back, our vets think it may be virus related. We cut it off again and in January when the next vet trip comes they will bring some cancer drugs to try and treat it. The vets kept warning that cutting it off would be a "blood bath" but it wasn't too terrible, just a little bloody.

When world vets first started treating horses in the area, there was a lot of mistrust of the vets and they have been working hard over the years to overcome this.  Today there was a lineup of horses, some of which traveled in quite a distance to see a vet.  It was great to see how they have gained the trust from the community and are able to help out the local horses.

Day 2: small animals

We worked a full day in the clinic today.

We took in 41 dogs and cats, most of them for spaying. The vets also performed one leg amputation and fixed up trachea dog (mentioned in previous post).  I worked at the anaesthesia area, and shaved and prepped the animals for surgery. I got to do a few of the pre-anaestethic im injections, however the one IV I tried I couldn't hit the vein. Hopefully later on the trip I'll get proficient at that.  I also did my first surgery! Just a neuter on a little kitten, very closely supervised, but it was fun to actually hold a scalpel and get involved.

                                           Cleaning the tools

 Our biggest problem today was keeping the animals asleep, even with extra doses of the anesthetic they kept wanting to wake up, which is not a good surgery trick!

We ended the day with the trach dog. They prepped him and cleanned him up, and intubated him (which was crazy, cause you could see the tube through the hole in his neck). It worked out better than we all expected I think. They where able to close the trachea w/o having to cut into any of the rings, and then stitch up the skin over it. We wrapped his neck up in cotton to prevent him from moving his head back and opening it up too far. As he started waking up from surgery he barked! Before this due to the hole he'd been hoarse and could barely make a noise, so this was promising. Apparently the next day he barked alot, so hopefully its healing well.

                                                  Getting ready for surgery.
                           
                               

                                                                     All stitched up