First week as a "real" LVT!

Handsome Jack!!

So this was my first week in clinic. All in all it was a great week. I worked 7:30-3, Mon-Th, and let me tell you--I was so tired at night, I barely made it til 9:30. Last night I actually hit the deck at 9 and this morning didn't wake til 8:30, that's how exhausted I was!

You really work for your pay as an LVT. Most of your patients are going to fight with you, not verbally (usually), but hey--who wants strangers in pink scrbs coming and "hugging" them while other strangers poke needles in them? Sounds like torture to me, and they generally think so too. Thankfully they're a forgiving bunch, and generally by the time you wake them up from anesthetic they don't care anyway.

We had dentals and knee surgeries every day this week. The dentals, with only two exceptions, were something that I did--5 total in 4 days. A dental for a dog is like what a dental hygenist teeth cleaning would be for a person. You set up the machine, wear goggles and a mask to avoid bacteria, put on gloves, and start cleaning the patient's teeth with a scaler and then a polisher. The main difference, actually, is that before you do all that, you have to surgically sedate and intubate your patient, and while you're working on them you have to keep stopping to check vitals to make sure you're not sedating them too deeply. Techs are allowed to do everything surrounding a dental except for extractions--one dog I worked on lost 4 teeth. She didn't have that much to start with and ended up with a grand total of 6 left in her head. Please, brush your dog's teeth with doggy toothpaste 2-3 times a week! Jack loves his.

Knee surgeries are cruciate ligament repair surgeries. Just like with people, dogs can tear the ligaments around the knee joint. This is terribly painful for the dog and must be repaired surgically. The surgery for this is EXTEREMELY expensive, so many owners try to medicate with pain meds before having it done, which means more work for the surgeon, which means longer time under anesthesia for the patient, which presents a greater risk for problems--you get where I'm going with this.

Anyway, I assisted in a few of these surgeries this week. We had four total. Yesterday's was the most interesting and the most gruelling, since the dog in question had completely worn away all cartalige in the knee and it was just bone-on-bone inside of that joint. The surgeon used a product I'd not heard of, a wash that was meant to be a replacement for the synovial fluid in the joint. He had the assistant (not me, I was leg holding) flush the whole area around the joint capsule with the fluid before he closed it. He also roughened the edges of the bone in an attempt to stimulate cartalige to re-grow on the space, and maybe make things better for the dog.

While repairing a ligament, the surgeon has to really wrench hard on the suture material he's using inside of the leg. The knots must be tied securely, since this material is what is taking the place of the dog's ligaments and won't be removed. The technician (me this time) has to hold the leg extended while the surgeon is wrenching and wrenching on this leg--it's hard work! Then I had to stablize the suture material with a hemastat so that the surgeon could tie more knots to hold the suture material in place.

Anyway, those were the cool bits. I also ran tons of bloodwork, administered meds via injection and orally, and helped hold a few sweet patients as they reached the end. The euthanasia's are always sad to me, because this is a life extinguished, and life is a precious thing. This is someone's companion, someone's friend, someone's comfort. The ends I saw this week were very peaceful, one minute there, then gone. I petted the little bodies while the lights went out, and listened to heartbeats continue, speed and stop before saying "ok, we're done." Then on the other end of the room, I was able to go and play with a basket of labrador puppies--the cycle restarted, in a way.

It was a good week, and I'm looking forward to more. I'll be there 1-4 afternoons a week, and my responsibilities will mainly be seeing patients for small things like nail trims, helping doctors pull blood, running bloodwork, administering evening treatments, and so on. It'll be good, I think, though I'm a bit nervous at being the only tech on duty at those times. I'm going to have to be especially aware of what is going on so that I know where I can be used, because they're not used to having a tech available at that time of day. But all in all it will be good, though I'm glad to be still at the library as well.