I got to the hospital this morning around 8:00. This morning we had an influx of patients into the ER. The first patient that arrived had already passed away by the time it got their. The medics tried to revive him, but it was to no avail. He had seemed to have already bleed out. Our next visitor was neither canine nor feline. A injured gosling had been found and brought in. It was not very happy about the circumstances. I learned where and what a birds ears look like. I learned that most water fowl have a special gland on their back that secretes the water proof oil. They use their beak to gather this oil and spread it over their feathers. Another thing I learned about birds, more specifically certain geese, is you usually cannot tell the difference between male and female. The only certain way you can tell is through a DNA test. Later after many patients had arrived I was able to help more. I helped with the goose, a few dogs, and watched the surgeries take place. One surgery was to both fix a knee as well as remove the dewclaws on a dog. A different surgery was to remove kidney stones from a cat. In the afternoon we had another ER patient who had also been attacked. This one had come in alive, but needed to be stabilized. After getting her stabile they were able to diagnose what was wrong and what she needed done. A cool surgery that was a cross over from Oncology today was the removal of a mass on the back of a dogs tongue. If a mass gets to large then the outer layers can loss circulation, die, and start to rot. This is what happened in that particular case. The mass was cut off of the tongue and the tongue then sutured together. Their where a few dogs with other problems. One dog was brought into the ER because he was thought to maybe have kidney failure. One dog who had an appointment was brought in. He no longer has to wear splints on his hind legs. He was sedated. Their are many different kinds of sedation. You can have one that takes a very long time to wear of, but has a reverse sedative to wake the animal up. Their is another type that allows for sedation, but must always be in steady supply to the blood stream. I also watched the mixing of the drugs used in chemotherapy. I did not witness the actually chemotherapy today though. Overall it was a very exciting day. Their was a lot of interesting things going on and a lot of patients to take care of.
