Day 2 (8/2/11): First Day

I awoke at 4am with absolutely no ability to sleep longer. I fiddled about a bit, took a shower, made some breakfast, and awaited the rising of my roommates. Coco was the first one I saw and she told me that I should take the dirt road to work and that we were to be there at 7:30am (it was already 7:45). Then I was told that Leanne had already left (I’d missed her) and that I better start walking. When I got there they were already having rounds and it became glaringly clear that I had absolutely no freaking clue what I was doing in an equine hospital. Most of the horses are standardbreds or thoroughbreds and weren’t the best in hand. Jim, the owner and main surgeon, asked Leanne to work with me and quickly departed. Libby, Jim’s wife and office manager, soon caught me and let me know that she’d asked Lisa, the front desk girl, to run me to the grocery store. 2 hours and 120 AUD later, I was back at the house with lunch in my stomach. I spent most of the rest of the day milking the mare of a dummy foal which had been admitted the previous day. The mare was actually very good, but my milking skills left a bit to be desired. After a bit of milk to the face, sticky arms, and a vest smelling much more of milk than it ever should, I figured out how to sufficiently milk a mare within a generous time period. The dummy foal was cute, but quite helpless and had splints applied on all four legs to help give laxity to its contracted tendons. He needed fed every 2 hours which meant I got lots of practice milking the mare. Later in the afternoon, I was offered the opportunity to see a bone marrow transplant into injured tendons and helped attend to a colic. Unfortunately, the colic had an elevated lactate, PCV, and TPR. His ultrasound showed distended loops of bowel and the horse was sent home to be euthanized. This is the one part of the job that I was not looking forward to and I have a very difficult time looking at a crying owner without crying also. I’m sad that the day had to end on this note, but still optimistic about my time at the hospital.