Class of 2020... how you doin?

[WildZoo]

Done with our last junior surgery!

Same!

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[LyraGardenia]

Done with our last junior surgery!

We have one more next week, and I have to be anesthetist again.
My group's dog this week was already spayed, so that was a quick surgery! Luckily my group member who was primary surgeon had gotten to do a couple spays with a vet over Thanksgiving break, so she still got the experience. Pupper is now tattooed, so she'll be spared unnecessary surgery in the future!

 

[WildZoo]

We have one more next week, and I have to be anesthetist again.
My group's dog this week was already spayed, so that was a quick surgery! Luckily my group member who was primary surgeon had gotten to do a couple spays with a vet over Thanksgiving break, so she still got the experience. Pupper is now tattooed, so she'll be spared unnecessary surgery in the future!

Heh. I kind of like running anesthesia. Only had to do it twice out of the 12 surgery days though. I'm not really looking forward to the 4 weeks of anesthesia during clinics...

 

[Caiter92]

Heh. I kind of like running anesthesia. Only had to do it twice out of the 12 surgery days though. I'm not really looking forward to the 4 weeks of anesthesia during clinics...

The week I was the anesthetist my dog was a nightmare under and I hated it lol first she went down hard with predrugs and her RR tanked, so the techs wanted us to get her into surgery early to get her on oxygen. But then when we were intubating her, she suddenly woke up after an entire dose of propofol, and she needed an extra half dose to get her down enough to do it.

First like half hour after we got her down was great. Then I had to breath for her for a good hour, while she was also tachycardic and hypertensive (I kept calling over our anesthesiologist to check if she needed more pain meds because I was like WTF). Her iso had to be at 3.5% for most of it because she was so light (I had every tech check by the end of her surgery to make sure her e tube wasn’t leaking because I kept having to bump it up, and wanted to be sure that wasn’t the issue haha).

Then all of 30 seconds after turning off her iso we had to pin her down in the hallway on the gurney so I could extubate her because she about jumped up lol

All-in-all, not my favorite experience

Our anesthesiologist did write me a nice review on my grading sheet though about being calm and being able to work through it haha

 

[WildZoo]

The week I was the anesthetist my dog was a nightmare under and I hated it lol first she went down hard with predrugs and her RR tanked, so the techs wanted us to get her into surgery early to get her on oxygen. But then when we were intubating her, she suddenly woke up after an entire dose of propofol, and she needed an extra half dose to get her down enough to do it.

First like half hour after we got her down was great. Then I had to breath for her for a good hour, while she was also tachycardic and hypertensive (I kept calling over our anesthesiologist to check if she needed more pain meds because I was like WTF). Her iso had to be at 3.5% for most of it because she was so light (I had every tech check by the end of her surgery to make sure her e tube wasn’t leaking because I kept having to bump it up, and wanted to be sure that wasn’t the issue haha).

Then all of 30 seconds after turning off her iso we had to pin her down in the hallway on the gurney so I could extubate her because she about jumped up lol

All-in-all, not my favorite experience

Our anesthesiologist did write me a nice review on my grading sheet though about being calm and being able to work through it haha

I am super glad I didn't have any bizarre cases like that. I was actually monitoring two dogs this past week because we had an extra surgery going on, but all I had to deal with for them was bradycardia...one of them we gave glycopyrrolate and she was fine after that, the other we just kept an eye on because it would go low and then bump back up and her blood pressure was fine the whole time.

Did have my giant Great Pyrenees neuter try to wake up before I was done closing, so that was fun...

It is good to have experiences like that when you're in school and have all the experts around though! So you learn how to work through it calmly (which it sounds like you did a great job of!) before you're out in practice on your own.

 

[Caiter92]

I am super glad I didn't have any bizarre cases like that. I was actually monitoring two dogs this past week because we had an extra surgery going on, but all I had to deal with for them was bradycardia...one of them we gave glycopyrrolate and she was fine after that, the other we just kept an eye on because it would go low and then bump back up and her blood pressure was fine the whole time.

Did have my giant Great Pyrenees neuter try to wake up before I was done closing, so that was fun...

It is good to have experiences like that when you're in school and have all the experts around though! So you learn how to work through it calmly (which it sounds like you did a great job of!) before you're out in practice on your own.

Yeah, I was prepared for hypotensive, bradycardia, and hypothermia, not the exact opposite of them all

Oh yeah, she was also hyperthermic (she got up to 103 from 99.5 before!) And I had never even turned her warmer on because she started climbing like as soon as we got her draped in and didn’t stop. That’s probably why she was burning through iso so fast. We turned her Baer hugger on cool air and at one point it was considered to get ice packs to run cool water through the mat thing because she wouldn’t stop climbing haha

Real glad it happened at school when I had someone to check with that I was handling it appropriately. Made me feel way calmer than I would have otherwise.

 

[WildZoo]

Yeah, I was prepared for hypotensive, bradycardia, and hypothermia, not the exact opposite of them all

Oh yeah, she was also hyperthermic (she got up to 103 from 99.5 before!) And I had never even turned her warmer on because she started climbing like as soon as we got her draped in and didn’t stop. That’s probably why she was burning through iso so fast. We turned her Baer hugger on cool air and at one point it was considered to get ice packs to run cool water through the mat thing because she wouldn’t stop climbing haha

Real glad it happened at school when I had someone to check with that I was handling it appropriately. Made me feel way calmer than I would have otherwise.

We had similar temp issues with my Pyr (probably because of all the floof). He started panting, not sure if that was related to him waking up or not but that was fun because he was moving so much I kept getting paranoid he was waking up while I was still, ya know, ligating things.

Crazy crazy it sounds like the anesthetics just decided not to work on your patient though!

 

[WildZoo]

I'm kind of salty that our surgery class is only worth one credit
Not only are we there for 4-6 hours a week, and we have to write an op report for every surgery, but we also have to do three article reviews and a topic paper. I know based on contact hours (1 hr per 4 hours of lab, 14 hrs = 1 credit) it is a one credit course, it just feels like with all the extra work it should be worth more.

Anyway they told us at the beginning of the semester to get our article reviews and topic paper done early, and yet here I am three days after they were due, still working on them...

 

[LyraGardenia]

I'm kind of salty that our surgery class is only worth one credit
Not only are we there for 4-6 hours a week, and we have to write an op report for every surgery, but we also have to do three article reviews and a topic paper. I know based on contact hours (1 hr per 4 hours of lab, 14 hrs = 1 credit) it is a one credit course, it just feels like with all the extra work it should be worth more.

Anyway they told us at the beginning of the semester to get our article reviews and topic paper done early, and yet here I am three days after they were due, still working on them...

Our surgery lab is only one credit too, I agree it's really annoying. We don't have to do article reviews or a paper, but the primary surgeon each week has to go in and SOAP their patient twice a day (roughly 7am and 7pm), which usually takes an hour each time. The patients stay at school for a week, so that's an extra ~14 hours of work the surgeons have to do. Last year they were able to split up the SOAPs between group members, but they changed it so the same person is examining the patient each time. We're only primary surgeon for two weeks out of the semester, but still it's a lot on top of classes and studying. And that 14 hours is assuming your patient is perfectly healthy, if they come in with issues that's even more time spent getting that taken care of. I could continue ranting about the problems with our junior surgery course (both lab and lecture, and how salty I am that they split them into separate grades but if anything upped the difficulty of lecture...), but yeah...

 

[WildZoo]

More complaining: why the heck should I bother to turn in anything on time when I have had one op report graded the entire semester? I did 10 surgeries. That is 10 op reports. And even the first one was graded two weeks late. For all I know all my op reports after the first one have major errors in them that I won't have time to fix because they won't be graded until I'm in the middle of finals

 

[Squeaksmom]

More complaining: why the heck should I bother to turn in anything on time when I have had one op report graded the entire semester? I did 10 surgeries. That is 10 op reports. And even the first one was graded two weeks late. For all I know all my op reports after the first one have major errors in them that I won't have time to fix because they won't be graded until I'm in the middle of finals

Is that 10 surgeries as primary surgeon? I thought we were doing well with 6!

 

[WildZoo]

Is that 10 surgeries as primary surgeon? I thought we were doing well with 6!

Yup yup! 4 dog spays (all adults), a cat spay, 2 adult dog neuters, and 3 puppy neuters.

 

[Teepster87]

Yup yup! 4 dog spays (all adults), a cat spay, 2 adult neuters, and 3 puppy neuters.

holy smokes.
i did 1 cat spay as primary and a neuter as assistant. you're killing it down there!

 

[WildZoo]

holy smokes.
i did 1 cat spay as primary and a neuter as assistant. you're killing it down there!

The downside is not everybody does live surgery before clinics. It's an elective, and you have two chances to take it. If you take it spring 2nd year you do about 6 surgeries as primary surgeon, and otherwise you are assistant or anesthetist. Taking it in the fall of 3rd year you get more surgeries because the 2nd year students run anesthesia so you're primary surgeon all but two weeks, and you don't have an assistant. Only 36 out of our class of 83 ended up taking it. We do have core rotations that include live surgeries, so everybody graduates with at least 4 surgeries, and then most everybody will do more on the spay/neuter mobile unless they opt out, but yeah, only 12 of us were in the elective this semester.

Some of that is probably changing with the new curriculum but I don't know the details for that class in particular.

 

[Caiter92]

The downside is not everybody does live surgery before clinics. It's an elective, and you have two chances to take it. If you take it spring 2nd year you do about 6 surgeries as primary surgeon, and otherwise you are assistant or anesthetist. Taking it in the fall of 3rd year you get more surgeries because the 2nd year students run anesthesia so you're primary surgeon all but two weeks, and you don't have an assistant. Only 36 out of our class of 83 ended up taking it. We do have core rotations that include live surgeries, so everybody graduates with at least 4 surgeries, and then most everybody will do more on the spay/neuter mobile unless they opt out, but yeah, only 12 of us were in the elective this semester.

Some of that is probably changing with the new curriculum but I don't know the details for that class in particular.

Woah! I knew this class was an elective for you, but I didn’t realize you didn’t have any sort of core junior surgery class, too.

We just do one spay as primary and one as assistant, plus another week as anesthesiologist.

I requested 4 weeks of sheltermed for clinics, so hopefully I get them so I can get more surgeries under my belt.

 

[sheltermed]

I requested 4 weeks of sheltermed

4 weeks of meeee

 

[WildZoo]

Woah! I knew this class was an elective for you, but I didn’t realize you didn’t have any sort of core junior surgery class, too.

We just do one spay as primary and one as assistant, plus another week as anesthesiologist.

I requested 4 weeks of sheltermed for clinics, so hopefully I get them so I can get more surgeries under my belt.

Our core surgery course only involves cadaver surgeries, so yeah, you could get to clinics without doing any live surgery. But on community practice you do four surgeries, and then lots on the spay/neuter mobile.

 

[supershorty]

Starting off finals week with having to tell my parents to put my/their dog down.

Knew it was coming, but doesn't make it suck less.

 

[WildZoo]

I'm so sorry @supershorty

 

[vetmedhead]

Hugs @supershorty

 

[awesomenessity]

Our core surgery course only involves cadaver surgeries, so yeah, you could get to clinics without doing any live surgery. But on community practice you do four surgeries, and then lots on the spay/neuter mobile.

Do you guys do any bovine or equine surgeries? Our (SAR, Squeaksmom and I) 6 surgeries are dog/cat neuter, dog/cat spay, equine castration and bovine exlap. Cool to see how different schools run things!

 

[WildZoo]

Do you guys do any bovine or equine surgeries? Our (SAR, Squeaksmom and I) 6 surgeries are dog/cat neuter, dog/cat spay, equine castration and bovine exlap. Cool to see how different schools run things!

Not live surgeries in any of our core classes that I am aware of. There is a large animal surgery elective where they use cadavers. I believe they do a castration day on equine surgery (which is an elective rotation). Sometimes you'll get more on farm animal or equine field services, which are both core, just depends on what cases you get. I know a couple people who did a bunch of pig castrations.

 

[awesomenessity]

Not live surgeries in any of our core classes that I am aware of. There is a large animal surgery elective where they use cadavers. I believe they do a castration day on equine surgery (which is an elective rotation). Sometimes you'll get more on farm animal or equine field services, which are both core, just depends on what cases you get. I know a couple people who did a bunch of pig castrations.

Interesting! Cadaver surgeries are one thing I wish our school did... lol. You just get thrown right into live animal surgery with no cadaver practice. I would have loved the opportunity to walk through the castration surgery (or our future surgeries we are going to do!) on a cadaver first, but resources and time are pretty limiting. We get our suturing labs etc on cadavers but not quite the same as doing a whole surgery start to finish.

 

[LyraGardenia]

Do you guys do any bovine or equine surgeries? Our (SAR, Squeaksmom and I) 6 surgeries are dog/cat neuter, dog/cat spay, equine castration and bovine exlap. Cool to see how different schools run things!

Here we have large animal surgery next semester, I don't know the details of how it's organized yet but I'm pretty sure the only thing that's required is a horse castration. There are optional opportunities for a bovine C-section or rumenotomy, and a small ruminant cadaver surgery lab, but it sounds like those are pretty competitive to get, the people who were interested had to submit a CV and a short essay explaining how it will benefit their future career. Hard pass for me.

This semester with small animal everyone has 2 weeks as primary surgeon (dog spays/neuters, I got one of each but some people got two spays or two neuters), 2 weeks as assistant surgeon, 2 weeks as anesthetist, and 2 weeks as circulator (basically a glorified tech - you help prep the patient, tie the surgeons into their gowns, open suture for them, find a clinician if they need help, clean stuff, etc.).

 

[WildZoo]

Interesting! Cadaver surgeries are one thing I wish our school did... lol. You just get thrown right into live animal surgery with no cadaver practice. I would have loved the opportunity to walk through the castration surgery (or our future surgeries we are going to do!) on a cadaver first, but resources and time are pretty limiting. We get our suturing labs etc on cadavers but not quite the same as doing a whole surgery start to finish.

Oh man that is terrifying

 

[LyraGardenia]

Interesting! Cadaver surgeries are one thing I wish our school did... lol. You just get thrown right into live animal surgery with no cadaver practice. I would have loved the opportunity to walk through the castration surgery (or our future surgeries we are going to do!) on a cadaver first, but resources and time are pretty limiting. We get our suturing labs etc on cadavers but not quite the same as doing a whole surgery start to finish.

We had a day of mock surgery on fresh cat cadavers, but they didn't have enough intact females for everybody, so some people still got thrown into a live spay without any practice. And for groups with males they just had them open the abdomen and suture it back up, so there wasn't really an opportunity for neuter practice either. But it was still nice to get the suture practice, considering they taught us suture patterns for the first time the week before that. (Classes after us now have clinical skills first and second year and learn suturing in there, but my class gets the short end of the stick with everything...)

 

[Caiter92]

I'm real glad we had clinical skills first year. I was really confident in my suturing skills going into my spay, since I'd had those down and had been practicing for a while. It just blows my mind some schools just give you a crash course in suturing right before you start surgery.

Was pretty terrified I was going to rupture a renal artery when I was trying to break the suspensory ligament on my spay though lol

 

[WildZoo]

We had a day of mock surgery on fresh cat cadavers, but they didn't have enough intact females for everybody, so some people still got thrown into a live spay without any practice. And for groups with males they just had them open the abdomen and suture it back up, so there wasn't really an opportunity for neuter practice either. But it was still nice to get the suture practice, considering they taught us suture patterns for the first time the week before that. (Classes after us now have clinical skills first and second year and learn suturing in there, but my class gets the short end of the stick with everything...)

Man, we had a whole semester of labs with a component of suture practice (our 2nd year surgery class). Granted that was only on cadavers a couple times - we had one lab with cats and one with dogs I think, and then one with pigs.

 

[WildZoo]

Was pretty terrified I was going to rupture a renal artery when I was trying to break the suspensory ligament on my spay though lol

I had that fear every time. It was the one part of the cat spay that I preferred to the dog spays lol

 

[Caiter92]

I had that fear every time. It was the one part of the cat spay that I preferred to the dog spays lol

Glad it wasn't just me haha

Some of my classmates were like "it's so easy! just grab it and do it harder!" Yeah okay but I also don't want to kill my dog so I'm not gonna go crazy in there

 

[WildZoo]

Glad it wasn't just me haha

Some of my classmates were like "it's so easy! just grab it and do it harder!" Yeah okay but I also don't want to kill my dog so I'm not gonna go crazy in there

Yeah. Apparently you're really unlikely to mess anything up if you go as far dorsal as possible and break it in a medial direction, but that doesn't make me feel too much better when I can't see what I'm doing!

 

[Caiter92]

Yeah. Apparently you're really unlikely to mess anything up if you go as far dorsal as possible and break it in a medial direction, but that doesn't make me feel too much better when I can't see what I'm doing!

Ha, same. Like I knew logically I was doing it correctly and nothing should be there I could harm. But also, WHAT IF

Clearly I’m not cut out to be a surgeon haha

 

[WildZoo]

Ha, same. Like I knew logically I was doing it correctly and nothing should be there I could harm. But also, WHAT IF

Clearly I’m not cut out to be a surgeon haha

I think maybe by the 4th one I was a little less freaked out. And then her subcu wouldn't stop bleeding and dripping into the abdomen so I freaked out that I had ruptured something because there was a little pool of blood, before I realized what it was from

 

[Caiter92]

I think maybe by the 4th one I was a little less freaked out. And then her subcu wouldn't stop bleeding and dripping into the abdomen so I freaked out that I had ruptured something because there was a little pool of blood, before I realized what it was from

I wish we did more than one as primary surgeon here. Haven’t been able to get a shelter spay day yet (only take 2 third years and it’s whoever RSVPs first... bad system). I think I’d feel better for my next one.

That was how the spay was the week I was assistant. Crazy how much the sub q can bleed.

 

[awesomenessity]

Oh man that is terrifying

Lol the preparation is literally "watch this video on dog castration, ok here is your dog you do surgery in the morning" Terrified is definitely how we all felt! But we all got through it and our patients did well!

 

[katashark]

We had like a surgery skills lab during 2nd year (no cadaver practice) and now for 3rd year we have live surgeries - dog spays, cat spays, dog neuters, and large animal surgeries next quarter. Then we have 3 weeks of high volume spay/neuter required during 4th year for every track. Every school is different.

 

[Trilt]

I think maybe by the 4th one I was a little less freaked out. And then her subcu wouldn't stop bleeding and dripping into the abdomen so I freaked out that I had ruptured something because there was a little pool of blood, before I realized what it was from

I still occasionally get oozy skin bleeders where I'll call another doctor in while I gutter check to just have them agree with me that the blood is all from the incision, lol. It always seems to happen in 70lb+ deep chested dogs and I ain't leaving no bleeding in that ****.

 

[itsrocky]

I put in all of scheduling wants for 4th year last week, but did I actually hit save? Stay tuned to find out

 

[Squeaksmom]

I was in the only group where neither of us ran anesthesia for our neuter. We only had one dog between us instead of one each, so they had us both scrub in and each do one testicle with a tech running anesthesia. Other groups had one person as surgeon and the other as anesthetist and switched for the second dog. Today we're running anesthesia for our dental lab, and I'm nervous and feel less prepared than the rest of the group.

 

[WildZoo]

I was in the only group where neither of us ran anesthesia for our neuter. We only had one dog between us instead of one each, so they had us both scrub in and each do one testicle with a tech running anesthesia. Other groups had one person as surgeon and the other as anesthetist and switched for the second dog. Today we're running anesthesia for our dental lab, and I'm nervous and feel less prepared than the rest of the group.

You'll do great! Running anesthesia is always a little scary, even if you've done it for years. Think of it like this though - you have a safety net in this setting, professors there to help you if something goes wrong. It's the best environment to be in when you're doing anything for the first time, and they also know you're learning.

 

[Squeaksmom]

You'll do great! Running anesthesia is always a little scary, even if you've done it for years. Think of it like this though - you have a safety net in this setting, professors there to help you if something goes wrong. It's the best environment to be in when you're doing anything for the first time, and they also know you're learning.

Doggo woke up and tried to leave when we rolled him to his second lateral, but other than that little hitch it went well (and I was sure glad there were experienced people there when it happened!).

 

[Caiter92]

Finals start in five days, and I've reached the point in my not studying where I'm anxious and it's making me not want to study and then it just makes me more anxious.

Finals week is gonna go great guys

 

[WildZoo]

Finals start in five days, and I've reached the point in my not studying where I'm anxious and it's making me not want to study and then it just makes me more anxious.

Finals week is gonna go great guys

Same except my first final is tomorrow and I also haven't finished this paper that is due in less than two hours and ahahaha I don't know what I'm doing

 

[SARdoghandler]

Doggo woke up and tried to leave when we rolled him to his second lateral, but other than that little hitch it went well (and I was sure glad there were experienced people there when it happened!).

At least yours was breathing! Fun story about an interesting anesthesia was here but is now gone.

No direct quoting please, I may remove most of the details soon

 

[Squeaksmom]

@SARdoghandler Our dog the other week stopped breathing on induction, so btdt on part of it.... Sorry yours was rough!

 

[WildZoo]

Definitely had several that didn't want to breathe for a bit after induction (thanks, propofol).

Also learned a couple months ago that pigeons don't like breathing under anesthesia, at all, ever.

 

[Caiter92]

Same except my first final is tomorrow and I also haven't finished this paper that is due in less than two hours and ahahaha I don't know what I'm doing

I'm currently eating a cookie and snuggling with my cat. This is how you do finals right?

Update: cat left me. Even he knows I'm doomed.

Second update: tried to bring both of the cats back to the couch and they abandoned me again. They can't associate with such failure.

 

[Squeaksmom]

Definitely had several that didn't want to breathe for a bit after induction (thanks, propofol).

Also learned a couple months ago that pigeons don't like breathing under anesthesia, at all, ever.

Neither do chickens....

 

[awesomenessity]

^ Our anesthesia record was... interesting "stable but low... stable but low... blood pressure/heart rate/resp rate rollercoaster wheeeeeee" Shout out to @Beagle-Brigade for ventilating our poor pup haha

 

[grebes4lyfe]

Definitely had several that didn't want to breathe for a bit after induction (thanks, propofol).

Also learned a couple months ago that pigeons don't like breathing under anesthesia, at all, ever.

I do avian anesthesia v regularly and 99% of my patients don’t breathe on their own under anesthesia at all.
The ones that do are usually gulls or ducks. But still super rarely.
ETA: and if they do breathe on their own—it’s not enough!!
We have to to constant HR monitoring and breathe 4-6x/min for all patients, even those who may *technically* still breathe 1-2x/min on their own