A crazy day!!

OK, well, I'm unsure really where to begin!

The morning started off with 2 cat neuters and a cat spay. Nothing too exciting, until over lunch, when one of the Vets asked if I wanted to help with a post mortem!! I said yes, OF COURSE!

It ended up that there were two of them! One, came in after a drastic one week weight loss. The vet palpated him and did an ultrasound, only to discover that there was what seemed to be a huge mass on his right kidney. The vet on this case sent out for numerous tests, (all of which I drew blood for). They had also been getting me to give him morning and afternoon treatments, however the vet suspected that it was a tumor.

Anyways...this morning the small animal tech is braiding a tail ( something we do for the clients when their horse die), so I say " whose tail is that", and when she told me my heart sank!
For insurance reasons we got to do a post mortem on him.

Although there was no tumor on the right kidney, it was HUGE. MASSIVE in fact. We also took out the left kidney to compare, and although that one was larger than normal also, the right one by far over shadowed it! We also looked at the lungs, and HO- LY. There was a tumorus like object on the lungs that is for sure. This thing was the size of a baseball. When I cut it out of the lungs, I had a hard time getting my hand to go all around it! While pulling out the small and large intestine, we also noticed a part of the small intestine that was VERY thick!

We then moved onto the next horse. One of the other vets put her down because when he rectaled her and did an ultrasound he found there to be little noddules all over her spleen.

While doing the post mortem, the spleen was in fact covered with these noddules, but, when I cut into the diaphragm and stuck my arm in, there was blood everywhere! I told the vet, but she didnt think much of it. That's when I pulled out this huge blood clot. It was GI-Normous! That's when she stuck her arm in and agreed that there was a good amount of blood!

While trying to find another clot, she ran her hand against the ribs where there was a very bumpy like surface...VERY WEIRD! She then went looking for the heart to see if she could find another clot, and she did in fact find one...with melanomas and fat all throughout it. (This was a grey mare, so melanomas are quite common). So this confirmed what the vet had suspected.

After all of this excitement, I STANK of death. Well...more so the gases of the intestines than death...but still...I stank! My rectal sleeve that I was wearing even got a tear in it and filled with blood, so no I smell AND my hand is stained redish. It's gross. But that's what a washer is for! ( not my hand...clearly!, but all of my smelly clothes!)

Nothing else happened that is worth writing about except.......

Tonight, as I started my blog, and before the head tech left for the night, she asked me, she said "After your Ojt how much more do you have?" and I said that after this I'm done like dinner! So she said " Do you want to work with Cows? or horses? or small animals?", and before I could answer she said " Well what I mean is, if you were to be offered a job, what would you want to work on", and so I said horses. Then she said " so you want to stay out here? " and I said " MOST DEFINATELY" :) So, although this might not mean ANYTHING, it also may mean SOMETHING!!!!!!

And that's pretty much all that I've got for tonight! Oh yes, I'm going to Banff tomorrow :) I'm very excited about this. Also, Kate told me that I am going to be placing a catheter on Thursday, and that's when I told her that I was up until 11pm the other night practicing my sutures. Yes, keaner, and yes, tired, but at least I can suture now :)

Okay! To bed I go. Have to be well rested for the big trip to the mountains tomorrow!!