It began with the best Food Friday I have ever had- we all decided on a brunch theme and there were two types of quiches, some veggies, some fruits, croissants and Italian bread, cookies, Havarti cheese, crackers, pineapple icebox dessert, orange juice, and just an awesome day laughing with some new friends.
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| This is Star <3 |
Next I had the most perfect patient- a 3 month old miniature donkey who first came to Cornell because her back foot had been dislocated in a traumatic accident. Several rounds of surgery, screws, and cast changes, she came to me for a recheck and to see if one of the two screws could be removed (screws near the ends of bones in young, growing animals can cause angular limb deformities if not removed at the proper time.) Star was easily sedated and placed under general anesthesia.I will say this, though, I did not expect how gross it was underneath the cast. I won't go into the details, but let's just say there was a lot of white and yellow stuff on the floor. And it smelled bad enough to "make a maggot leave the meat pile." In the end, the cast change became a bandage placement instead, along with some antibiotics. Now usually horses and other equids recover from general anesthesia in large padded stalls with rubber floors. It's one of the safest ways that an animal can wake up, but horses are flight animals by instinct and sometimes recoveries are
Then I spoke with her owner- an awesome guy who just happened to commute to Pittsburgh for his work about every month or so. We had some nice conversations about the Pirates and places at the Strip District which have the best bread, about rescuing horses and other animals, and at one point how I accidentally killed 5 fish in my youth because while I knew how to bait a hook, I never knew how to take the hook out of the fish's mouth after I caught it. He then told me that he's deathly afraid of needles, and the resident agreed with my advice to change Star's medications from an intramuscular antibiotic to an oral form. I showed him how to apply a sterile bandage, and where to get the best deals on non-sterile items such as brown gauze and cotton rolls. The man shook my hand and said he would come back to Cornell only if I were still here to be Star's vet- a phrase which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Finally, at the end of the day, when I was tired and had walked 6 miles around the hospital according to my pedometer app, when I was helping other colleagues with their patients because my single patient was easy to get him settled for the night, the resident who I thought had always disliked me told me that I clearly had come a long way from when she first met me in September (my first rotation was Anesthesia, the second was Large Animal Orthopedics: I was a truly bumbling idiot for that first entire month of clinics because I had just moved from a different country, I didn't know anyone, I didn't know where anything was located, and the computer program we used was not user-friendly.)
She then said,
"You know, we were hard on you because we know you're going to be a great equine veterinarian."
