April 11th- volunteering at the clinic

So with all the things going on, I probably should have stayed home and studied physiology however, what better way to learn than to learn it hands on.
I arrived at the clinic a little before 7:30am and the clinicians put us right to work because the 4th termers were not there because they are taking midterms or some rounds of tests this week. There were several dogs that we did kennels on and medicated at first and then we went on to the rooms working with clients. There was this one dog that had been hit by a stone of some sort on its head and so it had a nasty gaping oozy wound that we shaved up and scrubbed, but not before we sedated the little dog with dormitor. To do this I got to put a cathetor in the dog and had absolutely no problem putting it in. It went right in with no prob and I was very excited. Once we sedated the little dog we could see how much damage was actually there. The wound was stinky and discusting and we tested the dog for hw/erl/lymes and it tested positive for Erlichia which is actually the an antibody response. The poor dog had millions of ticks all over it especially in its ears and in it cutaneous marginal pouch (which is that little pouch in the dogs ear). Instead of putting the dog on doxycicline she gave it cephalosporin IV. We shaved it all up and then drenched it in Adams tick and flea and give it a sulf/dex bath. The dog upon waking up I am sure will feel like a totally diffrent dog.

The we got to go into a room with a Rotweiler that was down. It had some kind of small puncture wound on its right front paw but the fact that we had to carry the 19 kilogram animal into the exam room was more of a concern. Blood was taken and a CBC / Chem 12 was run. The results showed that the dog was in renal and liver failure however the total protien was extremely high also so the clinician explained to us that the renal values could be the result of severe dehydration. The dog was also heartworm and erylician positive. The dog was placed on IV at a maintainance level. The clinican showed us how to calculate the amount of IV a dog would need which is as follows.
shock: 90ml/kg/hr
maintainance:90ml/kg/24hours
surgery: 10ml/kg/hr

By the time that we finished with the rotweiler it was time to go to class. It was so good to be back working in a clinic again. I can hardly wait till this summer to work again. It is just so fun. I guess that it is good that I love to do this stuff as much as I do no matter how gross it can get.

My sunday went well, Brian got to meet Phil the missionary because he went to church with me and we talked to him about the boat. We are going to go out and see it sometime soon. Hopefully it will work out, we will see.
Sorry if I bored you with my above paragraph about the clinic work that I did this morning. It was so fun though.
All of you take care, love you and miss you. Hope all is well!!
Peace out!