My Surgery Dog is Here!

Today I met my victim, I mean patient, for my surgery tomorrow.  He is a very cute, extremely friendly 12 week old pit bull mix.  He is full of energy and he really makes me want to adopt him, however I just can't with all my traveling around I do and such.  I definitely think it would be neat to adopt the dog who I performed my first surgery on though!  At lunch break today I drew blood from him, performed a physical exam, and wrote up his exam report.  Two of my partners ran the bloodwork for me and my last partner Cari (who is going to be assistant surgeon tomorrow) helped restrain the dog for the exam.  When I first went to get blood I failed miserably at the jugular vein stick (the big vein in the neck) even though I could feel it very well which frustrated me quite a bit.  I finally drew the blood from the saphenous vein on the outside of the back leg.  This evening I had to draw a little more blood since we forgot to check his protein levels and I hit the jugular no problem, not sure what my deal was this afternoon.  After class, I drew the second round of blood, took just a heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature, clipped him up for surgery, typed up the exam report, and entered charges into the computer.  Again, my partner Cari helped me.  My other partners are Mike (who is the anesthetist this week) and Olga (who is the floater this week).  Tomorrow morning I have to be to school around 530AM to do another exam on our dog, and then start getting ready to do my surgery.  I will probably start the surgery around 830AM give or take a half hour or so.  I have to say, after today's events I am pretty excited about doing the surgery, just working with the dog was a lot of fun (especially since he is such a good dog, although quite wiggly!)  I will hopefully write here tomorrow to let you know how the actual surgery went (hopefully good!)