Ortho

I believe that this orthopedic surgery rotation has been the fastest moving rotation so far of all of them! I am admittedly not really into orthopedic procedures and will probably never be an orthopedic surgeon, however, the days tend to be quite busy and I've had a lot going on at school so the times just moves!  On Wednesday I had a black lab that had a tibial plateau leveling osteotomy (TPLO).  This involves cutting a piece of the tibia close to the femur and rotating it so that the tibia no longer moves forward when the dog walks.  This moving forward rotation doesn't normally happen but my dog had ruptured its cranial cruciate ligament, the ligament that prevents the tibial from moving forward.  While I'm glad I saw one, I did not find the surgery super interesting and am fine knowing that chances are pretty good that I won't  see another one.  Today I took over a case for one of my classmates who is gone today and this weekend.  She is a super sweet pitbull who last Friday sat down for a treat and couldn't get back up. She is not walking at all since her hind legs don't work but hopefully she will start at some point soon.  We will see.  

My classmate who is in surgery at this moment with her dog has another pit bull that is very aggressive.  It spent last night in the ICU and it couldn't go outside since no one can handle it.  It had a long tube attached to its IV catheter so that the anesthesia people didn't have to open the door to sedate it before bringing it to anesthesia.  It has a basket muzzle on at all time but lunged at my classmate when she tried putting food in its cage.  He will remain in the anesthesia recovery room after surgery sedated until his owners come to pick him up.  

I don't have any surgeries today which is fine with me so it's a little slower day for me which is nice.  This weekend I plan to be in Champaign so will hopefully get some studying done as I take boards three weeks from this Wednesday.  I also switch rotations to internal medicine on Monday so hopefully won't have quite as long days as I have been having on ortho.  In closing, here is a picture taken of me and two of my classmates watching a surgery through the surgery suite windows.  We sat like this just to make the surgeons uncomfortable and someone wanted to grab a picture of us (proof that not everything in vet school is serious):