As promised...

Here's the previously mentioned article, again in uncut, unedited form...because I couldn't be bothered to edit it. I hope you get a kick out of it.

The Final Countdown

The Journey Begins…

The alarm clock was set for 7 am on that morning of February 18th, 2001. Didn’t need it though, as I hadn’t slept very well the night before. Rotations were starting! Rotations!! I couldn’t believe I had made it – once I saw that I had passed my fourth year exam, I was in absolute disbelief. I had an ENTIRE WEEKEND to prepare for rotations…lucky me.
I attempted to study up on principles of equine surgery (which was my first rotation!), and got through approximately 4 pages of my notes before I got bored. “Ah, never mind,” I told myself, “I have just studied for and passed my fourth year exam. I am sure there’s still enough info in this thick skull of mine to get me through!” So, I proceeded to put the books away and enjoyed my last weekend of peace, relaxation and freedom.
When that morning arrived, I bounced out of bed at approximately 5:45am. Went in to the shower and had a shave, and noticed that all of the rest of my housemates were also awake at the same ungodly hour. By this time it was around 6:30am, and I had an hour and a half to kill, so I picked up a good ol’ equine surgery book, proceeded to read the same sentence 346 times and closed it again. I was too excited to retain any info, I was about to start the elusive ROTATIONS!!!
I attempted to get some food down my neck, but that too wasn’t happening, because I was too nervous to eat. I put on my newly purchased olive green boiler suit and put my shiny new name badge on perfectly straight. I made sure I had a pen torch, thermometer, haemostats, scissors, pad, and about 4 pens (just in case). Oh, and I couldn’t forget the flash new stethoscope I bought!! I opened the door and headed out to start a new and exciting day…
I arrived at the introductory session run by one of the equine nurses. She handed us a 40 page booklet which had tons of scary rules and regulations in them, dress code, etc. She then proceeded to dump me with a clinician who I had never seen before, and I stood quietly aside while she examined a horse, not once looking in my direction or acknowledging my presence. We then took this horse in to x-ray, took approximately 14,000 x-rays of its legs, went down to ultrasound to look at some tendons, and planned to bone scan it the following day. I still had no idea what this horse’s problem was. The clinician finally turned to me and spoke. She said “This is your case. Take it to the top barns and read up on proximal suspensory desmitis.” My first case!! How exciting! I immediately took the horse up to a stall, carefully put her in, made sure she had water, closed the stall door, checking 3 times to be sure it was closed, and left. I saw some of my fellow rotation-mates wandering around like lost puppies and said, “Hey! I have a case! What are you lot up to??” They all had cases too, and were thinking of going to the library. Good plan, I thought, so off we went.
As we sat there in the library, with books open to pages talking about proximal suspensory desmitis, neurectomies, colic and teeth extraction, we immediately got f**ked off with reading and decided that this would be a good time to sort out the out-of-hours duty rota. How exciting!! We would be solely responsible for treating these sick horses overnight! How grown up and vet-like! I immediately volunteered for the first night’s shift. We examined the duty rota, and were hard pressed to figure just what the hell it was going on about. How many of us were supposed to be on duty per night? 3? 4? Some of the duties were supposed to be covered by the equine medicine rotation group, but how many? What about weekends? How many people per shift? After an hour or so of arguing, we managed to sort it out, and had our first week of duties scheduled. We each had to do approximately 3 shifts per week – including one weekend shift – in order to be fair. I would do that first night, as well as Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning. Sorted.
After pissing about in the library for another few minutes, we saw that it was nearing noon. Time for our 12 o’clock checks! Yippee!! Responsibility!
Off we went to our respective horses, being sure not to dare enter the horse box without one of our classmates present as well – that would be unsafe! Upon examining the files of our horses, we were confronted with 4,000 different coloured papers. After 30 minutes of attempting to figure out what the f**k each of these papers was for, I finally found the appropriate sheets – the yellow ones to write our daily SOAP’s and any other comments on, and the pink ones to see what drug dosages to give and when. All the rest might as well have been loo roll as far as I could tell. We carefully administered our respective drugs (how cool to be giving IM injections on our own!!!), and took their TPR (temperature, pulse, respiration rate). Then off we went for lunch.
After lunch, 3 new cases came in. Two lameness work-ups and a colic. The colic obviously had to be sorted first – it was determined to be medical, chucked in a stall and observed. The lameness work-ups took us well beyond 7pm – both had to be trotted, lunged, x-rayed, nerve blocked, trotted and lunged again – and were both scheduled for further work up in the morning. Just as I was about to head home, completely exhausted…the colic decided to go from medical to surgical. Seeing as I chose to be on duty that night, I had to stay and help.
Equine surgeries are interesting events – seeing as how they are usually emergencies (in the case of colic especially), they routinely take two to three hours TO GET STARTED. Yes, that’s right. By the time the surgery was over, at 2 am, after lots of standing around while the clinicians cut, cursed, yelled, cursed some more, did some maneuvering and suturing, cursed a few more times, and closed the poor horse’s abdomen, it was time to call it a day. I got home at 2:15 am, shoved some food down my throat, and passed out, just to awake 4 hours later to do it all again.
By the end of my four weeks on equine surgery, I would roll out of bed at approximately 7:40am (to be in for 8am), brushed my teeth, ate a breakfast bar, and put on my smelly, dirty, barely recognizable overalls. My nametag was all beaten up, I lost all of my pens, and my haemostats may have been left attached to some bloody mess somewhere for all I remember. I stumbled in to my horses’ stalls alone and gave them their drugs. Their TPR was routinely 38.5/32/12, as I couldn’t be bothered to measure it. When I left the stalls, I slid them closed behind me, never bothering to check how well they had shut. Any free time I could manage, I slept. Social life? Ha! However….I could recognize a lame horse and identify the lame leg. I could tell you all about colic. I could tell you about location of nerve blocks. I could tell you about tendons. I could tell you about bone scanning, xraying, and ultrasound. The amount of practical information I had learned astounded me.
Rotations. The privilege to bust our arses all day long, all night long, and all the hours in between….for free. Some call it an exciting learning experience. Others call it slave labour. In truth, I think it is a combination of both. In retrospect, although it was extremely hard work and you often get frustrated, the times I have spent with my rotation group have probably been the most fun I have ever had. You bond quite closely with your group-mates, as you are going through the trenches together. Not only is it fun, but you learn so much more than you ever could from books. Responsibility. The practical stuff. The good stuff. The Vet Stuff. And that’s what its all about, baby.

Ah the good ol' days, when all that mattered was responsibility, graduating vet school, and becoming a doctor. Now I am married, and starting to think about buying a house. Amazing how priorities shift, isn't it?

Til tomorrow,

-B