Only Just the Beginning

Being at the shelter this semester, working alongside people who share the same passion as I do, has been an experience that I will always treasure! I was honored to have the privilege of learning so much in my field of interest. I think what I value most from this experience is the medical knowledge I acquired by working in the lab on a regular basis. I learned all about different medications to use in certain situations as well as new terminology that I wasn't familiar with before. I'm sad to see the semester end, but happy at the same time that I got to not only be apart of volunteering at the humane society to help with whatever I could but I also gained a tremendous amount of experience. I will 100% most definitely return to the shelter this summer doing anything I can. Even if it isn't an internship or everyday scheduled things, I want to stay involved. 

I learned a little bit of everything from everyone. The veterinarian was very good at involving me, even if it were little jobs (like stretching out the vet-wrap!) or shaving a cat for spaying. The lab manager was always able to clear up any questions I had about medicine and taught me all about different procedures to take in different situations. For example, we recently looked at a dogs eye because it was really gooey and she explained to me that the dog was probably having difficulty producing natural tears so the eye would have an excess of discharge that was unable to be washed away. Because of this, we used eye irrigator to rinse out his eye, and started him on artificial tear-drops monitoring daily for improvement. Staff members were probably the best at showing me techniques. Finding a good spot to hear the lungs through a stethescope, how to make a vein not roll when drawing blood, how to make a cat stop purring... all these things were shown to me by experienced staff members! Most recently, I helped to bottle feed kittens! They taught me how to use a warm, wet cotton ball to stimulate the kitten to urinate and defecate before and after feedings. Even though it wasn't all that glamorous, it was something that I had never done before! Even peforming wellness exams with my fellow interns was beneficial because we were able to share what we knew and offer our own techniques and assistance to each other.

This internship couldn't have gone better. Every weekend I woke up ready and excited to go in and see what was in store. It's a great feeling to know that I will love what I do after vet school and I have the humane society to thank for that!

Drawing Blood & SNAP Tests

Drawing blood on an animal is not only important but also one of my favorite things to do at the shelter. It is probably the most invasive thing that I get to take part in with lab work so I take it very seriously. I must admit, I wasn't very good at drawing blood at first. It seemed like if it wasn't one thing, it was another. For example, my first problem was not being able to find the right vein. I would confuse a tendon with a vein pretty easily. One way that I learned to tell the difference is to just feel what I think might be the vein. If you push down on it ever so slightly, it should "bounce" if it is indeed the vein. If it feels mroe hard and not so elastic, then it is most likely a tendon. I also learned to use alcohol to swab the entrance area in order to make the skin more visible. If the skin is more visible than I can actually see the blue color underneath it leading me to the correct vein. Up until today, I've only ever drawn blood on cats and kittens. On felines, I have learned to draw blood from the medial saphenous vein which is on the inside of their back leg. The person restraining the cat will "karate chop" the leg above the knee in order to make the vein stick out more. Whoever is drawing blood then has a better chance of finding the vein! Kittens are probably the hardest for me because their veins are so tiny! After doing a few though, I have them down pretty good. I found it easiest to hold my left thumb alongside the vein so it doesn't roll around (kitten veins have a bad habit of doing this!) and use my right hand to line up the needle with the vein in a parallel fashion. From there it is just skill to keep your hands steady and having a good eye.

SNAP FIV/FeLV Combo Test

So what do we do with the blood now that we have it? On cats we can check for FeLV (Feline Leukemia Virus) and FIV (Feline Immunodeficiency Virus) by reading the results. First, though, we have to set it up! We need about three drops of blood sample and about four drops of a conjugate including in the kit to run the test. After we have mixed these two together briefly, we then pour the entire contents of the mixture into the sample portion of the SNAP test. Then we wait for a while and read our results! As seen in the picture, the dots on the side indicate if the cat has either FeLV or FIV. If the cat is healthy and has neither, then the only dot that should appear is the one closest to the sample. I enjoy doing lab work like this as a student because I get a feel for what types of things a veterinarian does all day. Being a vet isn't only about working directly with the animal, but it's about working in the lab too. This can mean doing bloodwork, ear cytologys, urinalyses, fecal floats and microscope work. I love being able to get my feet wet in all these fields whie I'm still an undergraduate!

Surgery!

Today I got to help out with the spay/neuter clinic again! Except this time I got to observe the surgeries more closely than last time. To start though, I prepared Felovax and Rabies vaccines to give the cats. Once all the cats had be anesthetized, shaved, and scrubbed, the surgeries began! I I got to see a variety of different suture knots and incision techniques. I took advantage of the situation by asking the veterinarian any questions I had. Most of the questions I asked had to do with what things were called. For example, I learned that a cruciate mattress suture looks like a bunch of "x's." I also learned why certain procedures are used. For example, I learned that we suture many layers of the body in order to eliminate the dead space and reduce the risk of infection. One thing that the vet stressed over and over again was that we, as future surgeons, want to limit the amount of foreign material that we put into the body.

Similar to the spay packs I prepared.

Another valuable piece of information that I learned happened when I was cleaning and setting up the next surgery instruments! The medical lab director went over what the tools were all called. Just like with the lymph nodes, I had an idea of what certain things were called, but truly know it now. This spay pack included a spay hook (the long tool with a hook on the end) which is used to scoop out the uterus, uterine horns, and ovaries. Have a smooth hook on the end helps to grab on to the horns and pull the organs up through the incision site. Other tools in the pack were straight and curved hemostats. These are the scissor looking tools that when pinched together, stick together. These are used to cut off a blood flow of a vein to tie off or to hold other tissues and cut off the blood supply there. This is important because if the blood flow wasn't restricted, the animal could likely bleed out and it could turn into a detrimental situation.


I found this day to be particularly exciting for me because I've always wanted to specialize in surgical procedures beyond spaying/neutering. Being able to have the privilege of observing a real vet and vet students perform these surgeries is something I will forever remember!