So, back in sunny SA - must say that not having to wear thermals in summer is quite a novel experience! Been back at school (well, pretty much!) for the past 3 weeks, and really enjoying it! I even have my own office where i can go and hide when i can't think of anything else to do!! Students are still quite a hazard to themselves, and i've spent a lot of time saying things like,'Get someone to hold that dog properly while you take blood, or it will bite you!' or 'Please put a pole between you and that cow, otherwise she's going to back up and squash you against the crush!' or 'WILL YOU PUT THAT CAT IN A PROPER BASKET BEFORE IT JUMPS OUT ITS IGLOO AND GETS EATEN BY A PASSING BOERBOEL!!!' You can tell i was feeling quite strongly about the last one!! Honestly, i am quite surprised that final year students (us included!) make it through their last year without grievous bodily harm, because there sure is lots of opportunity for it!!!
Like last week, the final year student and i were examining a bull in the crush, when some of the handlers decided to bring in another bull... only thing was, that they hadn't checked the corridor through which the bull was supposed to make his way to the aforementioned crush, and while they were outside chasing the bull in, one of the grooms had walked past and undone the gates that the bull was supposed to go through, to take some sawdust shavings somewhere. Anyway, the first lot of bull wranglers chased the bull through what, when they had left it, was a straight and well organised pathway to the crush, only thing was, as the bull came round the corner, all the gates were open!! So it turned into something akin to the running of the bulls in pamplona... bull takes immediate advantage of his freedom and charges up the corridor towards the equine stalls, only to spot our bull out of the corner of his eye!! So he makes a rapid left turn and charges straight at our bull, who until that point was standing quite well in the crush. Our bull mounts a counter attack, attempting to climb out of the crush to face this interloper! The student hotfoots it out right into the pathway of the incoming bull in an attempt to shut the gate to stop the bull's progress. And there was a split second when it all looked to be going well, and the student looked triumphant at having averted a potentially bad situation….until he tugged the gate and realised that it was firmly chained to the wall. Doh. So here he is, in the pathway of about 1 tonne of bull and i could see that realisation dawn on him suddenly. Anyway, at the very last moment, the bull turned to face the confined bull headon and didn't take on the student. OMG my heart was in my mouth. The student had made it all the way to his final week of clinics only to be mown down!! Luckily not. There was great activity to get the free bull back to where he came from, which was luckily achieved without any harm coming to anyone! Who needs to go to Spain?!
Am learning loads, mainly when to keep my mouth shut! We've got a Prof who is incredibly thorough and who thinks things through to the n th degree, so when ever he asks for my (very humble) opinion on anything and i say something like, 'yes Prof, i think we should castrate it or whatever,' He'll go,'No Kate, there is no evidence to support that particular line of thought.' And that's me, chastised. This was the man who, while with his arm up a bull (yes) worked out the circumference of a bloodvessel using pi!!!!!! Now, i can barely work out drug dosages when everything's in multiples of 5 and i have a calculator (ok, so maths is not really a strong point!) and here's this man, covered in cowshit (the bull had projectile diarrhoea and managed to land some squarely inside the Prof's boot! Almost had to walk away at the point so as not to laugh!) working out things using pi. Amazing.
Am doing a locum down in vanderbijlpark - for those of you who don't know, it's somewhere south of Jo'burg, pretty industrial and pretty flat (hey, i'm from Cape Town, need Mountains and dassies! ;-) ) Everyone keeps asking me where i'm from, and are very surprised when i say SA. My Afrikaans, never a strong point (along with the maths!) has been sorely tested. I keep finding myself in the company of smallish Afrikaans children (I don't know how, it just happens! The vet who i'm locumming for has 3!) and trying to speak Afrikaans and failing miserably. These children must think that i'm a complete idiot (who can't even work out the circumference of a circle using pi either!) Anyway, possibly not having worked in SA for 4 years, not knowing any of the drug names or dosages and not being able to speak Afrikaans very well, should have put me off this one, but for some reason, it didn't. So have found myself in sole charge of a very busy practice, and it seems that all neighbouring practices have gone away for the long weekend and left our after hours number! That coupled with the fact that they’ve got a lot of equipment that should be confined to a museum (including the microscope! Which is not a good thing when you need to find tick bite fever parasites on a blood smear…) But then have a state of the art pulse oximeter… strange. So I have to speed read all the drugs, and found a strange one,’Ketofen 1% For Dogs and Chats’ No, kid you not! Just dogs and chats! The old biddy that I’m working with has been a bit narky and keeps telling me I’m not charging enough for stuff, but then won’t help me find anything on the computer, maintaining, ‘It’s there, luvvy, just go into transactions, new transactions, new clients, new pets, protocol, services, stock, add new blah blah blah.’ Oh yeah, sure, with a consult room full of people, running about 2 hours late, like I have time to do that??!!! And then I hear her on the phone going,’Yes, I have a locum here, so we’re running so far behind.’ Ok, I’ll stop now, I’m beginning to sound bitter and twisted!!!
I’m staying at the vet’s house, so Loki (my dog) has got a bit of company in the form of 3 teacup Yorkies and a lab x rottie. He can’t quite figure the Yorkies out, especially since one is very pregnant and the other one coming into season, and whenever he starts sniffing around they literally bite his head off, saying something like ,’Will you just f*** off!’ in dog! Too much oestrogen and he’s very confused!
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