Saturday, August 27, 2011

All Work and No Play??? Nooo....

The Arch at sunrise from the hotel room.
I recently had the opportunity to take a trip to St. Louis, Missouri for continuing education hosted by the American Veterinary Medical Association. This is one of the fun parts of my job! With the exchange of a few hours of learning and sitting in the classroom again, I got the chance to see somewhere new, eat some good food and see some old friends. It's a small price to pay! I had a great time at the conference and learned some newer approaches to diabetes, liver disease, urinary disease, obesity in cats and much more. But, I want to talk more about the off time, the time I spent outside of the classroom.

I had never visited St. Louis before. The conference was downtown, so I chose to book a hotel right by the Gateway Arch. One of my best friends from vet school went to the conference with me and we decided to share a room. We had a blast together and it seemed like we had an adventure every night! 

The first night, Friday, I got to catch up with some old friends that had recently moved to St. Louis from Florida. They showed me around and took me to eat at Blueberry Hill, where you can still catch regular performances by Chuck Berry.


The fire truck outside of our hotel.
Then, the second night, as soon as my friend and I walked through the front doors of our hotel after dinner, the fire alarm sounded. We all evacuated and waited for the fire department to give us the okay to enter again. Come to find out, one of the child beauty pageant contestants (our hotel was flooded with little toddlers and tiaras!) set off the alarm with her curlers and lost all of her dresses from water damage! Our room was just two rooms over and two floors down.

The U2 360 degree stage.
The most exiting day came on Sunday! This was the day that my husband wished that he had been there too! We had heard the locals talking all weekend about how U2 was coming to town to play in Busch Stadium. We watched as the gigantic 360 degree stage was erected and was amazed by its glory. Since my husband is a huge U2 fan and a studier of The Edge, I kept him up to date on the progress of the stage via picture texts.

My friend and I at the U2 concert.
The concert was Sunday night and the downtown area became flooded with people coming to watch the concert as my friend and I were trying to get dinner. We could hear the opening band perform as we ate dinner at the restaurant across from the stadium. We decided that we would stand outside of the stadium to listen to U2 play that night...an opportunity of a lifetime! However, little did we know, on our way back to our hotel, a sketchy dude on the street corner would try to sell us his tickets...for the "bargain price" of $100 each!! Yeah, ok, that wasn't a deal. The concert had already started! We walked away when he wouldn't go below $50 for two. We decided to hit up the next guy we came to on the side of the street and we were actually able to swindle him down to $45 for two tickets to see U2!! We made it to the concert before U2 took stage and it was the most amazing concert ever!! It was a beautiful day!

Not much could top the cheap, excellent U2 concert! But our trip just kept getting better. By the next night, the water from the fire two nights ago had finally reached our room. We got moved to an upgraded room at no charge! That sounded good to us! By Tuesday night, we were both ready to get home and see our husbands again! We spent our last night in St. Louis with my friends from Florida again. They took us to have some authentic St. Louis barbecue.

The Mississippi River from our upgraded room.
We spent a lot of time walking around downtown St. Louis and site-seeing. We never actually made it up the Arch, but we were able to visit the museum and walked around the Arch. We saw the Mississippi River and even wandered into Illinois by mistake! We had a blast while learning a lot about our profession. Trips like this are refreshing because it allows us to get away, but more importantly, it increases our flame of passion for our careers. I couldn't wait to get back to work and share what I learned and implement some new techniques! Can't wait untill next year!


The old St. Louis courthouse and the Arch.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

One Horrible Day!

Recently, I shared the most horrible day ever with a client. She brought both her older cat and her young puppy in as emergencies, at the same time! Both pets were perfectly healthy the day before, and even that morning, but now both pets were facing the very real possibility of losing their lives.

The two pets presented with two very different and obviously unrelated problems. The cat was older and was almost non-responsive. She had a temperature of about 95 degrees, which is usually only seen as a pet is dying (or under anesthesia). She was pale as a ghost with a touch of jaundiced as well. She did not seem to be very aware of her surroundings.

The puppy was only 6 months old and had just been hit by a car a few minutes earlier. It was clear that she had many injuries, including a couple of broken bones. Yet, she was still alert and doing well. It was so sad, two tragedies in the same family, at the same time.

Due to financial limitations, we chose to invest in the life that had the most chance of survival and recovery. Therefore, we humanely euthanized the older cat to prevent any more suffering from her illness. That left us able to focus on the recovery of the puppy.
After sedating the puppy with heavy doses of pain medications, we were able to take radiographs and see the full extent of the puppy’s injuries. They were not good! She had a broken shoulder (1), separation in the lumbosacral (spine to hip) joint (A), a broken femur along the growth plate (B ), and multiple fractures of the hip (C & D). To make things worse, all of the injuries were along the right side; the puppy would not be able to support its own weight during her recovery; she was severely debilitated.
The fate for the puppy was also a humane ending of her suffering. I couldn’t believe it! This family had suffered more in one day than I had ever seen with my job! It was horrible. I can work the rest of my life without having another day like this one!