(no subject)

[ladysprite]

When I was growing up, I always wore black on Valentine's Day because I was a lonely, unpopular nerd. I had no boyfriend, I had very few friends at all, and I felt like moping and wallowing and generally screaming my unhappiness to a world that seemed to insist on screaming its happiness to me.

Now I wear black, or at least dark colors on Valentine's Day because it hides the stains better. No matter what one might think, red doesn't hide blood stains. Or any of the other myriad substances that show up around holidays in my profession.

This year wasn't particularly bad, actually - I didn't wind up having to handle a single case of chocolate poisoning, lily poisoning, or 'I hate my ex so I killed their cat' trauma. And especially after last week, the day seemed positively rosy.

Then again, it would have to be pretty impressively lousy to top my personal Worst Ever Valentine's Day.



Valentine's Day, 1997 found me living with my aunt and working full-time as a vet tech while I applied to vet school. I had a boyfriend, whom I had started dating that summer, and this would be our first V. Day together. I had the day off work, and we planned to spend it snuggling, cuddling, baking cookies, going to a romantic movie together, and then having dinner out at a nice restaurant. Instead, I woke up to the sound of my aunt talking on the phone outside my room, saying, 'Of course she'll come in, it won't be any problem at all.'

Apparently one of the techs had called in sick, and my thoughtful and kind aunt volunteered me to cover her shift. Only for a couple of hours, my boss swore. Just until someone else could come in and take over. I should be out by noon at the latest, honest.

I stumbled out of bed, finished waking up in the shower, pulled on a pair of scrubs, and rolled into work just in time to take custody of the Puke Parade. Valentine's Day means large amounts of chocolate, and large amounts of chocolate means large amounts of pets who need to have their stomachs emptied. By 9:30 the kennel was full - a pair of basset hounds who had eaten an entire pound of Ghiardelli dark chocolate, a beagle who managed to swallow a chocolate cake mostly whole (the cake wasn't so much of a problem for him, but the buttercream icing apparently *really* didn't agree with his system), a bulldog that ate a box of truffles, box and all.... a whole chorus line of vomiting dogs, an experience to educate all of one's senses.

Eventually I managed to get everyone cleaned up, and was sent to assist in surgery. Our monitoring equipment had broken, so surgeries were being performed in the prep room where we had a backup EKG. Unfortunately, the bulb in the surgery lamp out in the prep room blew, so I was assigned to assisting while the surgical tech tried to swap the bulb from another bulb. Somehow, this resulted in the lamp itself falling off its mounting, and me holding the light for the surgeon.

Routine surgery is just that - routine. The procedures are established, the techniques are as safe as can be, and the drugs we use are tried and true. We've used them for years. Almost never does an animal have an adverse reaction, such as, perhaps, malignant hyperthermia - acute onset of fever to the point where their insides turn to scrambled eggs. Almost never. Except when your head surgery tech is swinging from the rafters with a broken lamp, you're in the middle of the prep suite with no monitor but a twenty-year-old ECG, and the only other tech is a still-sleepy, half-trained would-be veterinarian who has never actually had to handle this before and is currently stuck acting as a living lamppost.

Then the ECG died.

The dog made it, though, and the surgical tech managed to rig up some sort of flashlight-holder and took over monitoring the dog while she sent me to bring a gurney to wheel him back to his cage. When the wheel fell off the gurney halfway there, I sat down in the middle of the hallway and laughed until I cried.

I think I finally made it home somewhere after 8pm, though I don't remember any particular details after the gurney collapsed. Luckily, my boyfriend was incredibly patient and understanding, and our celebrations were merely postponed, and the next day work returned to something resembling normalcy and sanity. And now I am a doctor, and if nothing else I can tell other people to clean up after people's pets' technicolor tribute to Valentine's Day. Even so, though, I'm always just a little worried about what to expect on that day when I go in to work....

Comments

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

puke parade - that is priceless. As the owner of three lovely dogs who have, on more than one occasion, had upset tummies together - all over the house, I can sympathize. One time when we boarded them right after Christmas, it came with a warning for the vet tech that if BeeBee started pooping foil, not to worry as she had eaten half of JMacs mug of candy from Hershey Park.