Allie and I have settled into the University of Botswana "flat" that we will call home for most of our stay in Botswana. The accommodations are nice...not much different than Penn's highrises. We each have our own bedroom and share a bathroom, kitchen, and living area with Fiji, a UB student working towards her PhD. Like most Batswana, Fiji is extremely friendly and has really helped us in starting to adjust.
Nervous but excited, we set out this morning for our first day of work. Our placement at the Vet and Agric Consultants is located about 30 minutes away from campus by car. We were warmly welcomed by Dr. Mike Sentoo, the owner of the practice. On a quick tour of the clinic, he showed us the two consultation rooms, the surgery theater, and the treatment room and kennel area. We were introduced to the rest of the staff (3 other veterinarians and a handful of technicians).
And then we were thrown right into the action.
One of the vets was about to perform a castration on a cat. After finding out that Allie and I have performed the fairly basic surgery before, he said we could "each take a ball." Since I have only performed two nueters, I thought it would be best if Allie (being more experienced) go first. Once she was done, she handed the scalpel blade to me and said, "He's waking up. Have fun." If I wasn't before, I was definitely nervous now. Did I mention I've only done two of these before? Fortunately, the first few steps go smoothly. I make the figure 8 knot and breathe a sigh of relief. I've gotten past the most difficult steps...I'm in the home stretch. I start slipping the knot off the hemostat, trying to move quickly before the cat wakes up, when all of a sudden the whole knot comes undone. The hemostats had been unclamped. As the veterinarian had mentioned, some of their instruments were not in the best condition and a slight movement on my part was enough for it to come undone. The veterinarian placed a suture around the vessels (a technique used in castrating larger animals, including dogs), so everything ended up being fine in the end. However, it was not quite the way I wanted my first day on the job to begin.
As my first real clinical experience, I knew coming into this that I would be slightly behind on the learning curve, but this incident also taught me a valuable lesson: I will not always be able to rely on the technology or the tools that I have already become dependent upon as a student. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that I am bound to make mistakes and that I should learn from them rather than get upset by them.
The rest of the day got much much better as Allie and I saw number of cases that we've only read about in textbooks until this point:
A dog with canine distempter virus
A puppy with inflamed third eyelid glands
A patient with a transmissible venereal tumor
Two cases of tick fever
A dog with a torn ACL
And many more...
Today opened my eyes to how much I don't know despite one full year of veterinary training and showed me that I am bound to make mistakes. However, after all of the things we were able to see and do today, I realized how much we will be able to learn just within the next few weeks.
Tomorrow we wake up early and try to learn how to take a kombi (van/bus) to work to try to save a few pula.
Nervous but excited, we set out this morning for our first day of work. Our placement at the Vet and Agric Consultants is located about 30 minutes away from campus by car. We were warmly welcomed by Dr. Mike Sentoo, the owner of the practice. On a quick tour of the clinic, he showed us the two consultation rooms, the surgery theater, and the treatment room and kennel area. We were introduced to the rest of the staff (3 other veterinarians and a handful of technicians).
And then we were thrown right into the action.
One of the vets was about to perform a castration on a cat. After finding out that Allie and I have performed the fairly basic surgery before, he said we could "each take a ball." Since I have only performed two nueters, I thought it would be best if Allie (being more experienced) go first. Once she was done, she handed the scalpel blade to me and said, "He's waking up. Have fun." If I wasn't before, I was definitely nervous now. Did I mention I've only done two of these before? Fortunately, the first few steps go smoothly. I make the figure 8 knot and breathe a sigh of relief. I've gotten past the most difficult steps...I'm in the home stretch. I start slipping the knot off the hemostat, trying to move quickly before the cat wakes up, when all of a sudden the whole knot comes undone. The hemostats had been unclamped. As the veterinarian had mentioned, some of their instruments were not in the best condition and a slight movement on my part was enough for it to come undone. The veterinarian placed a suture around the vessels (a technique used in castrating larger animals, including dogs), so everything ended up being fine in the end. However, it was not quite the way I wanted my first day on the job to begin.
As my first real clinical experience, I knew coming into this that I would be slightly behind on the learning curve, but this incident also taught me a valuable lesson: I will not always be able to rely on the technology or the tools that I have already become dependent upon as a student. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that I am bound to make mistakes and that I should learn from them rather than get upset by them.
The rest of the day got much much better as Allie and I saw number of cases that we've only read about in textbooks until this point:
A dog with canine distempter virus
A puppy with inflamed third eyelid glands
A patient with a transmissible venereal tumor
Two cases of tick fever
A dog with a torn ACL
And many more...
Today opened my eyes to how much I don't know despite one full year of veterinary training and showed me that I am bound to make mistakes. However, after all of the things we were able to see and do today, I realized how much we will be able to learn just within the next few weeks.
Tomorrow we wake up early and try to learn how to take a kombi (van/bus) to work to try to save a few pula.
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| My room |
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| Work -- Vet and Agric Consultants |
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| Our first "patient" |
Wow! Sounds like you are really going to learn a lot in a short period of time! I bet the days that you are working in the clinic will go by so quickly! Keep up the good work and you will be world-renowned in no time! xxoo
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