First Day of Clinics!

November 18, 2014  Tuesday

First day of clinics!

This is the first night I have not slept through until 6am… got up at 4am to finish blogging.  Everybody got up, in varying degrees of bright eyed and bushy tailed, for breakfast before our 8am shuttle to the clinic site.  Breakfast was warming in the oven for us.  Lisa, a local lady with a catering business, is preparing breakfast and dinner on all three clinic days for us!  She had a nice frittata for us this am. 

Setting up the tents in the flood/mud!

It had rained very hard overnight at the site (not at our house).  The area was completely flooded and had to slog through mud and puddles to go back and forth.  It was a bit of a challenge to put up some tents, welcome to the rainy season!

One of the local Baptist Churches is allowing us to use there outbuildings.  We spent the first hour doing final preparation, then got started on surgeries and consults for the day!

It was very hot and humid.  We were all sweating profusely and we had not exerted ourselves much!  But if the clouds hung around and the breeze blew, we were fairly comfortable.  When the sun peeked out it was sweltering!

Woofie supervising, as always!

We had a moderate size group of surgeries show up first thing, and many consults all day.  The surgeries trickles in all day but there was never a huge rush.  World Vets has been coming to Roatan for 7 years and there are a couple other veterinary teams that come to help with the pet overpopulation, so the numbers are certainly dwindling.

Kateelyn prepping a kitty for a spay

Our team is really good!  The check in desk is staffed by local folks.  Our prep techs were spot on in getting a sedative in the patients, placing IV catheters, anesthetizing and prepping for surgery.  All anesthetic is by injectable agents.  No gas anesthesia like we would have in the States.  Sandy rotates between all the surgery tables to monitor anesthesia and give additional drugs as needed.  We have all experienced surgeons and patients moved right through.

Winda and Tonia

Dr Scott and Dr Mike

Dr Sandy monitoring anesthesia.

Concerned pet parents!

Dr Stacy spaying a cat.

Recovery.

The girls in recovery had quite a job keeping up with patients post op!  They give antibiotics, pain meds, Vit B injections and rabies vaccinations as well as monitoring as the dogs and cats wake up from anesthesia.  They make sure all the paperwork is complete then get the critter back to the owner to make room for more patients!

Al was noting that there was no music all day.  So Keisha and Stacy sang a song.  That was all it took.  No more complaining about no music!

Dr Brad with a medical consult.

We have five doctors, one stayed in medical consult all day while the rest did surgery.   Brad was doing consults and he was very busy all day.  Mike went out to help when we had a lull in surgery.  They saw cases that they had ideas on what was going on, but we do not have diagnostics or much in the way of medication for treatment, so it was a bit frustrating for them. 

Each day a new doctor will do consults.  Shelly asked me and Keisha to stay in surgery.  We have her a resounding “yes”!

Harmony with a darling patient and Dr Brad.

Dr Mike joined in consultations.

At the end of the first day!  This is only part of the group:  Sandy, Stacy, Kateelyn, Scott, Brad, Chinn, Keisha, Nicky   , Kimberly, Shelley and Jackie, a local helper.

We packed up a little early with 42 surgeries done and over 60 consults!  We had hoped to do at least 50 surgeries, but we can say we did do 100 percent of the animals presented!

We were all hot and sticky and would have liked to take a swim when we got back to the house, but it was dark by then.  So we took turns getting showered and changed while we visited and had some drinks and snacks while Lisa put the finishing touches on dinner.

We had a wonderful meal of lasagna, salad and bread with tiny cheesecakes for dessert.  We stayed up visiting and finally hit the hay about 9pm.  Sure seemed a whole lot later!  Hopefully we will have a very busy day tomorrow.  Supposed to rain again tonight.

Hasta manana!