Murphy is not a nice man

Remember what I said yesterday about hoping for anything but cat cephalics?
Yeah, guess what I drew out of the hat?
Took me two tries, but I got it. Take that, Murphy.

Rocking the medial saphenous stick

Yeah, I'm a rock star. I hit it first try. Uh huh. I'm cool.


......now let's see if I can do it on an awake cat.

VAMPIRE!!!

I don't think I fully realised just how deranged I would look when I made that face.

Anyway, 3 for 3 on my canine blood draws (as evidenced by the blood-filled needles in the photo). It took me 3 tries to hit the lateral saphenous, but I'm not too upset about it. I was working with Brynn and she tends to shriek and squirm when you touch her with a needle, so not being able to hit the smallest and squirmiest vein on the first try isn't grounds for a freak-out.

I did, however, hit the cephalic and jugular on my first try, and man did that ever feel good. Dr. Henson was right, this whole blood drawing thing is both cathartic and addictive. I've caught myself staring at veins on animals, people, whatever...and just thinking "I could hit that...". This is bad.

After lab, Perri, Cat and I went out to the stable and gave Dave a bath. He's so furry that it was more like bathing a giant dog, and we pulled what seemed like 50lbs of hair off of him. He was very good about the whole thing and seemed to quite enjoy the attention.

Doesn't he look pretty?

Cow Tippi.....er, Cow stabbing

No, we didn't tip cows today, we just stabbed them in the neck. And only to get their blood.

Yeah, I know. That doesn't make it sound any better.


Anyway, I did a jugular stick on cow today and hit it first try. I'm proud of myself, but I couldn't get too puffed up about it given that the vein is about an inch and a half across. I mean, really. I also hit the tail vein on the third try, which I was pretty pleased about. Actually, the hardest part about the cow lab was getting the cows into the chute in the first place. Most beef cattle are slightly nervous of people, so it is very easy to drive them. Ours are handled more than usual, so they don't fear us, and as a result, we have to use somewhat unorthodox methods to get them to move where we want them. This may seem like a scene from some bizarre horror movie (when vet techs attack?) but it was really just us trying (and failing) to drive the cattle. Honestly, if I were a cow, I would have been scared!


But apparently the cows couldn't care less, cause they sure didn't move.

Ah well, blood was eventually achieved anyway.

Blood!!

Yeah, I know, slacking again.

Anyway, this week was back to class, and we spent a large portion of our time handling blood. On Tuesday, I did my very first venipuncture, and managed a successful jugular stick on our sheep, along with a slightly less successful cephalic stick. I got a flash in the hub of the needle on the cephalic, but couldn't draw blood to save my life. My teammates couldn't get blood from the cephalic either though, so I think our sheep was just faulty. The jugular more than made up for it though and I easily pulled a full 3cc's. Took me about 7 tries to hit the vein, but I got blood, didn't blow the vein, and got the blood into the purple top with no spillage, so I call it a victory.

Thursday and Friday were spent analyzing said blood, which was highly entertaining. Thursday was all about learning how to do good blood smears, and let me tell you....it is WAY harder than it looks.

Dolores gave us 2 demos, and then did a demo using her left hand (and it still came out perfectly), so I was starting to think I wouldn't have too much trouble. I mean, really....place a drop of blood on the bottom slide, touch the edge of the top slide to it so the blood wicks along the edge, and then push the blood into a smear. Easy.



Yeah, so. About that easy bit....

To be fair, that pile of rejects isn't just mine. Alona and I pooled our spoil pile to save on cleanup, so at least half of them are hers. Still, we went through almost 2 boxes of slides in search of....



The perfect smear! See the pretty rainbow? The feathered edge and distinct lack of streaking? The way the blood doesn't run over the edges of the slide? Oh yeah. It's beautiful.

Friday was spent learning how to do hematocrit readings, total proteins, and fibrinogen levels. I learned that Dave is nicely within normal ranges on all of these, and that I am a total wimp when it comes to the necessary snapping of capillary tubes. Breaking glass on purpose just freaks me out, ok?

Both days were also spent being total dorks with classmates. Have I mentioned how much they rock?