Life and Death

This rotation (Equine Emergency) has been a crazy one. It started off slow the beginning of last week and then over Friday and Saturday I was at the hospital for over 24 hours with only 3.5 hours of sleep. That was a rough couple of days. I got to see lots of colic surgeries, which was something I had really been wanting to see. Some ended happily; others did not. There was a mini with an deadly intussusception, a Canadian horse with an epiploic foramen entrapment, a mare with deadly diarrhea, a mini with hairballs in his intestines (naughty boy!), a foal with a myopathy and pneumonia, a pregnant mare with a deadly colitis, a paint who had enteritis...and then today we watched a horse bleed out and die on the trailer. Life and Death. It's abundant in emergency work. I've gotten to see a lot of things and I've learned a lot along the way. The life of an equine ER vet isn't a glamorous one. As you can see from the above brief list, 50/50 odds aren't too far off when cases come in. I didn't mean for this to be a depressing post, but this afternoon was a sad one. In happier news, I get to go home this weekend and see my family before my next rotation starts! :)