Roses, Third Eyelids and Politics

I started off my day with a bath for the Rem monster outside- something she professes to hate, though I think secretly loves. I will never understand why baths in the house are enjoyable, swimming in the pond is heavenly, but bathing outside with the hose is terrible! Finally she has stopped smelling like the dead things (mostly groundhog) in which she rolls and has started to smell like something I wouldn't mind petting again.

After lounging around a bit and eating some spaghetti that was definitely too old to be eaten, I headed over to Doc's around noon. (I will be referring to the vet I ride along with as Doc, and all of his patients/clients will of course remain anonymous. His vet tech, an awesome woman who I adore, I will refer to as Ms. S. ) Something you should know about Doc- his hobby, besides horses of course, is gardening. He is a master gardener and grows orchids in every shape, size and variety you can think of. They are absolutely stunning. So as you can imagine, his entire property is always well-planted. He has some little mini ponds, a rose garden, and tons and tons of trees and vines and flowers- things I know nothing about! The first order of business this morning was to trim the rose bushes. Now my idea of trimming rose bushes is when Remi gets bored every fall and eats mine down to the ground. Apparently this is not how the rest of the world does it... who knew? Doc taught me how and when to prune, and I feel like this is probably a good thing to know!

We finally got started with the patient calls around two pm, after a couple hours of trimming and pruning and wheeling wheelbarrows, stacking and unstacking and restacking cut leaves and branches, that sort of thing. Our first couple of calls were just routing check-ups and vaccinations, no big deal there. We had a re-check on a horse with a skin condition called Scratches. Scratches is a bacterial infection on the legs, which Doc normally recommends treatment with the office special-recipe Scratches balm, which Ms. S zealously guards the recipe for. It does contain DMSO however, which, if you have never smelled it, is absolutely the WORST smell. I would actually rather smell the gut cavity of an animal than DMSO. I think I might just be super sensitive to it- even from across the room I feel like it invades my senses. I can even taste it in my mouth. It is gross! A google image of scratches is below:


The other interesting call today was to remove a third eyelid on a horse. It had a small cancerous growth on the third eyelid that had been getting bigger, and the idea was to cut enough of the third eyelid out to stop the spread of the cancer. Technically it is called a squamous cell carcinoma. I was a little nervous, as my stomach was not feeling so good from the crappy spaghetti, and because last week I had almost passed out at an eye surgery. I attributed it to the heat at the time, but I was just a little worried that perhaps it had not been solely the heat. My biggest fear is that the queasiness I displayed as a child will come back to haunt me and ruin my goals of becoming a vet. So I was pretty relieved when I made it through the whole surgery today without batting an eyelid. Doc calls it a "meatball surgery"- I guess because it is so easy- you literally bloc the supraorbital and auriculopalpebral (or something like that) nerves, then pull the third eyelid out and snip it off with a pair of surgical scissors- no stitches necessary! It was pretty cool- the lump will be sent out for biopsy, and we should have the results within a couple of days.

Here is a tumor on a third eyelid.

We were headed back around 7 when we got an emergency call. We got there and it wasn't too bad of an emergency- a horse had apparently stuck her leg through a fence yesterday and was a stiff and scraped up, running a bit of a fever. Some bute (painkiller), penicillin and SMZ's later, the horse looked to be heading toward recovery. The guy that owns this horse is probably in his 70's, and has written a couple books on politics, economics and social issues. He is really freaking cool- I think I could listen to him for hours and just absorb. Doc and he had some really in-depth conversation and I realized how little I truly know about the country and the world that I am living in... One thing Doc said that really stuck out to me was about the fakeness of my generation- how people often pretend to care, but don't really, or are outraged and protesting but couldn't tell you what they are really outraged for. It is very true- I have seen it time and again, though I have not recognized it in this exact way. It made me promise to myself never to express an opinion about something until I really know all about the issue...

Anyway, I guess that is probably long enough of an entry tonight- though I suppose no one will read this so it does not truly matter how long I make it. Jazmine is pawing at me to give her some attention so I suppose I will give in!

~Rich With Life~