First Day of Clinics

For the record, this is how Sandy caught me blogging last night. That is the blankie from my bed...

 This is where we set up - in the ground floor of the village municipal offices. There is a school that shares the same courtyard, and there were basketball games going on most of the day while we were in surgery. By the time we were done, they had switched to soccer:

 To start with, I headed up the Recovery area. My job: make sure everyone wakes up safely and well and gets all their required medications. I was assigned two great volunteers, who learned super fast, and by the end of the day, Amanda was able to give injections and fluids, monitor vitals, and basically just rock at recovery. Although she managed to escape any of the recovery photos I pirated from Sandy today...
For this week, we have the benefit of being "doctor heavy" as there are 8 veterinarians on board instead of the usual 5. Two of the vets signed on as assistants, Sandy because she works in a lab and doesn't  get to do surgeries often enough to stay in practice, and Erica, because all the Dr. spaces were filled, but she wanted to come on the trip. Our veterinarians are (left to right) Andrea, Sandy, Erica, Becky, Tom, Colleen, Stacy (I mean, Dr. Steele!), and Melissa:

Part of the awesomeness involved with that was that Colleen, who is an ER vet for her regular job, was available to help with some critical cases in the recovery area. One of those was a puppy who had a hard time in surgery, and Colleen worked with her for a long time to make sure everything went ok. The puppy plus her two siblings, being monitored by "Mama Colleen" here in the photo, woke up fine and went home this afternoon.

 Here, our trip leader, Andrea, takes a turn sitting with the babies. We kept them snuggled together and under blankets to stay warm while the anesthetic wore off, then cuddled them afterwards because they are just so darn cute!

As usual, Woofie carefully supervises surgeries during the day:

 Jason, who had never been to a spay/neuter clinic before today, learned how to safely restrain dogs for medicating, give injections, place an IV catheter, and basically do whatever the doctors or techs asked:

Including wiping sweat while Dr. Erica was scrubbed in for a surgery:

 Tom, or "Big Daddy" is a sucker for kids, and an Auburn University man. He brought a pile of Auburn shirts to give out to local children. Tom is an awesome teacher. He basically stole Jason from my recovery area and turned him into a surgery tech in just a few hours. But we'll forgive him for that!

 Recovery was busy! As each animal was finished with their surgery, a volunteer brought them, with their identifying paperwork, over to us and laid them on a blanket. We checked everyone's breathing, pulse, and the color of their gums (too light means low blood pressure), and let a doctor know if there was any trouble. In theory, we were going to clean some ears too, but most of the time we were too busy taking care of medicating everyone before they woke up. In between all of that, some volunteers from the local rescue group, Ayuda, vaccinated everyone and gave them dewormer and flea/tick treatments. After all that was done, we fitted them with new collars and leashes that had been donated, and some of them even got a new toy to take home! In this photo there are lots of dogs sleeping off the anesthesia with their orange ID collars and paperwork attached:

I mentioned that there were basketball games going on. I didn't mention that Jason took a little surgery break to impress the kids with his ball-spinning skills. They thought that was pretty cool.

 This dog was an older, battle-scarred street dog who was caught for his surgery today. He was not friendly, and didn't know how to walk on a leash, so after he woke up, we had to carry him outside in a cage to let him go. Here I'm carefully taking off his ID collar:

 And then, off he went, probably wondering what truck had hit him:

Speaking of trucks and transportation, we took two smaller water busses today, and took pictures of each other riding in them. The guys in the front are part of a film crew who spent most of the day documenting what we were doing. They are going to try to use it for a reality TV show pilot about helping animals around the world. If/when it airs, you KNOW I will share that information...

 The water busses brought us to a dock at the bottom of a big hill. The clinic was set up at the top of the big hill. There were two pickup trucks waiting to take us and our gear, so we loaded up:

 And off we went!

 Some of the local volunteers brought their own dogs for surgery, so there were already patients waiting when we got to our location, even though we still had to set up!

 This is our surgery room. Five surgery tables, one prep table, and lots of volunteers! First we set up surgery tables and organized all our supplies and medications:

 Then the prep team got to work! Here Christine gets a catheter ready while Randy makes friends with a patient. Just a minute later that pup was anesthetized, cleaned, and prepped for surgery:

Here Tom works on one of our spays. For this trip, we had some portable monitors for vital signs (most trips I've been on, there were just people and stethoscopes, so this was really cool!). Most of the surgeries were fairly routine, but some dogs here have a tick-borne disease called erlichia, which affects their ability to clot blood. Any dogs with this problem needed a little extra TLC once they got to recovery, and antibiotics to go home.

 Here some kids wait with their puppies until we are ready to take them in to surgery (pups, not kids):

 These dogs have been given their pre-anesthesia sedative and gradually calm down while they wait for their turn in surgery:

 Our local volunteers helped check in patients, but also acted as crowd control. Since we were right by their school, the local kids were around all day, and fascinated by what we were doing. Of course, we couldn't have children running around unsupervised in a surgery area, but some of them did get short tours. The kids were very friendly and excited to see the American Vets:

 After a long day of surgery, several of us opted to walk down the hill, instead of waiting for a pickup truck:

 The weather was great for a walk, and we got to talk to some of the local volunteers more along the way:

 The road was fairly nice, and the view was great! Good way to end a work day:

 Then we had to stop by an ATM (behind metal bars) on the way to the hotel, since some of us had already spent all of our dinner money (not naming any names...)

After the ATM, we gathered at the hotel, where I downloaded all these awesome pictures from Sandy's camera (I'm really bad at remembering to take pictures myself). Then we went out for some Italian food (of course, in Guatemala) and it wasn't half bad. Following dinner, the last few of us crazy people went out dancing. I guess it's a big deal when some crazy gringas get up and dance while the band is playing, but we got lots of cheers, and I was surprised to find out how many local people had cameras with them. Eventually we weren't the only one's making a spectacle of ourselves and some locals joined in. Lots of fun. Then we moseyed on back to our hotel, and I started blogging about the first day of surgery...
And that's it for tonight!