SGMS

Last Wednesday I broke in my new pair of green scrubs by doing a ceasarean section on a sheep. When I was done there was a puddle of blood on the floor, blood dripped on my right shoe and a massive amount of blood down the clothing on my right leg. This was not really excessive, I promise you. C-sections just involve a lot of blood and even more amniotic fluid.
It was the sheep and goat medicine and surgery class at OSU. I had been looking forward to this C-section lab for three years, and finally, amazingly, it came. We chose sheep on Monday out at a sheep establishment, checking their udders to ensure they were far enough along. Four of the sheep lambed before the lab started Wednesday morning, so they had to bring in back-ups. It was a grand time. My lambs did well and went home Friday.

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Today I got to pull a dead, decomposing, brown and nasty twin lamb from an ewe. My friend Jen had pulled the first of the twins, which were dead since perhaps last Tuesday. I had the pleasure (it really was, I'm not kidding) of lavaging the uterus with water and a disinfectant. I had my hand in with the tube, and my arm was largely blocking the exit to the uterus. As water was pumped through the tube, it built up pressure behind my arm until such a time at which it burst forth, drenching one of my shoes and part of my modified overalls in nasty, decomposed uterus-contents-water. After that I stood to the side of the ewe. And was I ever glad for a second pair of overalls!