CACC Diliman Junior Clinics and Korean Food!

Ah, these past three days have been really exhausting, but full of good things. On Friday me and my junior clinician group headed down to UP Diliman to finish up our first week of Companion Animal clinics at the teaching hospital. To tell you frankly, it was a lot of fun, but some of the clients that I dealt with weren’t really interested in their pets. We had some interesting cases, but I felt that the majority of people I talked with just spent most of their time texting instead of really thinking of their answers to my questions about the history. It kind of made me annoyed because for a lot of these animals, they had a lot of lesions that I can see were due just to neglect. Of course I couldn’t say anything about that to the client, but just tried to tell them that these things could be prevented in the future if better measures were taken. My partner this time was my friend Jean (but we call her Chacha) and most of the time we just did what we could. Fridays at the Diliman clinic aren’t as busy as you would think, but then again it seems that Saturdays are really the busiest days of all. I felt bad for the seniors that were above us because after we left, they said they would have to deal with 65+ cases without us.

Afterwards though, our seniors Jae, Elma and Toni took us out a Korean restaurant after clinics were over at around 5pm. We went to this place just off campus called Teacher’s Village to a lovely open restaurant called Donday. The restaurant had a lot of wooden tables, each with their own Korean BBQ grill built into them. Donday had a special of Korean BBQ and side-dishes and drinks… all unlimited for around 350P per person. Compared to what I would have to pay in the States for something similar to this I was shocked. 350P is basically just around $7 USD, which is extremely cheap for unlimited Korean BBQ.

They had a bunch of delicious dishes including a lot of Kalbi (BBQ short ribs), Japchae (glass noodles), lettuce and sesame seed leaf to put the meat in, as well as some great sauces and roasted garlic.

For the side dishes they had a lot of awesome things, such a lumpia shanghai, a nice sweet and sour chicken dish, roasted vegetables, tuna sushi, fried chicken, garlic rice and also this little scrumptious pumpkin fritter that was so simple but so good. I swear, I must’ve eaten at least 20 of those things that night. I really like sweet things, but this was naturally sweet and had a great taste to it, and in all of the Korean restaurants I’ve been to before I’ve never had something like that, so it was nice to taste it.

After dinner we were stuffed, but afterward the restaurant also supplied us with something they call ice candy, which is basically a plastic bottle filled with frozen sweet fruit juice. After eating so much it was just the thing to make us feel refreshed and make us not feel so full.

Jae and his friends then took us to a Korean supermarket nearby where we took a look around at the ingredients and picked up some Korean ice cream for dessert. It was extremely yummy and I hope that we can do something like that next time.

Last night I arrived back here to Los Banos, but then I heard that my Physiology professor’s sister had just died so I had to attend a wake. It was a sad thing to go to after everything we did at UP Diliman, but Dr. Estacio is a great teacher and so I thought it would be good to go and support her. I hope she’s doing well now. They’ll be burying her sister later today.

So right now I gotta get going to study and eat some lunch later. I will catch up with you all soon. Until then, take care!

Gastropexy, Gastrotomy, and Even More Surgeries

While I was away from the internet world I’ve been busying myself with exams and also tons of surgeries. For those of you who don’t already know, we have to run a surgery each week. We do our pre-operative exams on Tuesdays and then perform the actual procedure on the animal on the following Thursday. This gives us enough time to see if our animals we picked are fit for surgery.

Me as head surgeon during the Gastoromy/Gastropexy procedure.

This past week I was the head surgeon for our Gastropexy and Gastrotomy surgery. So here are some things I learned during this surgery.

• The ending “-pexy” means “adhesion” or “fastening to”. Since I performed a gastro-pexy in the procedure I had to adhere the stomach to another organ.
• The ending “-tomy” means to make an “incision of”. Gastro-tomy means that I would have to make an incision into the stomach. Basically for this procedure I punctured into the stomach and then just sutured it back together.
• When doing gastrotomy, try to incise in the hypovascular area of the stomach. You can use some stay sutures on both ends of the stomach to anchor them or have an assistant surgeon hold the stomach taut so you can incise precisely in this area. During my surgery I slipped a little bit with the scalpel and accidentally hit a blood vessel, so I had to ligate that and suture up the mistaken incision before doing it again. A stab incision is better for better accuracy.
• When closing the stomach after incision into the lumen, it’s better to use a 2 layer inverting suture. The 1st layer should include the submucosa, muscularis and serosal layer of the stomach in a simple continuous or Cushing suture pattern. The 2nd layer should include only the serosal and muscularis layers using a Cushing or Lembert suture.
• Always make sure there isn’t any dead space when closing up after a surgical procedure. We had a minor problem with some seroma and granulation tissue forming after my assistant surgeon closed up the wound. While it turned out to be okay and nothing dehisced, it still would have been better of course if that didn’t happen before. So keep this in mind if you ever do surgery!

Me helping Belle suture up the wound

Tonight, I just came back from doing another surgery which was Enterectomy and Anastomosis, as well as Jejunal-Feeding Tube placement and Enteropexy. It was a long lab… we got out an hour after lab was supposed to end. And when we left the place today, it was alright pitch dark and raining a lot. So it was a long day. And that’s why I’m just sitting here, vegging out and listening to some music. I haven’t been able to relax for awhile so I take every free minute I can to just sit and do just that. It’s very tiring. This whole semester is really tiring.

I won’t be able to rest for long though. In a bit I’ll have to tabulate all of the drugs in my pharmacological drug index and also go to bed since I have dute in UP Diliman (in Manila) tomorrow morning. Ugh, so much to do and so little time…

Anyway, I should really get on those things. I’ll catch up with you all soon. But have a great weekend!

Back From The Dead!

Or at least it seems like it!

I’m sorry for not commenting on this blog earlier. Like I said before, my internet was cut off about a week and a half ago due to the monsoon that occurred here then. What happened I found out later was that the monsoon had brought down a telephone pole (might I add, it was the ONLY telephone pole in the area) near my place which happened to supply my internet. So, after a week and a half, the telephone company finally got their act together and put it back up. The people on my street were without a dial tone for their phones for that while too, and I realized during this time just how inconvenient it was for me to not have internet.

Not having the internet at my fingertips made me feel somewhat bored and disconnected from everything, but I guess it had its advantages as well. I didn’t spend time in my room as much as I did in the past and instead went out, worked out and did some other things that I normally didn’t because I was bored. But that helped in the end…. but now that I have internet I can finally talk to you all again!

Well, all in all, I have some things to do. I’m the nurse in the upcoming surgical procedure which is an IRA (Intestinal Resection and Anastomosis surgery) which means I have to go pick up some supplies later for the surgery. Also, I have to study for a surgery exam I have tomorrow! Plus I have to finish the post-lab for my physiology class tomorrow… so yeah, I’ll be quite busy tonight.

I hope everything works out. But it’s great to be back again! I hope to talk with you all soon. Take care!