Disclaimer: In no way do I mean to undermine the education or training of ER doctors or staff, especially those in level 1 trauma centers. I admire your training, skills, and instinct. Also, in no way do I intend to make myself out to be the high-and-mighty, I-can-do-better-than-you veterinarian. Just need to gripe a little.
So, way back in February I got to make a trip to the ER for the first time since I myself became a doctor. I was tube feeding a newborn calf that decided to pitch a wal-eyed fit and throw himself on the ground. The corner of his tooth caught the skin between my thumb and first finger on my left hand (thank heavens!) and I got three sutures. I'll spare you the gory pictures- you're welcome. Anyhow, turns out I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to human lacerations, fractures or other severe injuries, especially when they occur to my body. Because I got all sweaty and white and shaky, my sweet MIL insisted I go to the ER and that I didn't need to drive myself.
So the reception and nursing staff were wonderful. They were kind, efficient, friendly, good and gold. The nurse even let me keep the instruments from my suture kit (they just throw them away!) and they are now autoclaved and in my truck for emergency purposes.
The doctor, however, was quite terrible. First of all, he didn't clean my wound. What part of "I cut my hand on a calf's tooth at a dairy" makes the wound sound sterile? No scrubbing, no flushing. He didn't even clean the blood off the rest of my hand when he was done suturing. Second, he didn't completely block some of the wound with lidocaine, so when he started I could feel him taking "bites" with the needle and feel the pull of the suture. Then, he overlapped the skin with the sutures instead of them being "apposed." And, his sutures had entirely too much tension to allow for good wound healing and blood flow. Then the nurse put woven gauze over the sutures and taped it to my hand which stuck and pulled when I changed the bandage. The he decided that I needed an ace bandage for "support." Are you kidding me???? He at least did have the presence of mind to give me a tetanus booster and start me on antibiotics- good think since he didn't properly clean a contaminated wound......
Next time I'll call Dr. Myers after I attempt to do it myself!
Okay, I'm done- thanks for letting me rant :)
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Truck
After 5 years of searching, test driving, contemplating, budget-maneuvering and endless discussion, Scott Holloway has finally bought a new truck!!!
So actually it's our truck, but I have yet to drive it. I have my own truck (well, it's the clinic's) and I will continue to drive it the vast majority of the time. When we make trips or go out of town to shop or eat, we'll take his. He still has his old truck and will drive it back and forth to the dairy and the dairy may actually buy it from him/us.
I'm really excited for him. It's his first brand new vehicle and he is so excited about it, it's sorta cute, he has a spring in his step (I'd call it a strut, but he gets made about that). Also, it has 4 doors, so he can take his buddies around. It's not the all-out, 4WD, 1 ton pick-up that he always wanted, but it works for now, for what we need, and for what we can afford. It's a good fit and a good compromise (I personally would have gotten a safe, fuel efficient, cheap car, but we weren't buying a car for me). Another big plus, it's something he can be proud of. I think he gets down on himself sometimes because he's not able to put his degrees to work and isn't earning what he's worth. We know that material things don't make us who we are, but it does get to us sometimes when our friends are buying land and building houses.
Okay, so most people would just go out and buy a car. What you have to realize is that his old truck is a '99 that he's driven for 10 years. My old car was a '99 and I drove it for 9 years and then my cousin drove it for another year after that. We squeeze every last dime out of our cars- like I said, E-N-D-L-E-S-S discussion. So this really was a major decision. Also, this little purchase is our first major one as a married couple, so a giant stepping stone. Another good thing is that we took a hard look at our budget, savings, spending and credit score and we're doing awesome for being so young and having so much school loan debt :) Yay! We're financially secure.... for now. What's funny/befudling about this decision is that another major, forever life-changing decision was made with exactly one sentence. I will never understand that man- but this has taught me a lot about him and made me fall in love with him all over again! :)
So actually it's our truck, but I have yet to drive it. I have my own truck (well, it's the clinic's) and I will continue to drive it the vast majority of the time. When we make trips or go out of town to shop or eat, we'll take his. He still has his old truck and will drive it back and forth to the dairy and the dairy may actually buy it from him/us.
I'm really excited for him. It's his first brand new vehicle and he is so excited about it, it's sorta cute, he has a spring in his step (I'd call it a strut, but he gets made about that). Also, it has 4 doors, so he can take his buddies around. It's not the all-out, 4WD, 1 ton pick-up that he always wanted, but it works for now, for what we need, and for what we can afford. It's a good fit and a good compromise (I personally would have gotten a safe, fuel efficient, cheap car, but we weren't buying a car for me). Another big plus, it's something he can be proud of. I think he gets down on himself sometimes because he's not able to put his degrees to work and isn't earning what he's worth. We know that material things don't make us who we are, but it does get to us sometimes when our friends are buying land and building houses.
Okay, so most people would just go out and buy a car. What you have to realize is that his old truck is a '99 that he's driven for 10 years. My old car was a '99 and I drove it for 9 years and then my cousin drove it for another year after that. We squeeze every last dime out of our cars- like I said, E-N-D-L-E-S-S discussion. So this really was a major decision. Also, this little purchase is our first major one as a married couple, so a giant stepping stone. Another good thing is that we took a hard look at our budget, savings, spending and credit score and we're doing awesome for being so young and having so much school loan debt :) Yay! We're financially secure.... for now. What's funny/befudling about this decision is that another major, forever life-changing decision was made with exactly one sentence. I will never understand that man- but this has taught me a lot about him and made me fall in love with him all over again! :)
Monday, April 11, 2011
Long Time Coming
After much lamenting, praying and holding back tears, we got a little rain last night. Of course, most of it was to our east. However, that turned out to be for the best because this beautiful line of thunderstorms brought with it damaging winds, frequent cloud-to-ground lightning (fire starters!), golf ball sized hail and one tornado that I'm aware of. Scott and I sat on the front porch until about 10:30 last night watching this beautiful sunset scene and enjoying God's fireworks- until it all got too close for comfort.
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| Beautiful view from the front porch |
To-Blog List
Things I need to blog about- accountability never hurt anybody:
DFA Annual Meeting Adventures
Top 10 dog breeds I'd never own
The Truck Saga
Emergency Rooms
The Unknown
Coming soon.....
P.S. I've added a few pictures to some older posts for your viewing pleasure.
DFA Annual Meeting Adventures
Top 10 dog breeds I'd never own
The Truck Saga
Emergency Rooms
The Unknown
Coming soon.....
P.S. I've added a few pictures to some older posts for your viewing pleasure.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Real Estate
My brother, sister, and I have decided to sell the last thing our Dad left us: 40 acres in South Texas.
Big sigh.
Such a hard decision. If you're like lots of people I know, it's been ingrained in you from day one to never sell family land. I can still hear my Dad saying it, "Whatever you do, never sell the farm." But the fact of the matter is, none of us will ever be able to do anything with it. We aren't close enough to run cattle on it (unless we hire hands to take care of them for us). We don't have the ability to farm it. It's not big enough (or rural enough) to lease it for hunting. South Texas land is hard, folks. Mesquite trees crop up overnight, rain is scarce most of the year, and sandy soil is hard to grow anything in except prickly pear, mesquite, snakes, and fire ants. You have to work hard to get something out of it in return.
Don't get me wrong, I love that small tract of property. It is so very rustic and just embodies South Texas. When you step out of the truck it smells like South Texas. It has these huge sprawling oak trees that the branches sweep all the way to the ground. Wild grapevines crawl up the branches and produce beautiful dark purple grapes. Larger mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus just scream, "You're in Texas!!!!" The tank (pond, for those of you outside our borders) is where I learned to fish, shoot and fed catfish with my grandfather. In the springtime, acres and acres of bluebonnets and those pink butter-cup flowers and Indian blankets cover the back 10 acres. In the front, there are some of the most run down cattle pens, feed bunks, hay cribs and storage houses you ever saw, but something that would be so very true to Texas in a painting, all shaded by those giant oak trees. I spent countless hours helping spray little mesquite trees to clear the pasture, burning pear so the cows would have something green to eat, cutting down larger mesquites to sell for firewood, building fence. So many memories.
For the past several years we've leased it to the guy that owns the horse-shoe of land around it. He's actually made several improvements, new fence, cleared the front pasture and uses it to rotate pastures for his cattle. So we're going to try to sell it to him. I would feel better about things if he bought it because I know it will never be turned into a trailer park or a hog farm like the places down the road.
I feel so greedy and heartless and like I'm betraying Dad one last time. I'm selling this last thing of his so that my brother and sister will have something to start fresh with and so that Scott and I can start building our dreams. I try to comfort myself with that thought: Dad would want us to have land and be productive with it. He would love the fact that we raise cattle and cut hay and live in the country. But that is little consolation to the voice in my head saying, "Don't ever sell the land."
Hard decision. Practical choice.
(I'd post pictures, but all the ones I have are not digital. Hopefully will get to take a trip down there before it's all said and done and take some memories home with me)
Big sigh.
Such a hard decision. If you're like lots of people I know, it's been ingrained in you from day one to never sell family land. I can still hear my Dad saying it, "Whatever you do, never sell the farm." But the fact of the matter is, none of us will ever be able to do anything with it. We aren't close enough to run cattle on it (unless we hire hands to take care of them for us). We don't have the ability to farm it. It's not big enough (or rural enough) to lease it for hunting. South Texas land is hard, folks. Mesquite trees crop up overnight, rain is scarce most of the year, and sandy soil is hard to grow anything in except prickly pear, mesquite, snakes, and fire ants. You have to work hard to get something out of it in return.
Don't get me wrong, I love that small tract of property. It is so very rustic and just embodies South Texas. When you step out of the truck it smells like South Texas. It has these huge sprawling oak trees that the branches sweep all the way to the ground. Wild grapevines crawl up the branches and produce beautiful dark purple grapes. Larger mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus just scream, "You're in Texas!!!!" The tank (pond, for those of you outside our borders) is where I learned to fish, shoot and fed catfish with my grandfather. In the springtime, acres and acres of bluebonnets and those pink butter-cup flowers and Indian blankets cover the back 10 acres. In the front, there are some of the most run down cattle pens, feed bunks, hay cribs and storage houses you ever saw, but something that would be so very true to Texas in a painting, all shaded by those giant oak trees. I spent countless hours helping spray little mesquite trees to clear the pasture, burning pear so the cows would have something green to eat, cutting down larger mesquites to sell for firewood, building fence. So many memories.
For the past several years we've leased it to the guy that owns the horse-shoe of land around it. He's actually made several improvements, new fence, cleared the front pasture and uses it to rotate pastures for his cattle. So we're going to try to sell it to him. I would feel better about things if he bought it because I know it will never be turned into a trailer park or a hog farm like the places down the road.
I feel so greedy and heartless and like I'm betraying Dad one last time. I'm selling this last thing of his so that my brother and sister will have something to start fresh with and so that Scott and I can start building our dreams. I try to comfort myself with that thought: Dad would want us to have land and be productive with it. He would love the fact that we raise cattle and cut hay and live in the country. But that is little consolation to the voice in my head saying, "Don't ever sell the land."
Hard decision. Practical choice.
(I'd post pictures, but all the ones I have are not digital. Hopefully will get to take a trip down there before it's all said and done and take some memories home with me)
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Bring on the rain!!
Yes, I realize that most of the country has had a significant amount of precipitation recently, be it snow, ice or rain. In fact, parts of North and East Texas got some pretty heavy duty thunderstorms and rain on Monday. Those storms formed over Montague County and our 30 mph winds blew them right on over and didn't start pouring buckets until they got to the Metroplex and ruined your Monday morning commute. I hope the rain did your concrete some good!
We rely soooo heavily on rain to make our pastures green so the cows can have something to eat. Our county boasts cattle numbers that rank it 124th in the country per capita. Most of those are cow-calf or stocker operations that rely on bermuda or wheat-pasture grazing for nutrition and growth. Almost all of this is what is called dry-land farming (i.e. no irrigation). Another big agricultural industry is bailing hay. Most of this is coastal bermuda- again, not irrigated. This is what we feed our dairy cows, especially in the winter when there is no green grass. Generally we will cut and bale 150 acres 3-4 times during a summer and make hay to feed our cows. Because dairy cows produce so much milk, they need a ton of nutritious food to support their metabolism. Cows get most of their nutrition from a feed ration (kind of like multi-grain cereal) but they also need lots of bulky fiber in the form of hay. If we don't make enough hay, we will have to buy it which drives up our cost of production. Not a good situation. At all.
Pray for rain!!!
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| The large hay pasture next to the house- it's supposed to be green |
However, we haven't had more than a trace of rain (4 inches of ice, actually) since the first week of February. Humidity is low, winds are high, temps are nearly in the 90s (already!!) and our land is crying out for moisture. Add to that months worth of dead grass, dried leaves, and people not paying attention to the burn ban and you've got the perfect recipe for an all-consuming wild fire. I know of two in our county in the past 5 years. So scary and devastating it's beyond words.
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| Beef cows "grazing" last summer's grass pasture |
Pray for rain!!!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Babies everywhere...
In the past few days I've worked on all kinds of babies. I love that about Spring- new life is everywhere!
I worked on a premature foal that didn't get enough colostrum. Colostrum is the first milk that a mother produces and is what provides neonatal animals with their immune system. Animals are born without immunity to any diseases, so they are at high risk for infection. This special formulation of milk is only absorbed in the intestines for the first 24 hours of birth, so if a baby doesn't nurse right away, their immune system is not equipped to handle any diseases they encounter in their environment. This particular foal did not nurse enough and required a transfusion of plasma, which is the fluid part of blood that carries all of the antibodies. We kept the foal and mare for a few days and let them bond and they went home in very good health.
I worked on a premature foal that didn't get enough colostrum. Colostrum is the first milk that a mother produces and is what provides neonatal animals with their immune system. Animals are born without immunity to any diseases, so they are at high risk for infection. This special formulation of milk is only absorbed in the intestines for the first 24 hours of birth, so if a baby doesn't nurse right away, their immune system is not equipped to handle any diseases they encounter in their environment. This particular foal did not nurse enough and required a transfusion of plasma, which is the fluid part of blood that carries all of the antibodies. We kept the foal and mare for a few days and let them bond and they went home in very good health.
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| Note the milk mustache! |
Then I saw a 2 day old puppy that it's mom wouldn't accept. There's not specific reason why this happens. Some feel that a mother animal can detect a problem with her baby and just won't take care of it. Another reason may be that a dog with a large litter simply can't make enough milk to feed all of the puppies and will selectively decrease her litter size. Lots of people think this is cruel, but animals have been doing just fine on their own for thousands of years without our help. Anyhow, this particular puppy did not nurse well (or mom kept kicking her off) and kept crawling away on the cold garage floor. She got so cold our thermometer wouldn't read her temperature and her blood sugar was also really low. A little warmth, milk, and TLC later, the puppy went home doing well. However, then next day the same thing happened, so now the owners are having to bottle feed the puppy.
And then there's always baby calves..... :) Think someone is trying to tell me something?
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