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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
soft tissue surgery
Today I spent 5 hours surgically mutilating a cat.
Coming off of the poultry rotation (which was extremely morally taxing) onto a rotation where i would be pretty much forced to participate in the two surgeries i'm morally against---is a LOT to deal with.
We do kidney transplants at this school on cats. The "donor" cat comes from a company that breeds cats for research. The owners of the "recipient" are required to adopt the donor cat (which is good....) The problem is that every household cat will eventually die from renal disease (if something else doesn't kill it first). So by taking a kidney away from the donor cat, you are almost definitely shortening it's life.
I feel like i'm playing god by doing this.
To add to the emotional stress a kidney transplant already puts me through, the owner wants the donor cat declawed.
4 paw declawed.
i FREAKED OUT. Besides there being a billion things wrong with just declawing a cat right off the bat (you should try things like encouraging appropriate scratching---having enough scratching posts, toys etc--and soft paws before you think about declawing) because the majority of cats will NOT ruin your furniture, rugs or scratch you if you take those steps---> ok so besides me being upset with the owner wanting to declaw the cat w/o evening meeting him (he NEVER puts his claws out, btw), she wants him 4 paw declawed which there is no reason ever (besides disease) to declaw a cat in all 4 paws.
never.
the vet school usually won't do all four paws b/c it's unnecessary...so we told her we'd do 2 paws....my classmate even tried to introduce the idea of alternatives and she threatened us.
"if you don't declaw all 4 then i'm just going ot have it done when i get him home"
so our surgeons caved.
i was so upset.
Here i was, just coming off of a 4 hour morally corrupt surgery (in my mind) and now i (ME!) have to cut off the tips of all this cats fingers.
btw--when you declaw a cat, it's like cutting off your fingers at the first joint.
so it was an emotionally draining day. I saved the tips of his fingers that we cut off so i have something to show people who want to do it. it was moving for me to see his 20 little bones sitting on the drape at the end of the surgery. i'll take a pic for the next post.
ALSO--i did NOT match:( i am very sad and incredibly freaked out. I only applied to two clinics so i didn't have high hopes, but now i'm really scared. i dont' just want to work with cats and dogs--infact i think i'll go crazy if i'm forced to. it's just not my cup of tea. i want to work with exotics and wildlife. but apparently that's too much to ask for:(
so we'll see how the job hunting goes....wish me luck
Coming off of the poultry rotation (which was extremely morally taxing) onto a rotation where i would be pretty much forced to participate in the two surgeries i'm morally against---is a LOT to deal with.
We do kidney transplants at this school on cats. The "donor" cat comes from a company that breeds cats for research. The owners of the "recipient" are required to adopt the donor cat (which is good....) The problem is that every household cat will eventually die from renal disease (if something else doesn't kill it first). So by taking a kidney away from the donor cat, you are almost definitely shortening it's life.
I feel like i'm playing god by doing this.
To add to the emotional stress a kidney transplant already puts me through, the owner wants the donor cat declawed.
4 paw declawed.
i FREAKED OUT. Besides there being a billion things wrong with just declawing a cat right off the bat (you should try things like encouraging appropriate scratching---having enough scratching posts, toys etc--and soft paws before you think about declawing) because the majority of cats will NOT ruin your furniture, rugs or scratch you if you take those steps---> ok so besides me being upset with the owner wanting to declaw the cat w/o evening meeting him (he NEVER puts his claws out, btw), she wants him 4 paw declawed which there is no reason ever (besides disease) to declaw a cat in all 4 paws.
never.
the vet school usually won't do all four paws b/c it's unnecessary...so we told her we'd do 2 paws....my classmate even tried to introduce the idea of alternatives and she threatened us.
"if you don't declaw all 4 then i'm just going ot have it done when i get him home"
so our surgeons caved.
i was so upset.
Here i was, just coming off of a 4 hour morally corrupt surgery (in my mind) and now i (ME!) have to cut off the tips of all this cats fingers.
btw--when you declaw a cat, it's like cutting off your fingers at the first joint.
so it was an emotionally draining day. I saved the tips of his fingers that we cut off so i have something to show people who want to do it. it was moving for me to see his 20 little bones sitting on the drape at the end of the surgery. i'll take a pic for the next post.
ALSO--i did NOT match:( i am very sad and incredibly freaked out. I only applied to two clinics so i didn't have high hopes, but now i'm really scared. i dont' just want to work with cats and dogs--infact i think i'll go crazy if i'm forced to. it's just not my cup of tea. i want to work with exotics and wildlife. but apparently that's too much to ask for:(
so we'll see how the job hunting goes....wish me luck
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