Smooth sailing in rough waters

September 9, 2022

Raylene Noftall, AVC 2023, travelled to Port Hope Simpson as one of the student participants on the Chinook Project. As part of the experience, the students craft various pieces of reflective writing.

Ray in surgery with Dr. Ruffino

The biggest transformation the Chinook Project granted me was improved surgical skills. Before traveling to Labrador, I had neutered one dog and spayed one cat in junior surgery at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC): both procedures completed with an assistant, under the watchful eye of a clinician, taking two and three hours respectively. 

In junior surgery I had several days to prepare for my procedure and held no obligations other than caring for my singular patient afterwards. This was a stark contrast from a typical day in Labrador, where the team and I completed upwards of ten surgeries per day in addition to numerous medicine appointments. Not only were we never sure what the day would bring, but the procedures we completed were often more complicated than the curated patient list back at AVC. 

My first neuter in Labrador was an incredibly sweet, incredibly overweight, geriatric cryptorchid dog. This meant that one of his testicles had not descended, and if it was not removed, was likely to become cancerous. Not only did his extra layers of abdominal fat make it more difficult to search for his retained testicle, but his older age meant that we had to move quickly to limit his time under anesthesia. 

I made an incision into his abdomen and began my search. After 10 minutes finding nothing that remotely looked like a testicle, the supervising vet Dr. Ruffino scrubbed in to help, also experiencing none such luck. We were able to locate what looked like a spermatic cord, which attaches to the testicle. We gingerly picked up the cord and began following it with our fingers when it broke, causing us to break out in nervous laughter. This prompted our second vet, Dr. Plater, to throw us a life line and scrub in. 

Monitoring patients waking up after surgery

Dr. Plater determined that the testicle was exactly where we were hoping it wasn’t: stuck in the inguinal canal, meaning we would have to try to squeeze it back into the abdomen to remove it. After more nervous laughter, and quite a bit of tension, the testicle popped into the abdomen like a chicken laying an egg. Luckily it was all smooth sailing from here. After we completed the procedure and watched as our patient made a routine recovery, we had a serene 5 minutes to guzzle some coffee before the next patient was ready for surgery. 

This was not my only complicated procedure, and I’m surprised to say that I’m grateful for that. Drs. Plater and Ruffino created a calm, open learning environment which made us feel comfortable taking on challenges and solving problems. A classmate and I took on a spay of a large, mature dog, meaning she had more delicate tissue and an increased risk of bleeding than the average dog. This was my first mature dog spay and I had no idea how delicate the tissue was: I moved one of my instruments and it severed the ovarian pedicle, (blood vessels to the ovary branching from the aorta). Essentially this means that our patient began to bleed - a lot. Without panicking, I called Dr. Plater over, who calmly instructed me how to locate the bleeding vessel and ligate it so we could get back on track. Piece of cake. I’m not sure how many surgeries I completed in Labrador, but when I returned to my home clinic in Charlottetown, my supervising vet was astounded at the progress I had made. Suddenly I was able to spay three cats before lunch, without breaking a sweat. I’m confident that no other clinical rotation would have allowed for so much growth.