Excuses

With moving being my top priority this week, and general existence getting in the way of any posts since March, the ol' attempt at blogging is pretty much falling into last place. I'm still not giving up entirely on this, though.

Next week is going to present problems of its own which will likely continue into the end of May. I'll be starting anaesthesia courses for work, and given that the only available online course before September is May 01, and it's an advance course, I have a bit of cramming to do before then.The material isn't overly difficult, plus it's interesting and (key point) short. A short course means that, in theory, it will end before I lose interest.

So a moving date is set for Saturday. I have a fair amount of packing to do before then -around my work schedule- which you'll note I am not currently doing. Sunday I will be reassembling my life in a new apartment, and likely cleaning cat vomit as Wicker freaks the hell out. Monday I will be back at work and free time from that point will likely revolve around learning how to properly administer anaesthesia to small animals without having them croak.

Note of interest: Dogs, along with most small mammals, have open "C" ring tracheae, like us. This is why people can be choked so easily. Because of these open rings of cartilage it is generally best to use an endo-tracheal tube that has an inflatable cuff. The cuff both holds the tube in place as well as prevents the escape of gas that should be going into the patient's lungs. Cats, birds and ferrets, meanwhile, have closed ring tracheae. Their tracheae are much stronger and this allows us to safely hold them around the neck without risk of choking them. Unfortunately, it also means that using inflatable E-T tubes risks damaging the sensitive tissue of the trachea, meaning we cannot use the inflatable tubes, and must rely on near-perfect sizing of the tube, and a general less-effective anaesthesia. Except that we still use the inflatable cuff in cats. No, I don't know why.