down on the farm

This past weekend LotR and I took the train over to IA to visit the Boy’s fam. Well, that was my primary motivation for making the trip. LotR, who wants to be a large-animal vet in the future, wanted to spend some time following Tom around to various farms during calving season. We were both introduced to Tom back in February (during my long IA stint) by the Boy’s G’pa, Howard, who owns and runs, in my opinion, quite a large operation himself, with plenty of cows and pigs and all sorts of other things to see. In any event, Tom primarily (only?) practices large-animal medicine and, as an added bonus, already loves LotR (he has a couple pretty hilarious pictures of her from the last visit – one with her arm inside a cow’s butt and one with the classic double-thumbs-up-silly-enthusiastic-smile pose).

So after a five hour train ride (during which I should have graded papers, but did crossword puzzles instead), we ended up in Ottumwa, where we were collected by tBm. She took us home (after taking us to a tractor supply store so I could buy a pair of wellies – black and white houndstooth because why not?) and then fed us, for which we were immensely grateful because, being the smart UChi grads that we are, all we packed for the trip, which we knew would run through dinner time, was chocolate.

We went to bed relatively early and spent most of the next day with the Boy’s father (tBf) and Domestic Partner (DP) [aside: I have a feeling I'm going to lose track of all of my little nicknames and abbreviations...]. We hit up a kitschy, but delicious (cinnamon roll french toast – YUM), little diner that serves breakfast all day and then went back to tBf and DP’s lovely and gorgeous home for ice cream and episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, which is very hilarious, very British, and very budget (in a, well, absolutely fabulous way). I also got a little guided plant tour through tBf’s garden, which is amazing and which always makes me want to plant things (got loads of lovely pictures out of it too). Then we went back to tBm’s house, played around on the piano for a bit, and got ready for dinner, which was to be a relatively large affair (both Stoz’s and Howard’s birthdays were this past week) with lots of pizza, more ice cream (accompanied by angel food cake), and some extended family. I also finally got to meet Stoz’s new gf, who is a very tall and very lovely Indian tennis player. She handled the whole meeting-the-entire-family-in-one-go method of gf introduction in the Coster clan very well.

The next day was the appointed day of shadowing Tom. And let me tell you, we saw a lot of really cool gross (and often bloody) things. We started our day with a prolapsed vagina on a pregnant heifer. Then we went to prolapsed-vagina-farmer’s brother’s farm for a lame cow, who ended up having some sort of toe abcess. He needed some antibiotics, which came in the form of huge (seriously, HUGE) white pills (and this cow had to take five of them). Then we headed back to the clinic where we saw a cat with a huge abcess on its face. Nate, one of the other vets, stabbed the abcess with a scalpel, causing the thing to literally fountain pus and blood (mostly pus – stinky, stinky pus). After this, we promptly went to lunch.

Afterwards, we saw a horse, who just needed some routine vaccinations (pretty boring after the pus fountain). Then came a pair of two month old goats – so adorable! LotR held them for sedative and anesthetic and I monitored breathing once they were under. They both needed to be dehorned, which is a horrifyingly bloody process, but which is necessary and is normally non-traumatic (you’re supposed to do it when they are wee babies). After this gory incident, we trekked out to a dairy farm that had a cow that needed surgery. Along the way, we stopped and watched Tom perform a pig autopsy. Anyway, the cow. Apparently the third stomach, which is supposed to be in the lower right part of the abdomen, managed to get a twisted up into the upper left part of the abdomen or this cow. Tom had to make an incision large enough to put his arm into and stitch the stomach down where it was supposed to go. To do this, he put a series of stitches into the stomach itself, stuck his arm into the cow and poked the needle out the other side with LotR’s guidance. I rounded out my day bottle-feedng a little calf. Also, everyone loved my boots. Just thought I’d throw that in there.

The next day, another five-ish hour train ride later (I did grade some papers this time), we were back in Chicago.

This week, save for massive amounts of grading, has been pretty relaxed and short (I guess we did just get back on Tuesday). I have the routine largely down, although I’m trying to add “hitting the gym” to my list of things to do (especially since I spent four days eating ice cream, more ice cream, pie, and then more ice cream).

Next, I’ll do an update on the Boy.