What did I say in my last entry about positive sides of large clinics?

A negative side would be the emergencies that keep you in the theatre until 1:30 am and need constant monitoring afterward.

*blinks sluggishly and contemplates sleep in the few hours until her turn at monitoring comes*

Paging Mr Murphy

After three weekends of the intern telling me "We've got two cats and two dogs in. We don't need you. Go out and have some fun and don't come back before 4" of course the weekend I actually plan on going out is the one that goes pear shaped at about 10pm on Saturday evening.

I probably should have expected the two spinals coming in one after the other right now. And the surgeon asking me to scrubb in.

So I won't get to meet the impressively articulate yonmei after all.
Sorry about that. I should know better than to tempt fate.

ETA (at 4pm): Ok, WTF is happening here? While spinal no 1 was being prepped spinal no 2 showed up. Severely hypothermic. While it was being stabilized, a dog with breathing problems showed up and was put into ICU as well while the intern was busy getting blood for the ruptured tumor from last night.
When we got out of the theatre (2 1/2 hours later) another dog had turned up.

It's Bedlam in ICU at the moment. Five dogs, as many vets (the intern, the second on call resident, the third on call from surgery as well as internal medicine and the anaesthesiologist) two nurses, an animal care assistant and two students. Add to that two million drip pumps that beep at random intervals and throw failure messages at you, the whining of the dogs that are in pain and put in an darkened room with many strange apparatuses.
I think Bedlam really describes it quite well.