World Vets Trip to Peru
In September of 2017, my mom and I took a trip to Cusco, Peru to participate in a World Vets trip. There was a group of about 15 people total that were a part of this particular World Vets trip, including 6 doctors, a handful of anesthesia/surgery nurses, and two recovery nurses. Together, we spayed and neutered just over 300 dogs/cats in a total of 2.5 days. We worked at two different sites.
The first site was an abandoned building on the corner of one of the city blocks. The building had a courtyard, where we set up to pop up tents for my recovery station. There was a line of many people and their animals (or with strays they caught) that went around the corner on the sidewalk. People would bring their animals to the woman in charge named Bety, and she would keep everything in order. The animals would then go to the nurses, who would give them injectable anesthesia and a catheter. They would then go to our makeshift surgery tables, where each doctor would perform the operation, which were mainly just spays and neuters. After the surgery was finished, they would bring the animal out to my tent and but them on the old mattresses I had on the ground, where I would give them the medications that reversed their anesthesia, along with a couple other medications. Once I got the animal woken up, I made sure they could walk, and I would return the animal to the owner and give them my mini aftercare spiel in Spanish. This first day we worked from 7:00AM until 10:30PM. At around 8:00, it was getting much too dark in my tents to see the medications I was drawing up. Some of the local men found me a light bulb and a chord that they spent about half an hour trying to rig up, so that I could see. (Shoutout to them for all their help.) Overall, day one was a successful operation, and we took care of an obscene amount of animals that day.
The line outside of our clinic set-up.
Izzie’s tent set up for recovering patients post-operation.
This was Izzie’s station for the recovery medications, bandages, and records.
Here was my tent station, where I recovered the animals and administered their medications. it definitely isn't much, but it worked well enough, and it was nice to have a mattress (used or not) to recover the dogs on. Eventually, I got into a good rhythm of recovering the animals, especially once I had the drug doses (per weight) memorized.
Izzie providing a patient with the medication that reverses the effects of anesthesia.
Keeping records of drug doses and patient treatments.
Izzie’s mom, Kecia, at her station in the makeshift surgery room.
After day one was over, we came back for day two in the same location. It was especially nice that we didn't have to set up shop from scratch again.
For the last day, we all took a bus that we loaded our supplies into, and we took a long bus ride to one of the smaller towns. We woke up extremely early that day, and we got there and set up by around 9:00 AM. This setup was in an empty building that seemed like an old shopping mall.
This was the clinic set-up at our new location.
At this location, Izzie was the anesthesia nurse, in charge of providing more anesthesia when needed.
All the tables were in a row, and all of the doctors had their own table. At this location, I was an anesthesia nurse instead of a recovery nurse. This meant that I walked down the line of tables, checked jaw tone and color, and checked to see if the animals were blinking, and then I would give the patient another dose of anesthesia if it was necessary.
By the end of it all, we had provided a great deal of free animal treatment, and we also made some lifelong friends with the local veterinarians and nurses. I am very lucky to have had this opportunity, and I am very grateful to have been able to help with this project.
This is Izzie and all her new friends after a long week of work.
A huge thank you goes out to all of my new friends I have made in this experience. I am thankful to have to have been able to help so many people and animals. I hope to do more World Vets work in the future!
