The Other Thing I Do...work

I actually have a very cool career. As a veterinary anesthesiologist at a major teaching hospital every day is an adventure. Some say anesthesia is long periods of boredom interspersed with shots of adrenaline but I'd beg to differ. I'm rarely bored.

Probably the most common question I'm asked when folks find out what I do for a living is "What is the most unusual animal you've anesthetized?" I'll get back to that one. The majority of our case load is just your average dog, cat or horse with a smattering of birds, bunnies, cows, goats, etc. What is not average is that this is a tertiary care referral hospital and, although we see any patients, many of our patients are referred to us because we have diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical capabilities not found in the average veterinary practice.

We like to joke with our human counterparts that they could not do our job but we could easily do theirs. We have to manage a huge diversity of species ranging from small:

To large:

From avian:

To reptilian:

And yet more diversity within each species. For example there are cats...

And then there are CATS:

Doing a person would just be doing another species, not unlike:

Back to the question of the most unusual. That is always a very tough one to answer. Is a 26 foot long Anaconda more unusual than an anteater? An elephant more unusual than a polar bear? I need to delve into my photo collection but I'll post a few that may represent "unusual".

Black Swan

Serval

Anteater