Surgical Anatomy, Fall Quarter, 1973 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Our junior year of veterinary school started with a bang. This was our first exposure to clinical medicine, and this was why most of us were here. But the rigors of the curriculum came as a new reality for some. 

We were at the clinic a full forty-hour week. We had classes that were sandwiched in between clinic responsibilities. Depending on your clinic rotation for any given week, it often meant arriving at seven or before and getting home sometimes well after six.

Some classes were elective, but the surgical anatomy class was required for the entire class. It was a full-hour lecture, twice a week in the old classroom upstairs over the clinic. In the early fall, it was always hot and poorly ventilated in this classroom. The seating was cramped, and the old wooden seats were hard.

“I know that most of you feel you know your anatomy pretty well,” Doctor Boer said. “But this class will concentrate on the specific anatomy you will encounter doing the common surgical procedures in veterinary medicine. I plan to hand out detailed notes so we can concentrate on the material and not have to worry about taking notes.”

“That sounds interesting,” I said to Ben, seated next to me. “I am not sure how that will work for me. I learn best when I write things down.”

“Ha, I’ve seen your notes,” Ben said. “I don’t know how you can read them.”

“I generally don’t have to read them,” I said. “If I hear the lecture and write down the important points, I will remember it.”

“Yes, but remember it for how long?” Ben asked.

“Well, I’m twenty-eight years old, so, for at least twenty-five years, I guess,” I said.

“You’re saying you don’t forget anything?” Ben asked.

“Pretty much, sometimes I need something to spark a recall, but if I can recall it, it is there,” I said. “Definitely, for the three months of this class.”

I collected my three pages of notes, poured the last half cup of coffee out of my thermos, and settled back in my seat. Doctor Boer started the lecture.

The room was hot, and we were at the end of the day. And Doctor Boer’s lecture just involved him standing up there and reading the notes. 

“What the hell,” I said in a low voice to Ben. “Does he think we can’t read?” Ben tried to frown. He remembered me getting him in trouble in Doctor Kainer’s class in our freshman year.

I sat quietly and followed along with Doctor Boer’s reading. I figured he would give a highlight or a side point somewhere along the way, but no such luck.

When class was over, we gathered ourselves up and headed downstairs, either to go home or to finish up things in our clinic rotation.

“I think I will have to save some more of my coffee to survive those lectures,” I said as we started down the stairs.

“It will be better when the weather gets a little cooler,” Ben said. “That room must be at the far end of the air conditioner duct system.”

The weeks wore on. The class would file into the classroom, pick up their notes packet, and take their seats. We were not assigned seats, but out of habit, probably starting in our freshman year, we always seemed to sit in the same seat, surrounded by the same group of friends.

I sat down and poured a full cup of coffee from my thermos.

“I’m beat,” I said. “At least tonight is the last night of my night duty.”

“That night duty makes for a pretty long week,” Chuck said.

Doctor Boer came into the room and picked up his packet of notes from the pile. He stood behind the podium and started reading. No small talk by this guy.

It was the middle of October, and the room was still hot. I sucked down the last of my coffee and tried to concentrate on the notes.

I woke with a jolt. Ben had elbowed me in the ribs.

I looked around the classroom, and everyone was looking at me. Some of the guys were trying to control a laugh. 

I looked at Doctor Boer. He was glaring at me, silent. He had paused in his reading.

“You were snoring,” Ben whispered.

After a full minute of constant glare, Doctor Boer started reading again. It took me a minute to find my spot on the page. I must have been asleep for several minutes.

The following week, when we filed into the classroom, there was no pile of notes.

Dr. Boer came in with his notes in hand. He assumed his position at the podium.

“Thanks to Mister Larsen, I have decided to do away with the printed notes,” Doctor Boer said just before he started reading.

Everyone in the class was scrambling to get a notebook out and start taking notes. 

“I think you’re going to be in the doghouse for a while,” Ben said.

“Everyone will function better taking notes,” I said. “This guy can put anyone to sleep.”

“They won’t be happy,” Ben said.

Ben was right, of course. As we filed out of the classroom and down the stairs, it seemed everyone had the same comment.

“Thanks, Larsen.”

Photo by Wokandapix on Pixaby.

Cold Weather Delivery 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

When I turned off the highway onto Liberty Road, my headlights flashed across a field that was white with a heavy frost. 

“It’s going to be a cold one tonight,” I said to myself as I corrected for a slight skid of the truck’s rear end. “At least Scott Mountain Road will be gravel.”

Pat had said the ewe was in the barn. It won’t be heated, but it will be out of the wind. 

If I had a call for dystocia in a backyard ewe, I could figure it would be a simple problem. Pat has been sheep ranching for many years. When she has trouble delivering lambs, it is probably a major problem. 

I slowed down for the last mile of pavement and made the turn onto Scott Mountain Road with care. The gravel surface was welcome, and it will make the twist on turns on this mountain road a lot safer than if it was paved.

Pat was waiting on her front porch when I pulled into her driveway.

“You will have to park here,” Pat said. “In this weather, you can’t get closer to the barn.”

The cold wind stung my bare arms when I stepped from the truck. I reached into the truck and grabbed my fleece jacket to wear to and from the barn.

I filled a bucket of warm water and grabbed my OB bag. 

“Lead the way, Pat,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on with this gal as we walk.”

“I noticed her with a bubble hanging out of her just before dinner tonight,” Pat said. “We ran her into the barn, got her in a pen, and then went and ate dinner. Nothing had happened when we checked her after dinner. I cleaned her up, like you always show me how to do, and ran my hand into her. All I could feel was a bunch of legs. I felt around awhile, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on, so we figured you needed something to do tonight.”

Pat’s barn was old, and the siding boards were weathered to a steel gray. Pat pushed the door open for me, guided me through it with her flashlight beam, and followed me into the barn.

“Things are a bit cluttered in here,” Pat said. “When you get a little older, there is always something left to do, but the days are just too short.”

Sheep barns were always a bit of a wonder for me. There seemed to be pens everywhere, and there was no specific order to their arrangement.

“She is way in the back of the barn,” Pat said. “You follow me, and I will try to keep the light so both of us can see.”

The barn was only slightly warmer than the outside. Most of the pens were empty, so there was no body heat from the sheep to warm things up. The best thing was we were out of the wind.

I stepped over the fence into the pen, and Pat put a halter on the ewe. I took off my fleece jacket and tossed it over to a couple of hay bales.

After washing up the ewe, I got down on my knees behind the ewe and ran a well-lubed bare hand into her birth canal. As I pushed through the cervix, I ran into a bunch of legs. 

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on. Then I counted legs.

“I count five legs right here,” I said. “That means we have twins, at least.”

“Twins are great,” Pat said. “But don’t try to tell me that there are triplets.”

“First thing, I need to find a head or a butt,” I said. “Then I can get one of them out of the way and then figure out what’s left.”

I reached deeper into the right side of the uterus and found a tail. I stuck a finger in the butt, and it cinched down on my finger.

“At least there is one of them alive,” I said as I gathered up the hind legs associated with the tail. Once I jiggled the other lambs out of the way, I pulled the hind legs and pelvis of the lamb into the birth canal. With a pull, I delivered the lamb in a posterior presentation.

The lamb landed in the straw and shook his head. Pat quickly dips his umbilical cord in iodine and gives him a Bo-Se injection. Then we shoved him up to momma’s nose. She immediately started licking the new lamb, even as I went back for the next one.

I reached into the left side of the uterus and found another bunch of legs. I fished through these legs and found a head. Grabbing the head like I would grab a baseball, I pulled the head up to the birth canal. Then finding the correct set of front legs, I pulled her with simple traction.

“I think there is one more, Pat,” I said as I pushed her over to the edge of the pen so Pat could take care of it.

“I don’t get triplets very often,” Pat said. “Do you see them much?”

“Triplets are uncommon for me, but I have seen quite a few in sheep, a few in goats, and one set in a cow,” I said. “I have seen three sets of quads, two in ewes and one in a goat.”

“Quads sound like a chore,” Pat said. “I would think you would have to bummer one or two of them.”

“They take a little extra work, but I had them leave them all with their mothers and just supplement them with a little extra milk,” I said. “That worked out well for all of them.”

I reached into the ewe, and the third lamb was lined up, ready to get out of there. Had I talked a little longer, momma would have pushed him. One little tug and he was out.

“I have always heard that in twins with mixed sexes, the females are sterile,” Pat said. “But that doesn’t seem to be a problem with lambs.”

“Yes, it is almost always a problem in cattle, but it’s rare in sheep,” I said. “It probably occurs less than one percent of the time in sheep.” 

The lambs were shivering when I stepped out of the pen, and my wet arm was suddenly icy.

“You might need to rig up a heat lamp for this bunch tonight,” I said. “It is going to get pretty cold tonight.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Pat said. “We don’t have electricity in this old barn. But there is an outlet in the shed behind the house. I will have to string a couple of extension cords together, but I think it will be fine.”

I washed up with the warm water in my bucket that was no longer warm, I pulled on my fleece jacket, and it felt a little warm. The truck heater is going to feel good.

***

It was several weeks later when Pat stopped by the clinic.

“You should see those lambs,” Pat said. “They are growing so fast and doing so well. I am so glad for your suggestion of leaving them all with mom. I had to supplement them a little for the first couple of weeks, but that was all. I would be feeding a bummer for another month.”

Photo by Matt Brown on Pexels.

KP, Basic Training, Fall 1965, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was up and through the showers and lacing my boots when the Fire Guard came into the bay to wake up the KP crew. We had to be in the kitchen by 5:00 AM. I was in the kitchen waiting for the cooks and the rest of the KP crew a good 15 minutes early.

Most of the guys hated the shift that ran until 7:00 PM. I had decided that nobody was going to work harder than me while I was in the Army, and this was just another day. And just like a day at work, time passes faster if you are working rather than sitting around watching the clock.

The assistant cook was the first to arrive, and he was surprised to see me already there. We started getting set up to cook breakfast. It was interesting to be mixing pancakes for 200 guys, and the scrambled eggs were also mixed from powder.

By the time the cook came through the door, we had the bacon ready to go into the oven. The oven was hot, and the griddle was fired up. Just about all he had to do was to start cooking.

“Are you the whole crew today?” the Mess Sergeant asked me. His voice was gruff, and his frown wrinkled his entire forehead. He wore a little white sock-like cap to cover his bald head.

“I was up early, Sergeant,” I said. “The others should be along any time now.”

When the others did arrive, the Mess Sergeant barked out instructions with practiced repetition. The milk dispenser needed to be filled, and the juice set out. Coffee needed to be made. He was assigning chores as fast as he could, and the assistant cook was trying to give instructions fast enough to keep up. It was a system that was used to make guys useful, even though many of them had never been in a kitchen.

“Who wants to mix the pancake batter?” the cook asked.

“Larsen had that mixed before you got here,” the assistant said. “And the eggs are mixed, and the bacon is ready for the oven.”

The cook looked at me and scowls. “Have you been a cook?” 

“No, Sergeant, I was just here early and needed to keep busy,” I said.

Breakfast went off with no problems. We were each assigned to serving positions or other chores like keeping the milk dispenser full or moving dishes from the collection area to the dishwasher.

When breakfast was over, we started cleaning up and then getting ready for lunch and making desserts for tomorrow’s dinner. The cook was pretty good at keeping everyone busy and ruled with a loud voice and a frown.

“Larsen, you wash the vegetable steamer,” the cook says as he points the sizable stainless steel steamer that was anchored to the floor. This was a large tank, maybe 100 gallons.

I jumped right to it. Having made cheese in Myrtle Point for 4 summers, if there was something I knew, it was how to scrub stainless steel. I didn’t wait for any instructions.

I dumped a good couple of handfuls of powdered detergent into the steamer and started filling it with water. With a large scrub brush, I mixed the soap with the water and turned on a little steam to warm the water. About that time, I felt the presence of the cook, more than seeing him. He was standing at my left shoulder.

“What the hell have you done?” he boomed into my ear. “Did you put soap into my steamer?” He continued before I could answer. “Nobody puts soap in my steamer.”

I looked at him, and then I looked back at the steamer, everybody in the kitchen was watching now. 

“How long have you used this without washing it?” I asked. I knew I probably had made a grave error by talking back to this guy. Still, I probably had him over the barrel because it was supposed to be washed.

The cook looked at me, red-faced, eyes narrowed, and breathing hard. Then he looked at the steamer.

“If they taste soap in their peas tonight, I will have your ass, Larsen,” he bellowed.

“I have washed more stainless steel than you will ever see in your life,” I said. 

He stood and looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I was expecting to catch his full wrath. Finally, he took a deep breath and relaxed his facial expression. “We will let them decide,” he said, pointing out to the dining hall. Then he turned away and got back to other tasks.

I scrubbed and scrubbed on that steamer. Swirling the brush around, I was hanging half over the rim into the tank. By the time I was done, sweat was dripping off my eyebrows and my nose. I drained the tank and rinsed it several times. During this whole process, I could see both the cook and the assistant cook watching me. Plus, the other guys on KP.

When I was done, the cook came over and looked at the steamer. It glistened compared to its old self. He nodded in approval.

“Now, if you’re so good at scrubbing, you can scrub all the garbage cans,” the cook said.

I am sure he thought this was a punishment. It sort of reminded me of the rabbit story when Brier Rabbit begs not to be thrown into the brier patch. Every fall, I would scrub hundreds of milk cans, cleaning them for winter storage. A few garbage cans were nothing.

I was outside, enjoying working in the sunshine. I had water flying and cans spinning as I washed the cans and set them out to dry in the sun. I noticed the cook watching from time to time. I think he was a little upset that I was enjoying myself.

Then one of the other guys in the platoon, who was cleaning the storeroom, came out with a bunch of empty bags and cardboard. He handed them down to me to put in the dumpster. I took the load and tossed them in the dumpster.

“I have one more load,” he said. “You can take a break for a minute while I grab it.”

I grabbed the bags, and this time they were cumbersome and heavy.

He smiled, “Payback for the ass-chewing,” he said. “Put the heavy one in one of those clean garbage cans, and we will pick it up tonight.”

I looked at the heavy bag. It contained a whole bunch of bananas, stem and all, enough for the entire platoon.

Dinner went without a hitch. Nobody complained about soap in the peas. We cleaned up and were thanked by the cook. 

“You guys have been a good bunch,” the cook said. “I think you will do well in this man’s Army.”

It was nice to get back to the barracks and get through the shower. I was in clean clothes when the guy who had stolen the bananas came by motioned toward the door. 

It was close to dark, and the two of us exited the rear door and ran across the back yard. We grabbed the bag of bananas from the garbage can, turned, and ran back across the yard with the bag carried between us.

We felt like we just put one over on the cook. We had bananas for the whole platoon.  We burst through the back door and almost ran over Sergeant Lopez. 

Sergeant Lopez was the DI for the 4th platoon. He had lost his wife to the meningitis epidemic currently at Fort Ord, and he lived in the company barracks. His room was right by the back door.

Here we are, standing at attention against the wall with a bag of stolen bananas between us. We both think we are dead.

Sergeant Lopez says, “Ah, what have we here?” He peeks into the bag.

We knew we were dead now.

Lopez smiles, looks down the hall, and shakes his head. “I didn’t see a thing,” he says as he turns and heads for his room.

The whole platoon had 2 or 3 bananas each. The trip back to the dumpster with the peelings was just as scary.

Our opinion of Sergeant Lopez changed that night.