Day 3
By Day 3 I felt like I was adjusted to the local way of life; up early with the gibbons singing and the sweeping outside the room at 5am! Beginning the day with a morning meeting; drinking green tea from tiny tea cups, sat on tiny plastic chairs in the middle of the forest. It felt normal, long having forgotten the normal pace of life!
I worked alongside Hai, the other vet at SVW today; it was light therapy session 2 for the pangolins. Hai was particularly excited about the light therapy machine, which he affectionately called the ‘ping ping’ machine, I think all the staff secretly wished it was a light saber!
The individuals had their dressings removed, wounds flushed and cleaned, and light therapy treatment before a new dressing was applied. I was photographing and documenting all of the wounds in turn each treatment session, to hopefully show the improvement over time with the light treatment. The photos were taking an hour a day to sort through and label.
The afternoon consisted of more blood samples, this time from two individuals with eye issues. A Vietnamese newspaper team were present to observe and photograph the blood draws for an article about the work SVW do. This provided the perfect opportunity for me to completely miss the vein and be unable to get a sample- camera shy clearly. To make it even worse Hai made it look so easy and got a perfect sample first time!
The blood sample required spinning down and the serum separating to use as an eye drop for the ulcerated eye. We popped next door to the EPRC to borrow their centrifuge, a great example of how the facilities unofficially work closely together.
Eye drops applied we finished just in time to help unload a Leopard cat that had just arrived at the centre, following confiscation from a restaurant in Hanoi. A very scared, stressed and skinny cat was unloaded, weighed and put in to a quarantine den with food and water to rest.
Hannah and I met up with some other staff from SVW, to chat about the work they do over a beer.
I worked alongside Hai, the other vet at SVW today; it was light therapy session 2 for the pangolins. Hai was particularly excited about the light therapy machine, which he affectionately called the ‘ping ping’ machine, I think all the staff secretly wished it was a light saber!
The individuals had their dressings removed, wounds flushed and cleaned, and light therapy treatment before a new dressing was applied. I was photographing and documenting all of the wounds in turn each treatment session, to hopefully show the improvement over time with the light treatment. The photos were taking an hour a day to sort through and label.
The morning had once again disappeared.
The afternoon consisted of more blood samples, this time from two individuals with eye issues. A Vietnamese newspaper team were present to observe and photograph the blood draws for an article about the work SVW do. This provided the perfect opportunity for me to completely miss the vein and be unable to get a sample- camera shy clearly. To make it even worse Hai made it look so easy and got a perfect sample first time!
The blood sample required spinning down and the serum separating to use as an eye drop for the ulcerated eye. We popped next door to the EPRC to borrow their centrifuge, a great example of how the facilities unofficially work closely together.
Eye drops applied we finished just in time to help unload a Leopard cat that had just arrived at the centre, following confiscation from a restaurant in Hanoi. A very scared, stressed and skinny cat was unloaded, weighed and put in to a quarantine den with food and water to rest.
Hannah and I met up with some other staff from SVW, to chat about the work they do over a beer.
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