Bear Laparoscopy

Well our crazy busy week is well under way! Two bears down and eight more to go.. phew I am going to need a few drinks by this weekend that's for sure! Our first bear for the day was lovely Italia (who is pictured here beneath all the drapes and equipment. You can just see her little bit of shaved belly. Romain the specialist is the small bearded man wielding the scope and our current vet Belinda is on the left - they are both looking at the television screen which was showing up all of Italia's inside bits! Very, very cool :). I like this shot because in the background is Phu, one of our bear workers who was extremely interested! He had actually trained as a vet many years ago, but doesn't work as one anymore.

Of course the first one was supposed to be a quick and easy 'this is how you do it' kind of thing.... and of course that's not the way it ended up! Turns out she was bitten by anther bear on her stomach recently and the bite penetrated through the abdominal wall causing lots of pain and some peritonitis (infection) internally. Thus we ended up looking around inside for quite some time and took many biopsies and samples of various organs. She was also one of the more tricky anaesthetics I've had for a while too... good to have one every now and then to keep you on your toes though!

I'm pooped. 7:30am - 6:30pm with a few minutes in between to scoff down some lunch. And tomorrow we do it all again!