What A Day!

I don't have the time to go in to all the details... but I have to get this down before I forget the intense/sickening/wonderful feeling. Yesterday I had the most exhilarating, frightening, nerve wracking, adrenaline pumping emergency at work that I have ever had to deal with!
I literally had a 60 pound boxer (yes people, that's a breed of dog) :) blow part of her jugular vein to pieces (it was the maxillary branch of the jugular, for those of you who want to know). She had been attacked by a boar and once the clot let loose, my hospital looked like a scene from a horror movie... I am in NO way exaggerating. Blood was pouring and gushing from this poor dogs neck!!!!!!!!!
My staff was GREAT! They totally got everything that I needed as a tech and I and bark orders since we were keeping pressure on the neck (I could feel the pressure of the blood hitting against my palm) and trying to stabilize that patient. Within minutes the dog was under anesthesia and I was trying desperately to keep my hands from shaking as I searched for the exact location of the tear. At one point I had to place my pointer finger inside the vein (yes it was THAT big!!!!!) so that I could get a good visualization of the wall of the vein as cut down over it!!!! I kept talking to myself and to God, asking for help... which He gave me, because somehow I got ALL the bleeding to stop (with the wonderful help of sutures and some clotting gel for added reassurance). We ended up playing ambulance too, and transported the patient in my truck while she was sedated, intubation and on IV fluids to a 24 hour emergency facility (since this of course occurred at 5:30 pm and I wanted her monitored overnight). By the grace of God she is alive and doing great, despite getting gouged by a boar multiple time, losing an obscene amount of blood and having emergency surgery! It was an amazing and very frightening feeling knowing that literally at THAT moment if I couldn't find or stop the bleeding, she would bleed out and die... then and there! Once it was all said and done, I felt like I needed to vomit and I'm pretty sure my hands didn't stop shaking until I finished a glass of wine and sat in the bath for 1/2 and hour! What a day!