A cow, a girl, and some water.

I've been milking the cows a bunch lately. Every night and morning :) This morning I was thinking, 'oh my  deja vu!'

The other morning, however, was definitely not the normal milking routine.

Usually in the summer time the cows will stay relatively clean. The pasture is dry, the dirt is dirt and not mud. Basically the only wet substance is a fresh cow pie. In the winter, on the other hand, everything is wet. And the cow gets nasty. That's what usually happens.

This cow, however, has an unusual habit. Maybe just an individual preference. Whatever it is, she loves to sleep right on top of her warm, fresh, cow pies. (Or she's just lazy and doesn't mind going while she's lying down.) As you can imagine, this makes her rather dirty when I go to get her for milking.

This particular morning it was baaaad. She had a thick layer of manure covering her bag, her tail, and her back legs. Dad had told me that in those situations he'll just hold her outside the barn and spray her off before bringing her into the stanchion. This seemed a very appropriate thing to do to me. So I grabbed the hose, turned it on, and tried to spray her off.

There was just one problem. My arms aren't as long as my Dad's. I couldn't reach her bag while still holding on to her halter. So, as best as I could, I squirted her bag from where I was. She was getting soaked, but the manure was by no means coming off easily. I leaned as close as I could to try to have more water pressure on her bag. I was bending over, leaning down, when suddenly a terrible thing flew around and whacked me in my face. It was wet. Like dripping wet. It was covered in manure. That had already been soaked in water. It was stringy. And it hit my face. Immediately I smelled it. The green colored water was dripping off my face. It was in my ear, my hair, on my nose. And it smelled nasty! I am a farm girl. I'm used to gross things. But this crossed the line. I was not wanting to re wash my hair that morning! And getting manure in my ear was not ok. I was rather upset. And the cow wasn't even close to being clean.

Camilla was out there doing her chores, heard my angry rantings (bellows. yells. whatever) and offered to help. She felt confident that she could hold the cow while I quickly cleaned her off. I gratefully accepted her offer but was a little worried about her ability to hold that darn cow. Sure enough, as soon as I started spraying her off again, Hazel went crazy. She ran towards her stanchion dragging Milla with her. As soon as I could process the words I yelled at Milla to let go. But it was too late. Hazel ran straight to her grain, scraping Milla off on the gate on her way. Milla hit her head and collar bone pretty darn hard (and now has two big bruises).

I thought I was angry before that happened...

After making sure Milla was okay, I grabbed that cow and pulled her back out of the barn. She would get sprayed off if it was the last thing I did. Usually I really have a hard time making that cow move, but I discovered something. In my rage I was about 10x stronger than normal. Or maybe she could sense my anger and complied with my shoving.

After spraying her off again, I brought her to the barn and started using the rags to really clean her. But she was still so dirty. So I used the hose again, but this time I was too irrational to take her out of the barn. I sprayed her off. And the barn got wet. But she was finally clean and I put the milker on her. (The gross, wet, manure water that was seeping up through my shoes wasn't helping my mood).

But this cow had to do one more thing to make matters worse. Just after I got the milker on and going she decided to pee. And when cows pee, they pee a LOT. It's like a flood. It normally splatters a lot, but with the ground already being wet and having a thin sheen of water, the splattering was greatly increased. It went everywhere. All over the milker. On my legs. On the cows tail. And I decided to feed all the milk to the calves.

Needless to say, my mood could only have improved from there.

Got Milk?

I love milking cows. But the caveat to that is I hate getting ready to go out to milk the cows. Once I'm out there I really enjoy it, but getting ready is sooooo hard! Especially when it's cold and snowy. Last night I went out to help Dad milk.


I may or may not have gone out to milk like this...

I had a conducting test that evening and I had already dressed up for it and really didn't want to change. So I didn't. But don't worry, I put a farm suit over the top so I wouldn't get my skirt dirty :)

My boots happened to have a big hole in them, so they didn't protect my feet very well when I was walking ankle deep in manure. And we'll just pretend that I didn't get wacked in the face by a manure covered tail... But I didn't even have to change when I got in from milking so I made it to my test on time :)

Did you know that pomegranates are super yummy? I had never really eaten one before the other day. Mostly they are just fun to play with because they are so cool! I had to document the moment:

Ok, I need to go to work. Just so you know, I've been doing so good this week! I turned in everything on time. I don't think you realize how big a miracle that is. The only thing that counts that I didn't get done was reading for one of my classes. But I turned in all my papers, did my presentation, finished one midterm, went to bed quite early (comparatively), went to a rehearsal and did my two critiques, got to clinical on time, and have just two midterms left this week. Yes! :)

What has nursing done to me?!

I have always been very much a farm girl. I was tough. Nothing grossed me out--manure? It's just a part of having animals, blood? not a bid deal. I've seen animals die, and although it was sad, I knew it was a part of life. I didn't care about getting dirty--in fact, I almost liked it. 
 
Well, today I had clinical again. And I did a bunch of stuff. I pulled out several IVs (and got blood on a gown--I'm so good at that...), removed two catheters, did an assessment, gave medications, gave a flu shot, watched an ultrasound-guided drainage of a cyst (that was cool), and had a doctor ask me to help him change a dressing and remove a drain (my reaction: "of course I would love to!" thinking to myself "oh my heavens, a doctor just talked to me, an unimportant nursing student!). It was a good day :) And everything I did was very clean--always put on gloves, always used sterile bandages, throw away things that fall on the floor, wash hands often--whenever they feel dirty, and avagard in and avagard out.

Then, when I got home (after I woke up from my nap), I went out to help my Dad with a new cow. She was SO dirty! Apparently the dairy she was at was all cement, and she had slipped and fallen this morning and then couldn't get up on the slippery surface, so we brought her here because she does fine just on dirt. But because she was on the ground all day she was such a mess! I held her rope while Dad sprayed her off with a hose. But all the while I kept wanting gloves. And when my Dad cut her long, stringy, wet, manure-covered tail and handed me the ends to throw away, I could barely grab it because I kept thinking I needed gloves! My Dad found a bloody spot on her back and was feeling it to see what it was, but I could not bring myself to touch it without gloves... And afterwards, when I let go of her rope, I was wanting to avagard so bad! It was ridiculous. It is definitely not because I've become a germaphobe--that's not it. It's just the rules they pound into our head so often that are conflicting with my "farm girl" habits. Never touch anything that could be contaminated without gloves, never touch bodily fluids without gloves, and ALWAYS avagard before and after every and any type of care.

Somehow I'm going to have to figure out how to change out of my "hospital/everything needs to be clean" mode when I'm out on the farm...