04/30/2026
One of the very first farm calls that Dr Stevens went on after graduating veterinary school, her Dad went with. After tending to the animal they went to help, they got back in the truck for the drive home and her Dad exclaimed, "You really are a vet!!!" 🤣🤣
This moment happened today for Dr Stevens with our fabulous veterinary nurse, Isabella! Dr Stevens and Isabella have known each other for many, many years and Dr Stevens has always dreamed of working with her. As many of you already know, Isabella is SVC's first Certified Veterinary Technician. Meaning that she went to college and learned about anatomy, physiology, anesthesia, parasitology, radiology, pharmacology and so, so many more things. Dr Stevens loves talking cases with Isabella as she recalls things from her animal nursing classes that often help with the overall outcome of the cases.
Today we had a tough case and Dr Stevens asked Isabella to get a blood smear and a manual count on the five different types of white blood cells to cross reference with the automated machine that we use in-house. We don't often do this test as the machine is pretty accurate however Isabella is trained in this technique. This test involves smearing a perfect, single layer of blood cells into a microscope side and then manually counting 100 white cells and identifying them as one of five cells. As you can see below, Black Hawk College - East Campus sure did a heck of a job teaching Isabella to correctly identify these cells!! Dr Stevens actually ran up and down the hallway today telling everyone that would listen that we have a REAL veterinary nurse working with us!! 🤣🤗💖
(Isabella is holding the blood work with the automated numbers and the photo of the computer screen is her manual counts! We dare you to zoom into the printout to see how much of a rockstar we have at the clinic!! Look for % neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, basophils and eosinophils.)
