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The Work We Do: Lauren Sikorski, East End Veterinary Center

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I’m Lauren Sikorski. I’m an internal medicine specialist and I work at East End Veterinary Center. I’ve been here for about four years.

There’s no such thing as a typical day here, but generally, we start with rounds, and we go over every case in the hospital. We try to get input from as many specialists as we can on each patient. We get an opinion from surgery, emergency, internal medicine, dermatology, cardiology — whatever sources we can pull in to make a patient better is really important to us.

I love to see all the wildlife that comes through the door. We have fawns, birds, snakes, turtles. … Our general clients are cats and dogs. And we see tons of them.

We do scopes, endoscopy, ultrasounds and blood work. So we have a surgery service, an oncology service, a cardiology service, a dermatology service and an emergency service. The emergency service is super busy, so sometimes we draw a lot of internal medicine cases from the emergency service.

We do a lot of ultrasounds, and that’s one of my favorite things. … Generally, we’ll have a set of blood work and some abnormal parameters. We look specifically in-depth at particular organs and make a plan if they’re abnormal.

I always wanted to be a veterinarian from a very early age. When I went away to college, I was programmed an English major — I just love reading and learning. After college, I found that I don’t really want to be a teacher. Then, I started teaching environmental education, which got me a little more into animals. I went back to school and I took a couple more biology and science courses and found that I really loved it.

This is my third practice. I went to vet school at St. George’s University … Then, I did my residency at the University of Pennsylvania. I was there for three years, following that I came back to Long Island.

I like figuring out problems. And that’s why most internists become internists: because you’re set with a set of blood work, a physical exam, some diagnostics — but the patient can’t talk. You really have to put together the puzzles. Figuring out what’s important is important to me, because I want to give this pet back to the owner fixed. I want him to feel better.

“The Work We Do” is a News-Review multimedia project profiling workers around Riverhead Town. Read it first and see more photos every Monday on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview and view a video on facebook.com/theriverheadnewsreview.