Hands up…
Anyone who wanted to be a vet in primary school….?
I have previously posted this on another forum, but this was a ‘typical day’ (so one where everything could go wrong).
I was working my way through the surgery list, which consistent mainly of animals owned by welfare agencies that were being desexed before going to their new owners. On the one hand, it keeps you busy. On the other hand, there’s always suprises to be had. I did my first spey without a hitch, the dog had had puppies about 8 weeks ago, so her uterus practically leapt out saying “take me” (yes, reproductive organs talk). Finished the surgery uneventfully.
Get up to the second spey. All looks normal, young dog, appears to have had a season at some point. Incision through the abdomen is uneventful. Spend 5 minutes poking around the abdomen (I usually locate the uterus blind with my finger, rather than a spey hook), can’t find a uterus. Try the other side of the abdomen. Try the spey hook. Can find something like a ligament in the right spot for an ovary, but its way to tight and attached to something TINY and pink and tubular and I think it’s a ureter so I tuck it back where it came from. Try around the bladder. Nope.
Stamp my feet in frustration and make my incision bigger. Invite the other vet to find the uterus. She can’t locate it through normal means either. Resort to big incision and exploratory. Search every square inch of abdoment and find some things that vaguely resemble ligatures, but no reproductive tract. Decide that she probably has been desexed before, but there’s no proof, lol. As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Given the number of dogs that we see through welfare, this is the first time out of hundreds we’ve come across one that has been desexed before (either that or it’s a freak).
All the rest of the desexings do actually manage to have fully functioning and easily locatable reproductive organs.
Then, in afternoon consults, I saw “the” policeman (insert *squueeeeeeeeeeee*). I should explain. About 2 weeks ago, a guy appeared quietly in our waiting room, holding his dogs mouth. Looking inconspicous enough, when I called in my next consultation the owner of that dog suggested that I see to the gentleman in the corner first. So I called him through to the consult.
He calmly told me that his dog was bleeding from the mouth, it had a fight with another dog over dinner. Open it’s mouth and hell yes, it was bleeding. We had an arterial spurt on the wall that would make Dexter proud, there’s blood everywhere and it’s pissing out a teeny tiny little hole in the dogs tongue. The next hour was quite dramatic…. we had it on IV fluids and anaesthetised within about 5 mins.
One nurse went green and had to sit in a corner. The owner is doing an excellent job of passing swabs and syringes and things. He tells us he’s a policeman…and that the dog is a very recently retired drug detection dog and it’s worth $$$$$$$$$, so if we can save her he’d be really grateful. Dog recovered fine and is really quite adorable.
The nice policeman came into pick her up the next day in all his overalled, booted and gunned glory and (I think mostly because he was enjoying the adoration of an almost entirely female staff) gave us a drug detection demo in the waiting room. *squueeeeeeee* He’s kind of cute and I developed something of a girlie crush (I should point out that I have a long term boyfriend and this was a very ‘rockstar’ kind of crush). So he came in yesterday so I check out my handiwork and check out his other dog. Having a very hard time keep a straight face, lol. Spent most of the time outside the consult room giggling. Yes, I have moment of extreme maturity.
I then did a nail clip on a lovely staffie.
Saw a few more consults, including an 8 week old budgie with a broken knee (sure you can’t technically break a knee, but there’s something crunchy between his tibia and femur). Nurse runs in in the middle of a consult and say they need me out the back NOW.
There had been a car accident a short distance up the road. A dog inside the car had been injured and was not breathing – one of our vets and a nurse had gone to collect it. It was the same dog whose nails I just clipped. Tubed it, on oxygen, started CPR and fluids, adrenaline. Coming up to 5 mins and nothing we contacted the owner for permission to start internal cardiac massage. It’s not every day we see the inside of a chest, and it’s not everytime that CPR will manage to restart a heart, but this time it did.
The very sad news is that we suspect the dog had suffered severe neck trauma so over the next 45 minutes it didn’t start breathing spontaneously even though it’s heart was beating. The owner decided to let her go, so there was another set of wings in the park in the sky today.
