Wow, what a day!

Well, my day sure was interesting! I walked in this morning and within a half hour saw a Boston terrier female that had had one puppy yesterday morning. She spent the rest of the day trying to get the other puppies out. When she presented to me she was pretty tired. I gave her 2U oxytocin IM and she started to push. when nothing came out I felt and there was a giant puppy head stuck in the canal. So the owners elected to take her to surgery. I did the c-section/spay and got two live puppies out. Even the one that was stuck in the canal lived! I was surprised and happy that he did. Mom got sewed up and was doing well when they left. Yeah!

Then I saw a sick cat and kept her on IV fluids.

A couple more appointments go by, nothing special. Than this dog rushes in about 4:30. His back foot is completely torn to shreds with shattered bone everywhere. It's bleeding everywhere and the foot is literally split in half. We start an IV catheter while the owner is contacted, manage to stabilize the dog and send him off to the emergency clinic 45 min away for overnight care. Tomorrow the owner will bring him to his regular vet for amputation.

Overall a pretty exciting day!

What Do I Look Like, an OB/GYN?

This story is courtesy of Dr. May B. Insane, who shared it with me recently via telephone... All the "I" usage is her words.

So I get this call about 10 pm while I was working overnight. It's this lady on the phone. "Oh dear, my dog is 66 days pregnant and acting like she's going to have puppies!" I ask some questions and determine, yes, she was bred on purpose, yes, she is showing nesting behavior, and yes, she does seem to be having contractions. So I ask, "So, sounds like she should be having puppies anytime now."

"Ok," she says, "I'm on my way!" "Wait," I exclaim, "why are you coming here?" She replies, "Well, I'm not going to let her have puppies AT HOME!" With that she hangs up, before my smart mouth can retort, "Well than, why did you breed her?"

She arrives about 20 minutes later with a charmingly under bitten foo-foo breed with long hair who is in active labor. I'm surprised she didn't start popping out puppies in the backseat of this lady's car. Course, that would have been pretty funny. I examine her, and take her in the back to ICU, load her into a cage with lots of comfy blankets, and leave her be. While I proceed to be swamped with other actual emergencies, she sits there, pants and stops contracting. Every five seconds the owners ask the receptionist about progress reports. I keep sending a tech up to answer them, and the tech tries to explain why the doctor is not coming up every time...

Three hours later, not a puppy to be seen. I was walking to her cage to scoop her up and send her home when OOPS! Out pops a puppy. I leave her to do her thing as I go out and tell the owners that she show is on the road.

Two hours later she has four new members of her family all wiggling and crying. I had had to help her break the placenta for the first one, but the others she handled like a pro. I palpated her abdomen gently and felt one other puppy in there. So I left her to do it.

Two hours later, she'd curled up to feed her brood and her Mom was breathing down my back more every second. So I popped her a little oxytocin, and our popped number five.

So off they went with their new little family, so proud and gushing thanks. "Oh, what would I ever do without you. If you hadn't been here, Fluffy would have had to have her puppies AT HOME!!"

I just stared at her as she walked out the door.

Still here, I promise

I'm still going, just been too busy/bored to blog :) I have a couple of good stories for you though, just waiting for time to get them typed out.

Most days I can't win

I got a call today from a new client. Said client wanted me to come out and sedate his donkey while the ferrier trimmed his hooves. The conversation went something like this:

Me: How big is the donkey and is he gelded?
Client: Well, he's as big as a freakin' house! And no, he's not gelded, I wanted him to protect my goats! I would never take away his manhood!#$%^&
Me: Well, if he's not gelded he's a lot harder to handle...
Client: I never handle him, so that's not a problem.
Me: But you expect me to stick him with a needle?
Client: Well, you can try! *laughs*
Me: What's the ferrier going to do?
Client: Dodge, really fast! *laughs harder*
Me: *fumes*

What, a DVM is a degree in how to dodge flying hooves, stick needles in speeding objects, tackle my patients, get bitten, walk around in a haze of fur, oh, by the way, the x-ray processor is out can you fix it?

I should have been a plumber. They make more than I do.

Ode to a Lost Soul

The kitten came in last week. He was about 8-9 weeks old. A little black and white tuxedo marked one. His temperature was 92F. He was covered in fleas and his gums were white. Total estimate including a blood transfusion was about $450-700. Owners elected euthanasia. Rest in Peace little one.

My TV Commercial

Sometimes I feel like I should just record some of my more often given talks and just play them while the client is waiting. You know, the heartworm talk, the spay/neuter talk, why you shouldn't vaccinate your dog yourself talk, the food allergy/atopy/flea allergy dermatitis talk, ad nausium, ad nausiom.

It's not very often, however, that I feel like I should record the same talk to the same client.

This absolutely adorable little old lady has a dog who gets fed a little too much people food. This causes him to have gastritis a little too often and not eat. I saw the little guy the first time and put him on a short course of sucralfate and metronidazole. Metronidazole is a drug we use in low doses for it's intestinal anti-inflammatory qualities. Since this little dog weighed about 4 pounds I mixed the pills in into a liquid form for ease of administration and dosing. It taste's very yucky, however, and the client christened it, "That Yucky Medicine" or TYM for short.

I told her about five times during the initial visit what exactly TYM was for, i.e. "Now, Mrs. XYZ, I know it tastes bad, but it calms down the inflammation in the intestines..." We'll call this phrase 1 for ease of typing.

So later that day I get a call from Mrs. XYZ. "Now dear, what exactly does TYM do?" I patiently explain again Phrase 1 and she is happy.

Repeat the next day.
And the next day.
And the next day.
And the next day.

So she stops calling for a few days and I rest secure in the knowledge that her dog is feeling better.

Than she calls back. "Dear, Pookie ate a little chicken today and isn't eating. Should I start him back on TYM?"
"Yes Ma'am," I say. And repeat Phrase 1.
And again.
And again.
And again.

Now don't get me wrong. I really like Mrs. XYZ and she is as sweet and polite as she can be. But I feel like I can start my own record label. It'll be called MedicalGems and the lead track will be titled, "TYM and Mrs XYZ." I could make a fortune, and start a company to record all the usual "talks" that vets give their clients and same them the trouble.

You can than call me Dr. Can'tSpell, millionaire. Yeah right. And I can fly without an airplane, too. Zoom Zoom.

Sundry stuff

I'm sorry to everybody who likes my blog (yes, you three) but I've been in a pretty big rut lately. My boss has been ill and I've been working covering his hours as well as my own. Also, it's been really slow at work (thank you winter and the economy) and not much interesting going on. However, this week I've done more surgery than usual with a couple of interesting ones.

I don't do much surgery. Despite liking it in vet school I had a few terrible episodes right out of school involving huge obese dog spays with loose ligatures and some large pyos, and one memorable... never mind. So it's taken me about a year to get my surgical courage back.

Monday I repaired a prolapse of the gland of the third eyelid (say that ten times fast) using the pocket technique. I've never done this surgery and never even seen one, but went to an excellent CE conference this past weekend that taught me how to do it. It went really well and looked really good when I was done.

Today, I amputated a cat's ear. The inside of the pinna (the part that sticks up) had a nasty fast growing tumor on it that I've cut out once before. So this time, with the owner a little frustrated (understandable) we just cut the whole thing off. That was interesting, I've never done it before. Went pretty well, as well. We'll see how he does the next few weeks.

I also did a cat spay and neuter today. Same old same old, probably done about a hundred or so of those. Took me less than an hour to do both of them.

Hope I have something good to tell ya'll (I used that word on purpose) next time I blog!!!