Night, Death and Life

 

Time at the ER comes in two, and only two, varieties…warp speed and paint blistering, slow.  The weekends are the storm…where an 8 hr shift quickly becomes a 12 hr and the laundry basket heaps ever higher with bloody towels. I love the weekends.  Filled with nature’s mishaps and “I probably shoulda brought him in yesterday’s”.  It is the week days, specifically the 1am-8am shift that is usually filled with the boring sounds of silence.  No phone calls filled with panicked voices and descriptions of blood, no tales of volatile poop.  Nothing. My last couple night shifts have consisted of polishing cage doors, washing surgery walls and doing whatever else I could find to keep myself entertained and awake.

My first overnight shift was misleadingly perfect.  It was only my third day on the job, and my first time ever forcing my way through the night hours without a cocktail in my hand.  The cases came in one at a time and perfectly spaced.  No one was in imminent danger of expiring and I was left with time to coerce the blood machines into working.  My second evening shift was from 5pm-1am and I got to experience my first caesarean.  14 golden retriever puppies made their debut, stained pine forest, green with uteroverdin, and joyously screaming for milk.  It was perhaps the messiest act I’ve ever been involved in, but the sound of squawking puppies is truly beautiful.    

Surprisingly, we see far less trauma than I was expecting.  The majority of cases consist of vomiting and diarrhea, and cats with kidney failure (the norm in general practice as well).  However everything we see is ill which is huge change from general practice where 80% of your caseload is healthy pets.  And sadly, we see a huge section of people who can not afford to care for their pets.  These cases are frustrating for everyone involved.  I strongly believe people need to plan for the care of their pets with access to savings accounts, or at a minimum, a credit card.  I would love to say that we treat every animal, regardless of finances.  But we don’t, and we can’t.  A couple days ago I helped a dog that was clearly on some sort of stimulant, wobble its way back out to the car with no treatment on board.  The owners, like three earlier in the day, claimed no access to cash, and no one they could ask.  Their cell phones rang with current ringtones while they cried in front of me, and they asked if it was alright if they still went up to the lake for the vacation they had been about to leave on…while the dog shook and wobbled at their feet.  Choices.

And of course there’s the other side of the coin…like the gal who had us perform an exploratory on her cat last night.  The cat underwent an enterotomy (opening of sections of its GI tract) earlier in the week at her general practice.  Unfortunately several of those sites dehisced and fecal matter had leaked into her abdomen, coating her kidneys, liver and everything else.  But the gal wanted us to try.  And so we did…for four hours.  The doctor removed almost her entire ileum, performed a splenectomy and removed the vast majority of the omentum.  I read to her from an anatomy book and identified different arteries as she resected and cut.  And we rinsed with 4000 mL of warmed saline.  We rinsed for an hour.  And now we wait to see how she does…to see if she decides to live.  Because medically we’ve done all we can.  She was a feral cat the lady adopted…she’s coming up on $4000 now.

And there’s been characters…people like BJ and his dog Ms. Spaghetti.  He called me from nearly every vet clinic in town asking if he’d got there yet.  The last call was from Cats Over The Moon hospital (a feline only practice)…as stated earlier, he owns a dog.  But then, he hasn’t been quite right since “the explosion”.  He was adorably happy and Ms. Spaghetti was hackled and snarling at 40 ft…”but of course she don’t bite.”  Sure you don’t Ms. Spaghetti.  He stayed in the hospital from 1am-3am loudly and actively campaigning for funds from our waiting room, so we could get some Vit K1 into the stomach of rodenticide eating, Ms. Spaghetti.  His dad was the most likely candidate but, “likely smoked all his medical marijuana and passed out.  He’s got aches and pains.”  At 3am he ended up driving 40 miles back to his home to wake up his stoned father, get the cash, and then returned around 5am.

And then there was this poor guy…the eternally happy lab.  Triumphant and laughing even in defeat. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suppose it could of been worse…he could of been this guy…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Names have been changed to protect client privacy :)