Jaws of Life

This week I got to be the assistant surgeon for a little boy cat's neuter. Things didn't exactly go as planned...

Darryl (names have been changed to protect the innocent, and not-so-innocent) is a one year old little boy cat with quite the personality. He's small for his age, but has the purr of a lion. His physical exam went well, and I was excited to have another surgery under my belt.

One of my least favorite parts of veterinary medicine is having to draw blood and give injections to animals. I don't like to put any animal in pain, but I know that it is only to help them. Darryl was such a trooper for his blood draw. Pre-anesthetic medications, however, would be an entirely different story.

Premeds are given as an IM injection, which is more painful than just giving an injection subcutaneously, like most vaccines are given. In addition, the premeds can sting as they go into the muscle. As the anesthetist gave Darryl his injection, I was holding him, and he decided he needed a stick to bite on. That stick was my hand. Poor Darryl latched on and wouldn't let go. Poor kitty.

After I pried him off my hand, I had to report my injury to our faculty surgeon and fill out an incident report. Bites are part of veterinary medicine. It will happen to everyone, eventually. The thing with cat bites, is that they can be incredibly dangerous. Cats have very sharp canine teeth because they are carnivores and need to eat meat. Darryl, being a year old, had all of his adult teeth, which are stronger than kitten teeth. On top of having razor sharp teeth, cats also carry a significant amount of bacteria in their saliva, which can cause serious problems if the wound is not cleaned immediately.

I made the decision to clean out my wound, bandage it the best I could, and scrub in for surgery. I wanted to follow my patient through, and figured that a surgical scrub would  clean the wound fairly well until I could get to a clinic. (NOTE: our faculty recommends that all students seek medical attention right away for any injuries sustained at school.)

Darryl's surgery went very smoothly, and he recovered well. I went to the clinic and got some antibiotics to prevent any infections in my hand. By this point, my hand had two very deep puncture wounds, and two shallow punctures. It had swelled significantly, and was painful, but looked okay considering.

The next day, my hand throbbed most of the day, and I could barely concentrate on classes. By evening, the swelling had doubled and the entire hand was red, sore, and radiating heat and pain all the way to my elbow. After texting photos to my human hospital friends back in Minnesota, I was convinced I better go in and have the wound looked at again. Fortunately, the doctor said it looked like it was healing. However, my kitty friend shredded the sheath around the tendon, creating what is called tenosynovitis, which was why my arm was so painful.

It has been a few days and I still cannot use my hand very well, but I am hopeful that I will be back to 100% soon, and am looking forward to being the anesthetist for my patient next week!

Five hours post attack

The infection spreads

The important lesson to take away from this story is that animals come to you, and they may be scared or hurting. Their only defense is to bite or scratch, and it is something we veterinarians need to anticipate and prepare for. I should have been holding Darryl with his mouth away from my hand. This is definitely not the first bite, nor the last. But I learned a valuable lesson in this weeks lab.

Going Solo-Primary Surgeon

So last week was a huge milestone in my veterinary career-solo surgery. I suppose I can't really call it "solo" since I had two amazing teammates as my assistant and anesthetist, but it was my first surgery without a veterinarian walking me through the procedure.

My patient was a little boy cat named Minnow from a local rescue here in Arizona. All of our surgery patients come from shelters and rescues, and it is incredible that we get to be a part of helping these animals in their journeys to forever homes.

The patients arrived at the hospital the day before their scheduled surgeries. As primary surgeon, my role was to examine my patient and draw blood to make sure he was able to undergo anesthesia. It is important that any patient that undergoes surgery is healthy, because surgery could make them even more sick if they have any pre-existing conditions. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for him, Minnow was healthy and ready for surgery!

The day of surgery, I think I expected to feel more nervous than I did. I actually felt more excited than anything else. The first surgeries are expected to be stressful, but I was ready to go!

I have to say, we have some of the most amazing veterinarians and veterinary technicians on hand. Everyone was so friendly and they went out of their way to help us. They really made the entire afternoon run smoothly and gave us all such confidence in the surgery suite. One of the adjunct faculty checked in on my surgery, and even gave me some smaller tools to work with since Minnow was just a kitten.

Overall, the procedure went really well, and Minnow handled anesthesia perfectly. He didn't even need any extra pain medication, which made me feel like I did a great neuter.

The worst part of surgery is definitely the paperwork! But it is incredibly important to make sure that each patient has a detailed medical record and report anything that happens with the patient throughout his or her stay in the hospital. I was grateful to have my assistant and anesthetist there to help remember all of the details we needed to include in the report. I handed over care to the overnight technician, and ventured home for some much needed rest!

The next morning, I went to the hospital bright and early to find Minnow happy, healthy, and ready to play. He didn't act like he was in any pain, and was eager to eat his breakfast. I did one last physical exam, which he passed with flying colors, and said goodbye to my first neuter patient. There will be many more, but I will never forget Minnow.

UPDATE: We are no longer allowed to post photos of our patients, despite them being adoptable animals. I am so sorry for the inconvenience, and I will try to take interesting non-patient photos for future posts...

Sincerest Apologies

First of all, I need to make an apology for being unproductive with this blog over the summer. I went home to Minnesota, which should have been the happiest thing in my life, but I faced tragedy shortly after arriving home.

As you know, I am an avid greyhound lover. I had two Italian Greyhounds that are my entire world, and they are my children. However, I had to put sweet baby Georgia to sleep over the summer. I wanted to blog about it, but I don't think I was emotionally ready to face that. But I realize that I need to move forward and I need to continue sharing my journey, and to do that I need to share Georgia's story.

As a little girl, I used to watch the dog shows on television with my family. I'm not sure when my obsession with greyhounds (and sighthounds in general) began, but for as long as I can remember, I have wanted a greyhound. During my senior year of college, my parents were planning to adopt a greyhound for me as a graduation present. Shortly before graduation, I took a trip with my best friend Jeni to Texas for a long weekend. One afternoon my mom called and asked me, "what would you name an Italian Greyhound?" and I replied, "Boy or girl?" and when my mom said a girl, I instantly said, "Georgia!" When I arrived home from Texas, there was a little fawn colored Italian Greyhound on my bed. She jumped into my arms, and we were instantly bonded. About a year or two later, I adopted another iggy from the Animal Humane Society, and the two dogs became inseparable.

Fast forward about six years to when we moved to Arizona. As you may know, I had problems with the tenant living above me in my apartment complex. He did not like my dogs, for whenever he made noise, they would bark. Now this was never when I was home, and it was never early in the morning or the middle of the night. Things got so bad, that this man began yelling through the window at my dogs. He often would stand outside the window and look into my window and tease the dogs, enticing them to bark at him, so he could yell. Once, I caught him parked outside in a car looking through my windows. I eventually took cardboard boxes and covered all of the windows in the apartment. His threats to the dogs continued, and I grew fearful for their safety, as well as my own. I knew I needed to get out of that place, but the apartment manager said I needed $1600, plus an additional two months of rent in order to break the lease. I was living off student loans at the time, so I wasn't able to pay the money right away.

One day, I was sitting on the couch studying and Georgia began to vomit. Now, Georgia has always been an easy vomiter. She eats fast, and often regurgitates her food, usually in my bed! But this time was different. Not only was she violently retching, she was vomiting large amounts of bile and food. After about four large vomits, she collapsed onto the couch. I immediately called the vet clinic and they said to bring her in right away. She had gotten so dehydrated that they had to give her IV fluids and anti-nausea drugs to keep her from continuing to vomit. They took blood and urine,and found that her kidney and liver values were really high. They also found three different species of bacteria, and on ultrasound, found that her liver was slightly enlarged. This was in October, and Georgia remained on antibiotics until January to clear up the infection. Meanwhile, I moved to a new apartment where I finally began to relax and feel safe.

Shortly after Georgia finished her course of antibiotics, I began noticing neurological changes in her. She would wander around the apartment as though she were lost. She didn't respond to her name, and her eyes were very dilated and glazed over. She would try to jump onto the bed and would often fall off. The vet attributed this to potentially cognitive dysfunction, as we could not find anything significant without an MRI. Because the MRI cost several thousand dollars, I knew it would take me some time to save up the money. Her symptoms continued to get worse, and by the time we went home to Minnesota for summer, Georgia was a completely different dog.

I thought that being home would make her more comfortable, which it did, for a little while. Eventually, her symptoms were so severe that I was up most of the night trying to comfort her and calm her down. Her weight was down to about 9 lbs, and she wasn't eating much because she was so busy pacing and shaking. She had been chewing through phone cords and lamp cords, and each time had to have been electrocuting herself, but still could not stop.

She was suffering. It was no longer Georgia inside of that body. It wasn't fair to let her carry on like that. On July 10th, I made the heartbreaking decision to let her go. I made the appointment for the next day, so we could have one last night to visit my mom up north and spend some time with her second favorite person, my dad. On the way to my mom's house, Georgia started to go crazy. She began tearing up the back seat and chewing on anything she could get into her mouth. She bit her tongue and began bleeding profusely. Sobbing, I knew we couldn't wait any longer. I drove to the vet's office.

After that, I felt that I needed more answers, so I took her body to the University of Minnesota for a necropsy. After an agonizing wait, the results came in. They found no evidence of cognitive dysfunction. However, her liver had basically rotted inside of her. The top differentials for the state of her liver were leptospirosis and toxic poisoning. Georgia had been vaccinated every year consistently for lepto, so it had to have been a toxin. Instantly, my heart dropped. Whatever had been going on in October was the first signs of her poisoning.

I still to this day believe it was that man that poisoned her, and I will never stop believing that. I blame myself for what happened to her. I was supposed to protect her, and I didn't. She died because I didn't get away from that man. She was 8 years old.

My only comfort in all of this was that she got to go home to die. She loved Minnesota as much as I do, and it was only fitting that I leave her there to rest peacefully.

I hope you can forgive me for not posting. I needed some time to heal. I will be back soon, I promise.

At the doctor

Wasted away to nothing

She loved her Grampa

The moment I knew it was time

Our Final Goodbye

The following are some of my favorite photos of Georgia. I hope they bring you as much joy as they do me.