This is a story about a dog. That dog's name? You guessed it--Harper. But before I tell you my story, there is one fact that you should know about me. I am notorious for getting blood on my scrubs at work. It happens literally almost every day, and most of the time, I'm not even sure how it happens.
Our story begins around 5:30 pm on Tuesday, December 9. I'm sitting at work and in comes Harper, a 90 pound all white Alaskan malamute. For the previous 2 days, Harper had been vomiting and having diarrhea, and not wanting to eat. The day before that started, he ate a whole loaf of bread. (Granted, for a 90 pound malamute, that's not that significant. But it could cause some stomach upset.) So the doctor recommended the necessary diagnostics to rule out several possible causes--radiographs, bloodwork panel, CPL (pancreatitis test), fecal exam, giardia test. The owner approved the diagnostics, and so we took Harper back to the treatment room to get started. But of course, this is a fairly young, big malamute. He wasn't very happy with what we were going to do to him. It took 3 of us to try to hold him down to get a blood sample, and even then we couldn't do it. He was just too big and feisty. He liked to thrash his head and kick his front legs out at our faces. Dr. Kohler got scratched in several places, and I got a pretty significant bruise on my head. It wasn't going to be done. Our only option at this point was to sedate him in order to get all of the samples we needed and to take radiographs without him flailing all over the place. But it was after 6:00 by this point, and we were closing in an hour. So he had to come back the next day.
Day 2 of Harper: Wednesday, December 10, 8:30 am.
We inject the medications into his muscle, and within about 20 minutes, he is out. We are able to take x-rays, draw blood, and get fecal samples without any trouble at all. I discovered he actually looks quite cuddly and adorable when he's unconscious and not trying to tear my face off. As he is laying sedated on the floor, we are running the diagnostics to see what we can find. After all tests come back normal, we decided to start him on IV fluids because he was dehydrated due to losing water via vomiting/diarrhea. So I placed a catheter in his leg (you should just assume from this point on, anytime I say catheter, it means IV catheter, not urinary catheter). For the next 3 hours, Harper was slowly waking up as the sedative wore off. We checked on him occasionally to make sure he was doing okay and that the catheter was still in. After he had gotten about 600 mL of fluids, the fluid pump beeped at me and I went to check on him. As soon as I looked at his kennel, I saw it--the massive blood bath that was covering him and the entire inside of the kennel. (Keep in mind, this is a completely white dog.) Harper had lain down on the fluid line, causing it to disconnect from the cap on the catheter. Fluids continued to flow into the kennel while Harper's blood kept seeping out of his vein. I rushed to turn off the fluids and stop the bleeding. It took several minutes to clean up all the blood, and we had to give Harper a bath in hydrogen peroxide to remove the blood stains. As soon as I had him all cleaned up and was reconnecting the fluid line, Harper decides to get up and walk away, pulling the cap out of the catheter in the process. So of course, this makes him start bleeding. Again. But this time, the blood was coming out faster. Two other techs tried to help me get the cap back on, to no avail. We decided that he was done with fluids for the day, and removed the catheter altogether. It took even longer to clean him up this time, because he was more awake and getting very impatient. He didn't like being cleaned. By the time we were done, I had blood covering my arms up to my elbows, and the treatment room looked like a crime scene. Harper was finally clean, but everything else was super bloody. The rest of the day, he was pretty calm and just slept most of the time, howling on occasion.
Through all of this excitement, I amazingly managed to not get ANY blood on my scrubs. Not one drop. And for me, that's worth celebrating. That pretty much just made my week.
