Harper

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.

Gender confusion and nail trims.

It's been a while. I've been pretty busy with work and managing two living spaces for the past couple months, and nothing too exciting has happened at work. Nothing worth putting on here, anyway. Just average work-related things. Today was kind of exciting, though. Not that we were busy or anything, cuz we've been super slow lately. We're short-staffed and trying to hire new people, so it's gonna take a little time to get back on track.

So far this week I've had all surgery shifts. I enjoy it. We only had two today. In fact, we've only had two surgeries all week as long as I've been on surgery. And I wasn't about to let my streak end today. So, of course, only two of the three showed up. Again. One of the ones that showed up for a dental was a cat named Bella. A boy cat named Bella. Who the heck names a boy cat Bella?? That's exactly what I was thinking as I was talking to the owner while dropping off this cat. The owner had her 7-8 year old daughter with her. As I was explaining the procedure for the dental, I kept referring to the cat as "he", which I thought was appropriate considering it is, in fact, a male cat. I then noticed the owner gesturing behind her daughter and mouthing the word "she". I said something to the effect of the computer is telling me he's a boy. So of course, the daughter turns around and says, "Bella's a boy?" It was then I realized that the daughter obviously thinks this is a girl cat (which is why he is named Bella), and the parents didn't bother to tell her that it's actually a boy. Poor cat. No wonder he was so angry. I would be too.

One of the semi-exciting things that happened today was another fun nail trim. Nail trims are always fun. We have this yellow lab named Joey that comes in often for nail trims, and he freaks out so much that it takes at least 4 of us to get it done. He came in last week, and clocked me pretty good in the jaw. I got a bruise and bit my tongue. The one today was a different kind of exciting though. Another yellow lab, his name is Shadow, and he is very overweight. 122 pounds. And he should probably be about 70. So we had him laying on his side so we could handle him more easily. The nail trim itself wasn't terrible. But then he started to get up. I was holding onto his leash, and as I was still sitting on the floor, he decides to make a run for the door. And drag me along with him. He pulled me probably about 10 feet before I finally just let go and let him stand by the door. At least he didn't run me into anything.

I also broke the pressure gauge on the oxygen tank today. But that's not nearly as exciting. Besides, it's really easy to get a replacement one.

I don't feel like typing anymore. I need a nap.

I don't feel like being creative, so I'm just gonna call this post 5/21/2014.

Okay, so I haven't posted in a while. I don't really remember much about the last month or so that would be interesting enough to put on here, so I'll just tell you about the awesome day I had today.

For starters, I was on a surgery shift, which means I have to be at work at 6:30. Usually not a good start to my day, considering I'm not a morning person. EVER. And today was worse, because this was the third day in a row I had to be awake before 6. But I generally enjoy surgery shifts, so it's kind of bittersweet.

Once I got all of my surgery pets dropped off, we ran bloodwork on them and placed IV catheters to prepare them for anesthesia. The surgery doctor usually arrives by 8:30. That didn't happen today. So she was running a little late. It happens. 9:00 rolls around. Still no doctors. By now, all of us techs were starting to worry because neither of our 2 scheduled doctors had shown up, and we had appointments beginning at 9:45. We tried calling them to see if we could find out why they weren't there, but had no luck. Now it's 9:15. Still not there. One of the techs thought maybe they got into a car crash with each other. I was starting to think we would have to call all the appointments and say, "Our doctors have disappeared, so we can't see you today." We were all freaking out and becoming very frustrated because none of us knew what was going on. I had all of my pets ready for surgery, and was running out of things to do. Finally we were able to get ahold of our third doctor (who wasn't actually scheduled), and she told us they had a meeting this morning and were on their way. Yeah, that would have been nice to know earlier. So we got a little bit of a late start.

Most of the surgeries went pretty smoothly, with only a couple of extractions on a very angry cat. Also, I did something today that I've never done before. I placed an IV catheter in this very angry cat while it was laying on its side. It wasn't easy, but somehow I was able to do it. Well, the cat was sedated at the time. So that made it a little bit easier....but it sounds more impressive without that little detail. Another first for me was this cat's owner pre-approved extractions for the cat when he dropped off in the morning. Apparently it wasn't really a big deal for him to pay $600, so he was just like, "I'm busy all day. Don't call me unless it's an emergency. If he needs extractions, do it." So that made our job a tiny bit easier.

We finished with surgeries around 4:00, and I finally got to eat my lunch that Bre bought me from Subway. Well, I bought it, but she was nice enough to go get it for me. She also bought herself a sandwich with my money, so it was more like I bribed her. But either way, I got Subway for lunch. That made me happy. We also had a meeting from 6:30pm-8:00, so we ordered pizza. That also made me happy. Plus, another tech I work with brought me a Dr Pepper. For no reason. That just made my whole day better. So yeah, I was at work literally all day, about 14 hours.

One upside to my freakishly long day: I met Tigger's twin. This isn't like Sprite's twin who is evil. Tigger's twin is a sweet old cat with hyperthyroidism who comes in about once a month for a thyroid check. He's very nice. And they're literally identical.

This is Tigger.

This is Tigger's twin. He's a lot skinnier, but otherwise identical.

So yeah. That was my day. I now have about 35 hours for the week, and I have 2 more days to work. I'm so ready for this week to be done. Cuz then I get to go on a 2 week vacation.

And with the ending to my day, I will leave you with this cute picture of Sprite sleeping on a kitty pillow.

Update on Sam (and other random thoughts)

We recently got the results back from the U of M regarding the necropsy (autopsy) of Sam, the dog who died from cardiac arrest. The results showed that he had a large tumor--most likely cancerous--on his spleen that ruptured following anesthesia. We never saw it coming! I mean, this dog's bloodwork was completely normal, he wasn't acting out of the ordinary, or anything. He seemed a perfectly normal healthy dog. But it kind of made all of us feel slightly better about the whole situation. Not that we're happy about what happened, but at least there was a reason for his passing; it wasn't anything that could have been prevented.

In other news, I met Sprite's evil twin today. Literally, these cats look almost identical. The only difference is that Sprite has a half white/half black nose, and a gray spot on her head, whereas her twin's face is all black. Oh, and her twin is seriously evil. I couldn't come within 10 feet of her without her hissing. Even 10 minutes after she woke up from her spay earlier today, she was growling and hissing and freaking out, trying to lick at her incision. For the most part, she was fine until you went near her. Otherwise she wouldn't make a sound.

Work is making me exhausted, guys. I'll be honest, I need like a week off right now. I've been working 50+ hours a week for the last 2 weeks, and I'll probably end up getting at least 60 this week. On the bright side, I'm still getting 2 days off. But the days I do work are super long and tiring. For instance, today I was on a surgery shift. I was scheduled to work 6:30-4:30. I ended up going on my lunch break at 4:45, and worked until 7:00. I went 11 hours without eating. It wasn't pretty. One positive note from today: we might have had to do a foreign body surgery today, but didn't do it because the owner couldn't afford it. If we did the surgery, I might have stayed til 9. So that's a plus. Although, in a way I wish we would have done it, for the sake of the dog. Poor guy.

One of the most adorable puppies came in yesterday. She was a corgi/border collie mix, but she looked like a full-grown long-haired dachshund. 12 weeks old, black, long silky hair, the cutest little puppy. And smart, too. Her owner said she was already potty trained and knows how to sit. She didn't bark or whine at all while she was at the clinic, and she liked to cuddle. Overall, I'd say she's a perfect puppy. I wish I had a picture of her so I could show you guys. Cuz she's adorable.

Perspective

This is the story of how I got peed on by a dead dog. Before you start laughing, it's not as funny as it sounds. Sure, the end is funny, but the story leading up to it--not so much.

We had always been taught in tech school that you should have a fear of anesthesia. But not like a phobia or anything, a healthy fear, a respect, the type of fear instilled in you when driving a car or handling a gun. One of my instructors always said that the day she stops having that fear in her is the day she stops monitoring for anesthesia. Why? Simply put, when the respectful fear is gone, it becomes more of just a routine, you get too comfortable, and that's when mistakes happen.

I know what you're thinking, and no, we did not lose a patient under anesthesia. But what did happen was almost worse. Almost.

It started out as any other busy day at the clinic. Full appointments, numerous early morning drop-offs, seven surgeries, 3 techs and 2 doctors. This was my fourth day in a row out of five, and I was pretty exhausted from the three days before. Even so, I still had to do my job and help out everyone else where I could. The morning went pretty smoothly in spite of being crazy busy, but it was just one of those days where you could feel something was different. Something in the atmosphere wasn't quite right, and you knew something bad was about to happen. Around 3:00, I came out of a room and noticed a lady sitting on the bench with her dog. This dog had just had a dental cleaning and was being discharged to go home. He was a bigger dog, about 105 pounds (his name was Sam). He was still really sleepy from the anesthesia, and didn't look like he wanted to move. I offered to help the lady take him out to the car, and she thanked me for the gesture, but she thought it might be better if he just stayed at the clinic for another hour or two to give him more time to wake up. I thought it was a good idea, and she helped me take him in the back and put him back in his kennel.

He laid in the kennel for a while, and as we walked by we would check on him to see how he was doing. This has also become a routine for most of us, and we don't really think much about it, especially when we're so busy doing other things, and sometimes don't even notice the dogs in the kennels unless they're barking at us. It sounds horrible, but that's how things go. (It doesn't help that we've been short staffed lately, so everybody's kind of stressed and trying to focus on what needs to be done.)

Shortly after Sam was put back in the kennel, the surgery doctor had just finished with a cat spay and was putting her in a kennel to recover. She noticed something wasn't quite right with Sam. He was breathing heavily and not responding to any noises. So she opened the kennel to look at him. His gums were a very pale shade of pink, and he had a slow blinking reflex. Immediately she got the other doctor to help put him on the stretcher to bring him over to the table and get him on oxygen. At this point, I had just walked into the back, so I didn't know what was going on. The first doctor shouted out that they needed help lifting him onto the table, so I grabbed the sides of the stretcher and lifted him up. I still didn't know what was happening, but both doctors and another tech were scrambling around, turning on oxygen and feeling for a pulse. That's when it hit me: Sam was crashing. We tried to intubate him but failed, so we just put a mask on him to give him oxygen. He had a steady but faint pulse, and low blood pressure. Doctor #2 grabbed a vial of glycopyrrolate and told me to hold off his vein so she could inject the drug. No luck finding the vein, so we attempted to place an IV catheter. His blood pressure was so low that we couldn't get a catheter in either of his front legs. Eventually we ended up successfully placing it in a rear leg, where we were able to give glycopyrrolate and epinephrine. After each time of injecting a drug, his pulse would get stronger and faster, but would grow fainter after about a minute. We decided to try to intubate him again, so that oxygen would be going straight to his lungs. I pulled out his tongue and it was cold and purple. We successfully intubated him that time, but he wasn't breathing on his own. That's when Doctor #1 made the decision to start chest compressions. Between the 2 doctors and 3 of us techs, we tag-teamed CPR for about 10 minutes, stopping after several compressions to check for a pulse. It was getting fainter every time. Our last hope was to inject epinephrine directly into the heart. For a few minutes after the injection, we continued with CPR. But Sam could not be revived.

We took x-rays afterwards and determined he had gone into cardiac arrest caused by anesthesia. It's a rare occurrence, but things like this happen. That's something that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and has really made me stop and think every time I monitor anesthesia now. This was the first time I was actually involved with something like this, and it's incredibly stressful. No amount of schooling can prepare you for these situations, and after that happened, guess what? I had to keep working. I didn't have time to relieve my stress. I had the worst headache for the rest of my shift, but for all the appointments I had to see, they didn't know what had just happened, so I had to act like nothing was wrong.

After we closed for the day, we had to transport Sam to the U of M to have him cremated. He was too big to fit in one bag, so we put a bag over his front half and one over his back half. As we were lifting his rear legs to put him in the bag, I was putting pressure on his abdomen and inadvertently squeezing his bladder. So of course that caused urine to go all over the table and my arm that was wrapped around him. And that's how I got peed on by a dead dog.

When I got home from work, I ate, I showered, I cried a little bit, and I slept it off. Unfortunately, I had to work another 12 hour shift the next day. That wasn't easy, but I got through it. I think that situation caused me to have a different perspective on the medical aspect of my job, not just for anesthesia, but for all of it. I also have a new-found respect for people who work in emergency medicine, both human and veterinary. It's not easy to go through those situations, and often we take for granted the routine of medical care without really thinking about the real-life risks of some of the things we do every day.

Finding humor in unexpected places.

For some reason, a lot of my interesting stories this week involve euthanasias. I'd really like to share them, because they're actually kind of funny...in a weird kinda way (but hey, if you work in vet medicine long enough, you find humor in literally everything). So if you don't want to read about death, you should probably just leave this page right now.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #1:
An old black lab came in to get an exam on her eye that was red and swollen and looked kind of gross. She also had a sore on the back of her leg that looked like a ruptured mass. Turns out, she had severe glaucoma in that eye, and the mass that ruptured was on one of her several swollen lymph nodes. Long story short, the owner couldn't afford the diagnostics and treatment that we recommended, and decided not to make the dog suffer anymore. But the owner didn't want to be present for the euthanasia. That actually turned out to be a good thing, because the dog was really anxious and flinchy, and didn't want to lay down. As the doctor was injecting the pentobarbital (euthanasia solution) into the IV catheter, the dog jerked, the syringe came out, and pentobarbital squirted everywhere. This happened twice before the dog passed. I now know what pentobarbital tastes like. It's quite disgusting.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #2:
We had to euthanize a snake. I volunteered to help, because I was the only tech at the time that would handle a snake. It's basically the same as euthanizing a dog or cat, except you inject the solution into its heart. And you have to sedate it first. It just makes things a whole lot easier. As the doctor and I were watching the snake slowly lose consciousness from the anesthetic gas, we noticed how cute his little face was. And we both actually started getting sad. Then we disconnected him from the gas, felt for his heart, and stuck him with the needle. We both shed a tear or two while watching the snake take his last few breaths. It was sad, guys. Fast forward 2 days....we walk into the treatment room in the morning, and the smell of death is in the air. We have no idea where it's coming from, until one of the techs discovers something in the back kennel. It's the dead snake. On a heating pad. And it had been there for 2 days. Yeah. It smelled pretty bad. Don't ask me how we forgot to get rid of a dead snake, but somehow it happened.

Somewhat funny euthanasia story #3:
It was another old dog. He had several cancerous masses all over his body, arthritis in all his joints, and had a really hard time getting around. He was also a very sweet old dog. Oh yeah, and he weighed 130 pounds. This dog wasn't terribly huge, but he was definitely solid. So we went through the procedure, and afterwards we had to transport him. (We store them in a big freezer in the back until they get sent out to be cremated). We have this stretcher that's supposed to help lighten the load a little bit with such big dogs. After we managed to get a black bag around him, we rolled him over onto the stretcher, and proceeded to lift him off the floor to carry him into the back. We made it probably 10 feet, and I hear this big crack simultaneously with 130 pounds of dead weight being pulled down to the ground. Our one and only stretcher broke. Apparently it wasn't meant to hold that much weight. So we got a third person to help us drag the stretcher back to the freezer. Two people were pulling, I was pushing. If you can picture it, I was pushing this huge dog with my rear end sticking up in the air, slipping on the hard tile floor and trying not to run into walls. One of the techs working just looked at us and said, "Never a dull moment."

Hope you can find at least one of these stories as funny as I did. Otherwise, I'll just feel like a horrible person for laughing about dead things.

Cats are weird.

It's amazing how many different personalities of cats there are. Not even dogs, just cats. And their personalities usually change when they're at the vet versus at home. For example, I have two cats. My older cat, Tigger, an almost 10 year old 12 pound orange tabby, is more laid back. He occasionally gets a spurt of energy, but will spend most of his day laying in a sunny spot on someone's bed. Sprite is younger, not quite 2 years old, 8 pounds. She is very active. She's also very vocal and food motivated. She always greets me at the door when I come home, meowing and whining like crazy out of excitement because she expects food. This happens every time I come home, even if I was only gone for 2 minutes. And she doesn't do it for anybody else, just me. I've even taught her how to sit. Kind of. Anyways, she has such a different personality when she's at the vet. She just sits there, not wanting to move out of fear, she doesn't vocalize at all, and just clings to me. Tigger, however, will roam around the room and check everything out. Very different cats.

There was a cat in to be spayed today. She was weird. And slightly psychotic. When she was in her kennel, she would chew on the door, wrap her paws around it, and put her hind legs in the air, while screaming quite loudly. After her spay, she kept getting her cone off and licking at her incision. I could only wonder what this cat is like at home.

Other cats are really sweet when they're at home, or even with their owners at the vet, but the second you take them in the back, they turn into spawn of Satan. And then you can't do anything with them. You even look at them and they flip out. This is where a little miracle called DKT comes in handy. It's a mixture or "cocktail" of drugs that is the greatest thing invented for angry cats. It consists of dexmedetomidine, ketamine, and butorphanol. Within about 10-20 minutes of injecting the drugs, the cat is out. At this point, we can handle the cat and do whatever exam or diagnostics we need to do. We had a cat last week that came in for a dental, and as soon as I went to pick up his carrier, he started hissing and growling and just freaking out. We gave him DKT, let him sit and calm down for about 15 minutes, then took him out of the carrier. We drew his blood, placed an IV catheter, performed the dental cleaning, and then started waking him up. We didn't expect him to wake up so quickly, and as I was taking out his catheter, he growled and bit me. He was still pretty out of it, but awake enough to be freaking out again. I'm sure he's nice and sweet at home, but polar opposite while at the vet.

My least favorite cat breed is Siamese. Sure, they're intelligent, but they're loud and obnoxious and quite frankly, rather psychotic. My favorite breed is Maine Coon. They're big and long-haired, which is the main reason I probably won't actually get one, but they have the most mellow, laid-back temperament of any cat. And they have awesome green eyes. But, my overall favorite type of cat is a polydactyl brown tabby. For those of you who don't know what polydactyl means, literally it means "many toes". Polydactyl cats have extra toes, which means they have huge paws. I love it. And it's most common in brown tabbies, which I like even without 28 toes.

This is a picture of polydactyl cat paws. Aren't they awesome??

And this is the cat those paws belong to. He's a cutie. :)