More Fun in the ER

It was always MY shift! I'm done with ER finally now. I can't believe I lived on so little sleep. So much for studying for my Large Animal Medicine exam this morning. I was in the ER all weekend (in addition to every night this week) and was only able to study for literally 2 hours before the exam started. Grades already posted though, I did good enough to be content with my grade.

The major excitement was Saturday night. A campus worker found his dog next to a dead sheep. He and his two student friends brought the dog in. I was there, supposed to be alone, but wasn't only because a student spay dog was bleeding half to death.

Okay, let me back up... this was at no fault to the student surgeons, as far as I know, but that dog was my drama the night before when I checked on her (30 min intervals) and found her cage filled with bight red blood (at 5am). So we (the two student surgeons I made haul themselves up to campus at 5:15am) dealt with that dog all day. Turns out routine spays are really dangerous and stressful surgeries! (Was like a repeat of last semester when our partner's dog would not clot due to low platelets.) At 11am, I was released to go home and sleep because I had to be back at 8pm for my next overnight shift.

Anyway, the dog by sheep arrived at 8:30pm (making it a very long day for all involved). He was foaming at the mouth (which would have been consistent with Rabies if we'd been in the states) and having seizures. His temperature was 108F!!! (Not compatible with life.) His heart sounded exactly like we learned about in Small Animal medicine: little kid playing on the drums. It was amazing, horribly irregular, tachycardia, and like nothing I'd ever hear before! To complicate matters, the dog stopped breathing, which is also not compatible with life.

So what does one do in this situation? Yeah I donno either. The vet was 20 minutes away and had alerted me before the dog arrived. So by this time the clients are shrieking at me, so I had to do something. We got ice packs for them to put around the dog, turned on the oxygen tank, and set up an IV fluid line. I'm not the person you'd want to have place a catheter without out pressure, now bring the pressure to it's max, and I'm really not who you'd want to place it. It was a blind stick too since the vein was almost collapsed. I took a deep breath and got it on the first try! I have NO idea how. Tomorrow I'm placing a jugular catheter in our little donkey, so I sure hope my skills don't leave me.

We bollused a shock dose of fluids into this dog, who was still seizing, then readjusted the ice packs. His body temperature was starting to come down, but his tongue was still indigo blue. All the meds were locked up (with good reason), so all we could do was wait. By the time the on-call vet arrived, the dog had a fever, but had stopped seizing, was pink rather than blue, and aware of his surroundings. Then I stepped back so they could give him activated charcoal to absorb whatever the toxin was.

Two hours after the dog arrived, he looked completely normal and was ready to fetch. The vet told the owner that in all his years, he had only ever seen one other animal with that high of a temperature survive. At that temperature, the proteins in the blood become solid (just like when you cook a steak). That night seven other dogs in the owner's neighborhood died. We think that the dogs had been let wander by their owners and they got a taste for sheep. The owner of the sheep got made and salted the carcase with a poison, most likely a Carbamate.

My last case was a dog bite wound on Sunday night. (Remember, my exam was Monday at 7am.) A 2nd semester student came in crying as the on-call vet and I were updating the ER club about the cases. I slipped out to see what she needed. Apparently a clinic dog (now an anatomy dog) attacked her. She had at least 8 bite wounds up and down her arms. There were another 6 or 7 on her legs, and she is a girl of my stature! Then she lifted up her pants and there was a gaping hole and the outline of all the dog's teeth on her left butt cheek! Poor girl. I don't have much sympathy for the dog just because it was such an obvious and repeated attack.

And that was my exciting weekend. I definitely learned more in that week than in a semester of classes, speaking of, have a long week of school ahead...