Coated With Fur: A Vet's Life

  Coated With Fur

  A Vet’s Life

  By

  Kristen Nelson, D.V.M.

  Published by

  Veterinary Creative L.L.C., Kindle Edition

  Coated With Fur A Vet’s Life Copyright 2010 by Kristen Nelson D.V.M. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact:

  Dr. Kristen Nelson

  480-236-1841

  drnelson@veterinarycreative.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1-936278-02-2

  ISBN-10: 1-936278-02-2

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all the wonderful animals and people with whom I have worked. May love, joy and good health fill your days.

  I also dedicate this book to my husband, Steve.

  Thanks for your neverending love, support and acceptance of all the creatures I adopt. You are the pick of the litter!

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Our First Patient

  Chapter 2: Setting up the Clinic

  Chapter 3: Ivan’s Hotspot

  Chapter 4: Genevieve, MVC Mascot

  Chapter 5: Allie Rescues a Cat

  Chapter 6: Bridget Lacerates Her Paw

  Chapter 7: Scruffy Fights for Life

  Chapter 8: Owner’s Intuition

  Chapter 9: Nasty Animals

  Chapter 10: Lucifer

  Chapter 11: Cosmo Saves Us

  Chapter 12: Blake’s Christmas Puppy

  Chapter 13: Oscar the Parrot

  Chapter 14: Moe the Ferret

  Chapter 15: Genevieve’s Spay

  Chapter 16: Butch the Alpha Pup

  Chapter 17: Puppy Hit by Car

  Chapter 18: Emily the Guinea Pig

  Chapter 19: Sugar and Spice, Maltese Sisters

  Chapter 20: Butch Revisited

  Chapter 21: Rusty the Blood Donor

  Chapter 22: Sugar’s PCV Falls

  Chapter 23: Elvira the Snake

  Chapter 24: Chewy the Gerbil

  Chapter 25: Trudy, U.S. Customs Canine Officer

  Chapter 26: Fourteen Puppies

  Chapter 27: Cow Doc

  Chapter 28: Emergency of the Male Variety

  Chapter 29: Goodbye, Chewy

  Chapter 30: Miracle of Life

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Disclaimer

  This book is about the wonderful animals and people I met upon opening a veterinary practice in Burnsville, Minnesota in 1992. With the exception of my own family and pets, I changed the names and other identifying characteristics to preserve confidentiality. Any similarity between details as they appear in this book and actual people or pets is strictly coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Our First Patient

  This was not how I dreamed it.

  “Kris, you have two dogs hit-by-car,” said my frantic husband, Steve, over the phone. “It’s bad.”

  I felt my heart race. I was standing in the parking lot of a hardware store in Burnsville, Minnesota. The clinic wasn’t open for business yet. The landlord had given me the key that very morning. Most of my supplies would not arrive until next week. Naturally, all of the nearby hospitals were closed and the emergency clinic was 20 minutes away.

  “I’ll be right there,” I told Steve. A combination of training and experience helped me stay calm, but I had no sense what could be done under the circumstances. In an exaggerated fashion, I motioned my father, Gordon Lindstrom, to head for the car. He pushed a shopping cart full of supplies through potholes as I ran ahead and opened the trunk. We unloaded bags of brushes, paint, tape, light bulbs, pipes and garbage bags in record time and sped off.

  Driving along the Minnesota River, we raced toward the clinic without a word. I typically gaze at the maple and oak trees lining the boulevard or look for waterfowl resting on the banks. But today, I kept my eyes on the road and tried to ignore the pit forming in my stomach. I considered my resources; I had fluids, catheters and a few emergency drugs on hand. Hopefully, they would be enough.

  When we reached the clinic, I slammed my car to a stop next to a large pickup truck. The half-ton Chevy dwarfed my Ford Probe. Through the glass door, I saw an Australian cattle dog lying in the middle of the lobby with my family surrounding him. White foam poured from his mouth. Allie Knutson, my 24-year-old technician, knelt by the dog’s head, holding an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. The sparkling new anesthesia machine towered over her. A red first-aid kit sat on the floor by her side.

  I knelt by the dog. A glassy stare covered his face. I touched the inner corner of his eye with my finger, but he didn’t blink. His chest heaved up and down as he fought for air with all of his remaining strength. I reached under his hind leg to check the pulse, pressing my fingertips against the leg in search of the femoral artery. It’s usually easy to find because the large vessel runs along the inner aspect of the femur. But this dog was in severe shock. Because his heart was having a hard time pumping blood through his body, his pulse was weak and rapid. We had to act fast. I feared the worst.

  “Allie, let me see his gums,” I ordered. She removed the mask from the dog’s mouth and pulled back his lip, revealing a sick shade of blue. It should have been pink, but the color confirmed my analysis. This poor dog was starving for oxygen. An experienced technician, Allie replaced the mask and held up a catheter. “Is an 18-gauge OK?”

  I nodded and took the catheter. My hands trembled as I removed the plastic guard. Through many years of school and medical practice I had placed more of these than I could recall. But today, with a new clinic, few resources and my family standing vigil – afraid for me and the dog – it was different. Allie slid her hand around the dog’s elbow. She used her fingers as a tourniquet to block the flow of blood. In healthy animals, the vein distends from the backup of blood, but with this injured animal, the vein was invisible despite Allie’s clip job. I pumped the paw a few times and splashed more rubbing alcohol over the prep site. I was happy to see the ever-so-faint outline of a vein appear down the center of the dog’s leg between the wrist and elbow.

  “His pressure is awful,” I muttered. I pumped the paw again with my left hand and felt his leg with the fingertips of my right hand. “I can barely feel it.”

  I held the catheter over the vein with the tip hovering above the dog’s leg. “Lord, help me,” I prayed as it penetrated the skin. I threaded the catheter up the leg and waited. Allie and I froze in place, our eyes focused on the catheter protruding from the leg. A moment passed, then blood appeared. I slid the stylet out and capped it off.

  “Nice stick, Dr. Nelson,” Allie said, handing me a piece of white medical tape. I could feel my muscles release just a little. I wrapped the tape around the catheter and then securely around the dog’s leg. Allie prepared a bag of Lactated Ringer’s, a sterile solution used to replace fluid lost by the body. She handed the bag to my sister, Debbie Welch, with the firm instruction to hold it high to increase the flow rate. Then Allie allowed clear fluid to rush from the bag down the tubing and onto the floor. Once the air bubbles were gone, she handed the end of the drip set to me. I removed the plug from the catheter and replaced it with the fluid line.

  “Now,” I said in a tone accentuated by the massive amount of adrenaline coursing through me. Allie opened the valve, and fluid rushed out of the bag into the dog’s leg. I turned my attention to his respiration. The dog fought for every breath, each one lifted his feet off the ground. I had to find out what was making him breathe like this. I asked Steve to find the stethoscope.

  It seemed like an eternity before
the stethoscope appeared. I placed the bell on the dog’s chest and heard the air rushing in and out of the trachea like a wind tunnel, so loud it drowned out all the normal lung sounds.

  I looked at the only stranger in the room, the dog’s owner, and said, “This does not sound good.” What color remained drained from the owner’s face. He clung to the reception counter for support.

  “I’m worried your dog has a pneumothorax,” I said. “That means he has air in his chest.”

  I paused to collect my thoughts. My mind raced back to veterinary school and all I learned about pneumothorax. In normal animals and people, air flows down the trachea into the lungs and back out on exhalation. The system works because the space around the lungs is a vacuum. It’s empty, devoid of pressure.

  I turned to the owner. “I think the impact of the car damaged his lungs, and air leaked into his chest. His vacuum is gone, and he can’t breathe.” I pushed the oxygen mask back and lifted the dog’s lip to check on his color. There was no change, despite the fluids.

  “I need to tap his chest,” I exclaimed as much to myself as to anyone. Turning to the owner, I said; “We need to remove the excess air. I will stick a needle into his chest and pull the air out. Is that OK?” I looked at the man for his response. He slumped over the counter with his head in his hands.

  Often the hardest part of veterinary medicine is dealing with people. Giving owners time to make decisions is always hard for me, especially with critical patients like this one. This dog did not have the luxury of time. I looked at Steve and wrung my hands. Debbie and Allie exchanged a concerned glance. What was he waiting for?

  Finally, the man straightened and faced me. His eyes glistened with tears under the clinic lights. “Do what you think is best, Doc,” he whispered and looked down at his leather cowboy boots. “I don’t want to lose Cody.” He raised his hand to forehead, closed his eyes and made the Sign of the Cross over his chest. When he finished, he kissed his fingers and touched the dog’s back.

  Allie sprang into action. She clipped a nine-by-nine-inch square patch over the dog’s rib cage. Loose brown hair fell onto the floor. She disinfected the area with Betadine scrub and rinsed it with rubbing alcohol. While I donned a pair of surgical gloves, Steve grabbed a 35-milliliter syringe and a butterfly catheter from the first-aid kit. He opened the packages carefully and slid them into my gloved hands. I connected the syringe to the rubber tubing of the catheter.

  As Allie finished the sterile prep, the pit returned to my stomach. If the tear in Cody’s lung was large, this chest tap would not work. He’d need a chest tube with continuous suction. My suction equipment would not arrive for a week.

  Allie rubbed her hands on her pants to dry off the slimy scrub. “Ready,” she said. I passed the syringe to her and took a deep breath. I dreaded the feeling of the needle passing through the muscles of the chest. The professors said I would get over it with time, but in four years of practice I had not. I always thought how much it must hurt. Cody could not afford to wait for me to numb the area with lidocaine. His gums looked gray.

  I felt his fifth and sixth rib with my left hand and identified the muscular space between. Grasping the special catheter by its plastic wings, I plunged the needle deep into Cody’s side. The dog did not flinch. His chest continued to heave up and down with each breath.

  Allie drew back the plunger on the syringe, filling it with air. When it was full, I kinked off the tubing with my left hand while holding the needle in place with my right. She disconnected the syringe and flushed the air from the chamber. “One,” she counted out loud. When it was reconnected, I unfolded the tubing, and Allie pulled more air out of Cody’s chest. He did not fight the chest tap at all. We repeated this over and over again. “Two, three, four.” The air just kept coming. “Five, six, seven.” The dog’s chest continued to rise and fall. He still fought for each breath.

  Worry and doubt crept into my mind. I quickly calculated how much air we had removed. Seven times 35 is about 250 milliliters, which isn’t that much for an Australian cattle dog. As the amount of excess air decreased, Allie would need to pull harder on the syringe. Hopefully, she would feel resistance soon.

  “Are you getting any resistance at all?” I asked desperately. She frowned.

  “Eight, nine, 10.” She smiled when the syringe finally became harder to pull. It dug into her fingers, leaving red marks. She rubbed them against her leg to remove the numbness and pulled again. The plunger slid halfway back and stopped. I removed the needle and reinserted it higher on Cody’s chest. “Here goes 11,” she said. Halfway through the next syringe, I felt a scratching sensation on the tip of the needle. Even though lung tissue is soft and elastic, it feels as rough and abrasive as steel wool during a chest tap.

  “Stop,” I ordered. Allie took her fingers off the plunger. I repositioned the needle and asked her to pull again. Five milliliters of air flowed into the syringe before I felt lung again. I withdrew the needle completely.

  For the first time, Cody closed his mouth and inhaled through his nose. I sat back on my heels with a sigh of relief and watched his chest. His ribs moved slowly up and down with each breath, and his respiratory rate slowed to normal. Allie removed the oxygen mask from his face and pulled back his lip. A healthy pink color replaced the deathly gray tone. Cody stuck out his tongue and licked his lips.

  “Whew!” I exclaimed with delight.

  The man slumped over the counter again, this time washed in relief. Tears of joy streamed down his face. He pulled a red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. Smiles spread across my family’s faces. Cody could breathe again.

  I removed my gloves to tend to the second dog, but didn’t see it anywhere. “Weren’t there two dogs?” I asked. I looked around the room, but no one answered. I distinctly remembered Steve saying there were two dogs.

  Finally, Allie pointed at the truck and whispered, “Cody’s buddy didn’t make it. He was DOA.” The somber words immediately squashed the joy I felt from seeing Cody improve. I slowly rose to my feet and stood by the man’s side.

  “I’m sorry about your other dog Mr. uh, Mr. ... I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.” He turned to face me with his right hand extended.

  “Tommy, Tommy Munson,” he replied as we shook hands. “I thought they was locked-up when I left.” He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “They never seen the car. Poor Jeb.” He bit his lip and sniffed loudly. Through the lobby window, I saw Jeb’s body lying in the bed of the pickup. The wind ruffled his beautiful fur coat. “Cody will be heartbroken without him.” He slid his thumbs into the pockets of his tightly fitting jeans.

  At the sound of his name, Cody lifted his head off the floor. I returned to his side and checked his pulse. It felt strong and regular. I placed my stethoscope over his heart. Lub, dub, lub, dub echoed in my ears, its beats crisp and regular. No signs of a murmur. I moved the bell of the stethoscope around his chest. Soft sounds of air moving through his lungs replaced the harsh rattle from before.

  “What happens now?” Tommy asked.

  Because this was our first day and the clinic was not operational, I explained that Cody should go to the emergency clinic for continued care. He needed X-rays to check for fractured bones and bruised lungs. My machine was not set up yet. I gave Cody an injection of Demoral to control his pain and ran my fingers over his body once it took effect. I manipulated his head and front legs and, palpated the abdomen and back, searching for signs of injury. So far, so good.

  When I reached his back left leg, Cody swung his head toward me, teeth exposed.

  “Sorry, boy.” I released the leg. Orthopedic injuries are so painful.

  Allie took a muzzle out of the first-aid kit and slid it over Cody’s nose. I continued to palpate his leg. The hip was swollen, probably fractured. Now it was time to examine the other side. Allie held Cody’s head, Debbie had his middle, and I took the back end. On the count of three, we rolled him onto his left side on top of a thick wool bla
nket, the kind we all have in Minnesota. Cody yelped so loudly we all jumped.

  After I examined his right side, Allie prepped his chest for a second tap. This time Cody jumped when the needle penetrated his chest. Only a few milliliters of air flowed into the syringe. Thank heavens, he would not need a chest tube. We rolled him back to his right side to take pressure off his injured left hip. Allie left him muzzled.

  As I stood and stretched my back, Tommy asked, “What’s the verdict, Doc?”

  “I’ve stabilized him as best I can. Now you need to get him to the emergency clinic. I’m worried his chest might fill with air again, or he might revert into shock.

  Tommy pressed his lips together and nodded. “He’s a tough dog, he’ll make it.”

  We used the blanket as a sling to carry Cody to the cab of Tommy’s truck. Once he was more or less comfortable, I removed the muzzle and rubbed his nose. “Good luck Cody.” He licked my hand and began to pant – it was a good sign.

  Tommy promised to call with an update. As he pulled away, everyone went inside except Steve and me. We stood together silently watching him depart. Steve put his arm around my shoulder. A thousand thoughts raced through my mind. Here I was, a young veterinarian who now owned her own clinic. There was so much to do. Quite unexpectedly, we had treated our first patient. While it seemed he would make it, I was not at all certain about my clinic.

  Chapter 2

  Setting up the Clinic

  Earlier that first day at 8 a.m. sharp, I pulled into the clinic parking lot in the black Ford Probe. Cleaning and paint supplies filled the car to the ceiling. My dad followed me in his pickup truck full of tools. My heart raced as I backed into a space in front of the building. We had a lot to accomplish in a short period of time.