Interesting admissions...

So there have been a few funny moments over the past few weeks on clinics. The one happened when one of the students was talking to an owner about their dogs that were in for breeding. We call them “honeymooners” (the dogs, not the people!) because they stay with us for a while and um, yes, there is rather a lot of “action” involved. So the student was trying to explain to the owner that the dog’s semen quality was not really up to scratch. And the owner (Italian Mafia type, complete with swarthy complexion, moustache and glowering eyes) said, “No problemo! I also struggle in the winter!” in a thick Italian/South African accent. Um. Ja well no fine!

And then we had a jack russel in scan to check if she was pregnant. The owner was quite worried as it was planned and she really didn’t want there to be any puppies. Anyway, so I asked her how it had all happened (obviously, I know HOW it all happened! I was more interested in whether or not it was the neighbour’s dog or the owner’s other dog). So she got quite flustered and blurted out, “Well, they had unprotected sex!” Ah. Yes, that would do it! I haven’t heard it described in quite that way before, but that was pretty much what it boiled down to!!

Then we had a call out to go and see a cow that was calving and our fantastic directions, scrawled on a scrap of paper were: Head up the soutpansberg rd, go over 3 speed bumps and the owner will be waiting for you in a green venture. Just up the road. Now, I’m always suspicious of places that i don’t know that are “just up the road” and directions like, “go over three speed bumps.” But what can you do? So we set off, drive for about 20km, go over the obligatory 3 speed bumps and..... yep, you guessed it, no sign of anyone in a green venture. So we called the number on the scrap of paper... “Yes, yes!! 3 speed bumps! We wait! Green Venture” like it was the most obvious thing in the world!! So I explained that we had gone over three speed bumps and we couldn’t see them. I then tried to explain what junction we were at....”Yes! Yes! Straight! You go straight, straight, straight!” Ok, could he give us any other directions? “Straight! Straight! Straight! 3 speed bumps!! You see green Venture!” So, with little other option, we continued straight (unsurprisingly!) until reached a rather big junction and I called again. “Mr Kumale (not his real name) we’re at the Solomon Katinka highway, must we turn left or right or continue over the highway?” “Yes! Yes! Straight! Straight! Straight! 3 speed bumps! Green Venture!” So on we tootled, past the Tswaing Crater (which, you’d think would be quite an important landmark on an otherwise unremarkable landscape?!), we continued into Limpopo province (“Just up the road”) and lo and behold, we came across three speed bumps in the middle of frikkin nowhere!!! And, as we’d been told, there, after the 3^rd speed bump, was the greenest venture I have ever seen! Like, John Deere tractor green! With a strip of yellow reflective tape all the way round!! Well, we had been told!

"How now brown cow?!"

Where to start? These past few weeks have been filled with moments, that just make you shake your head and go, “What?!” For instance, I had a phone call the other day, that my clinic’s sister passed on to me, which started something like this…”so we’ve got this elephant bull in musth…” Whoa!!! Whoa!! Whoa!! Now, I am learning a small bit about reproduction in various animals… but no where on the course do we cover elephants!!! Luckily I could pass him on to the right person!

We then had another call about a cow in labour. So I’m speaking to the owner, trying to get more of a history, so I ask him, what exactly is protruding from the rear end of the cow? Thinking he’ll tell me the head or the feet or something so that I can get some idea of what we’re dealing with… Instead, he tells me, “It’s brown.” Well, I suppose that’s a start!!

And talking of weirds and wonderfuls - the exotics clinic came through to us the other day for us to ultrasound a guinea pig! Needless to say our ultrasound probe was the size of the guinea pig!! But we were able to make out the little guinea piglet (don’t quote me on that one!) in amongst various other organs that were also on the screen at the same time! So we said that they needed to call us if they ever have anything else that they need help with. Well, we get a frantic phone call the very next day, to say that there is a wild dog which is having trouble giving birth… will we please do a caesarian section?! Is a duck’s ass watertight? Do bears s*** in the woods? Of course we’ll do a c-section on a wild dog! How cool is that! Well, I had no idea how much these things SMELL!!! |Seriously, gagging! And the weird thing is, the pups smell just as bad as you take them out the womb! Crazy huh?! She had 14 pups all together! Wow! Massive litter!

We got a call the other day to go and see a cow that was in labour. After getting a bit more of a history (more than, “It’s brown,” in any event!) I ascertained that she had been in labour since Monday… and it was now Thursday. This is when you just know that your day is about to go straight to worse… not even gonna touch ‘bad!’ And she’s in the rural areas about an hours drive away AND it’s already 4pm. So, I pulled myself towards myself, packed the combi with a few students and set off. Now directions in these rural areas are usually sketchy at best, and these were no exception. They consisted of “drive until you reach Big Al’s hardware shop and then phone” So an hr later, we reach Big Al’s hardware shop, more by luck than judgement, because the distances indicated were no where near accurate ie. 5km was actually 15km. So we call, and an old lady answers, and between my pidgeon Sotho and her pidgeon English, I resolve to stay exactly where we are until she comes to find us, never mind her directions to ‘carry straight and right’ when I’m pretty sure she means left. So after about 5 mins, she does appear and directs us to where the cow is supposed to be. So we pull up at a kraal of relatively healthy looking animals, and I’m already scouting for a cow that’s been in labour for 5 days. Not seeing anything. The herdman meanders over and there follows a rapid conversation in Sotho, with various gesticulating towards the vast bushveld that stretches as far as the eye can see in a northerly direction, and then the old lady turns to me and says, ‘Cow gone.’ Yes, I can see that. ‘Gone where?’ I ask, accompanied by the universal  open handed shrug. The old lady points north towards the previously mentioned miles and miles of bushveld…. Ah. “Houston. We have a problem.” The herdboy mutters something and goes rushing off in the supposed direction of the errant cow. So by this time I was having mild sense of humour failure… they had known that we were coming. We’d driven for an hour on some of the dodgeyist roads imaginable, only to find a cow that wasn’t there, and it’s now about to get dark. And to top it all off, the calf is going to be dead and smelly and the cow will probably end up dying despite our best efforts. So we gave them sometime, and when neither the herd man nor the cow made an appearance, I told them to find it, KEEP IT IN THE KRAAL and call us when they had it safely restrained. And we headed off on our hour return journey.

Then I was on outpatients last weekend and three jack rascals were rushed in with supposed poisoning. So we treated them generically for poisoning, but it wasn’t really fitting the profile of the more common poisonings that we see. They seemed completely out of it, one had had a slightly crazy 5 minutes and leapt out of the student’s hands and tried to bite people. So a little while later, after grilling the owner about any possible dips or topspots or anything, one of the dogs vomited up some seeds. The student who’s case it was rushed over to me, brandishing the vomit on a piece of blanket (yes, this is what I deal with everyday!) and told me that they were marijuana  seeds!! A quick round the room consensus sonfirmed that these were indeed, dagga seeds! Gotta love students!! And this did explain a lot of the dogs’ symptoms. So now I was faced with a very awkward conversation with the owner, because obviously these dogs had got into someone’s stash of marijuana… but I didn’t know was it the daughter’s? Was it the mothers? The gardener’s? Was it common knowledge??? How was the owner going to take me accusing her of smoking weed?? Anyway, so as I was bracing myself for a very interesting conversation, the owner phoned and said that she wasn’t sure if it had any bearing, but the dogs had got into her husband’s hemp seed/molasses mix that he used for carp fishing!! So these dogs had eaten a kilogram of hemp seeds between them and were stoned off their little heads!! It totally explained why they were so zoned out, why the one had a little paranoid episode! Everything!! So we just let them sleep it off in a cage and feed them when the munchies set in!!

And finally, on call this Friday and one of the students phoned to tell me that she thinks that one of our goat patients has died. Now this is not a 50:50 question!! Just as you can’t be “a little bit pregnant,” you also can’t be “somewhat dead!!” I told her to go back and make sure. Either it was dead or it wasn’t, but there were not half measures!!! Honestly!! Students!!!

The first week on clinics!

Well after my foray in outer Piketberg (there’s enough there for another email!) I’m back in Pretoria! And started back with brand new students, and I do mean brand new! The final years have left to go on study leave, and with any luck, progress on to become fully fledged members of the veterinary community, which leaves these students, well, in the deep end!!!  And although they have all the enthusiasm in the world, and quite a lot of the theory, they have none of the practical experience, as you will shortly find out!  So there I was faced, on Monday morning, with 12 bright eyed, bushy tailed, super keen students! The department is trying out a new system whereby the clinician on duty (ie. Me) is helped by a mentor + a second resident. The mentor is just supposed to be there in a supporting role if you need advice/help with procedures, but the actual day to day running of the clinic is down to, well, me. So now I have 12 students to literally look after...24/7 for 4 wks!

A typical microscope session would go something like, Me,”So, are these sperm alive or dead?” You’d think that was a pretty obvious answer?? All students studiously studying the eyepieces, not volunteering a word. Me,”Come on guys, it’s a 50:50 question?! What do you want to do? Phone a friend?? Ok, so they’re all dead... moving on!”

The first casualty happened on Wednesday... I left them alone for literally 5 minutes, with the words, “I’ll meet you at the bull!” When I arrived there was carnage; one student with a black eye + snot+ trane (snot & tears for those non-South Africans!); other students very subdued & in shock. “What the hell happened?” I asked very confused!  “Genevieve was run over by the bull.” “What??? Like literally run over?” “Yep.” As it turns out, the specially designed race & crush that we have at OP to try and minimise these sorts of things, was somewhat lost on the students, who chased the bull up the crush, with them also inside the race! So when he turned around + came straight back at them, they didn’t manage to get out in time and he ran over one of them! Luckily, he is rather a young, small bull, otherwise it would have been pretty awful. As it was, the student has some impressive hoofmarks on the back of her legs and a stunning black eye!! Don’t think that she will be doing that again!

Then the next casualty is a student that has clearly been sent by the gods to teach me about patience, because she... talks....so...slowly...and...is...very...irritating....in ....a....slightly.....misguided....enthusiastic....way.  As a bit of background, this is also the smallest student in the group, all of 4’2” of her! And, as luck would have it, she also had one of the biggest dogs, all of 75kg of him! Anyway, she decided that it was a great idea to take his temperature.... without anyone holding him!! So you can see where this is going, right?! Needless to say he turned around and bit her on the arm! From her account she was lucky to still have her arm, but when we examined it under the bandage, it was actually really superficial, more of a warning, “please don’t do that kinda thing” bite, so not too bad luckily! So we had a “what important, life saving points have I learnt today” session in rounds, that they a)must always try and pre-empt the next move when dealing with animals, for instance, not trapping yourself in a race with a bull unless there is no way he can turn around! And b)by getting someone to hold the dog before you stick a thermometer up his ass!

Then yesterday I was required to collect semen from a Saddler stallion that was going in for surgery on Thursday for a reproductively unrelated injury. The owner assured me that he had been used for breeding, and, in my haste, I took him at his word, which as most vets know, is a schoolboy error with most owners! You have to ask the right questions. Anyway, we manage to find a mare on heat, stallion limps over, and then proceeds to play silly buggers by rearing and rearing and rearing.  Then sniffing a bit, nuzzling the mare and then starting the rearing performance again. While I wait patiently, AV in hand!  Then he teases the mare, then rears again and this goes on and on for about 20 minutes until he finally, although I think it was more by luck than judgement, comes down on the mare and I was able to collect the sample! I then find out, after careful questioning of the owner (which I should have done first!) that he’s only ever bred to one mare, once!!! And even then it took him 2 hrs!! That would have been useful to know, beforehand!  Then I had to do the whole performance over again an hour later!!  Same story! He still hadn’t figured it out! Then we needed to freeze the semen + there was no one else available to help me and I was trying to remember the right sequence and find all the right tools and this all needed to happen quite quickly, as you can no doubt appreciate! Anyway, the dogbite student who...speaks...really...slowly...and ....asks....innane .... questions....all... of ...the...time...unfortunately had this case as well, and she was following me around the lab, talking all of the time. And I have to admit that i was a bit stressed and it had been a long day, and eventually I turned to her , put up my hand and said, “just stop talking to me please, just for a little bit. I just can’t think.” Anyway, this didn’t appear to dampen her enthusiasm at all, although she did stop talking, thank goodness! And when I was struggling to turn the centrifuge on, she continues to volunteer her opinion and starts pressing buttons!!!!  I was like, “don’t touch that!” Honestly! Managed to restrain myself and send her off on some long errand so I didn’t snap at her anymore! Oh dear, it’s going to be  a LONG 3 wks!!!

So that’s been the week so far! Thankfully the rearing stallion’s semen didn’t freeze well, so we won’t be collecting him again! And I haven’t had to deal with that student today, so I am still remarkably cheerful! Hope that you all have a good week!

Alcoholoc pigs, pig x-rays, pig c-sections....

Sorry there has been such a delay in emails - i feel like i'm running to catch up with life this past month, although it has been rather a lot of fun!  Let's see, i've been on clinics now for about a month, with another month to go and am getting quite au fait with shepherding students.  I'm developing the student "sixth sense" when i  get a feeling that they're about to potentially jeoprodise their own lives (and more often than not, a patients!) and have to make a few rapid suggestions, or whisk scalpel blades and other dangerous implements out of reach!

So I was on clinics the other week and Prof (yes, he of Pi and other amazing knowledge!) was handing over the weekend's cases to me.  And there was a pig, that unsurprisingly for our department, was having trouble giving birth.  He had managed to get about 4 piglets, but was concerned that there may be more. Now, this pig was not one of those cute (small-ish) pot bellied variety... no, she was one of the very large white variety - you know the type, about 1.5m long and weighing in at about 250kg.  So he suggests, completely straight faced, that we should do an x-ray on her to determine if there were any piglets left inside.  Now, my first instinct was to laugh, pat him on the back and go "nice one Prof! Haha."  But a quick sideways glance told me that he wasn't joking... not at all.  And then he wished me luck and went on his way. I looked at the other resident and she just raised her eyebrows as if to say, "what now?"  Now, i'm supposing that most of you have not x-rayed a pig...???  No, me neither!  So off I toodled to radiology to inform them that we had a pig to x-ray. Luckily when you drop Prof's name, they all go, "oh, I see!" and become very helpful.  So we organised to use the horse x-ray machine, now all we had to do was get the 250kg pig to the x-ray room!!  So I rounded up the animal handlers and after looking at me very skeptically when i informed them what we had to do, they sportingly fashioned a harness out of heavy duty tow rope, applied it to the pig and the game was on!!!  For those of you that don't know OP, we have the small stock pens which are perpendicular to the breezeway, which is a large corridor (large as in you can drive a combi down it) that links the small animal hospital to the large animal hospital and has various rooms leading off it, including the horse x-ray unit.  So we opened all the gates between the small stock pens and the breezeway, and the pig dutifully took off, with 3 strong men in tow, squealing with all her might!!  At the breezeway she took a quick left towards the outside and freedom, but the other resident and i were ready with boards to try and encourage her to go the other way (to be fair, that's about all you can do with a 250kg animal... encourage it to do your will!!) so we managed to get her heading in the right direction (*WEEEEEE* *WEEEEEEEE*) and another rapid shuffling of the boards got her to hang a left into the x-ray room, where she, amazingly, stood quite still and quietly while we took the x-rays. And after all that there weren’t any more piglets!!! Then we had to do the whole thing in reverse.... WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Talking of pigs, production animals had a real pot bellied pig in that had been rescued from a shebeen... he had liver failure because he’d been fed too much beer... what a crazy world we live in!

And talking of pigs, although not a happy ending i’m afraid... we were called out to see a pig with a dystocia (trouble giving birth) – the owner muttered something about intestines hanging out, which is NEVER a good thing, but thankfully he couldn’t tell the difference between intestines and a blood clot, so all was well and there was just some trauma.  Now pigs, as one knows, are rather long animals,  and there is NO WAY that one can reach all the way to get all the piglets out, even with the longest arms in the world because the uterus goes all the way to the chin... ok, not quite that far seeing as there are a few important structures in the way (eg. Heart, lungs!) but you get the drift?!  Ok, so the farmer requests that we leave a student behind to pull out piglets... nice try, buddy, this ain’t a dating service!  So we pull out all available piglets and tell him to keep an eye on her and call us if there are any other problems.  Which he duly did, but only the next morning... yes, not ideal.  So off we go again, and the pig is in rather a bad way. We can feel a piglet, but can’t get it out, so decide to do a caesarean section.  Now, i’ve never done a pig c-section before, but having quickly swatted up on it before we left, I was fairly confident we would manage... only problem was the anaesthetic... anyway, so we managed to sedate her, block the area where we’re going to cut with local anaesthetic, checked metres and metres of uterus to find 2 piglets, sewed her back together in record time, only for the students to go, “um, doctor?” as we’re closing up the skin... “she’s not breathing.” “WHAT???!!!! WHEN DID YOU NOTICE THIS?” I cried. “Um, a little while back.” “And you didn’t think that it was important to tell me????” So yes, piggy had shuffled off this mortal coil, which the students omitted to tell me until there was really nothing that could be done.  Not a great feeling.  The next one will be better though. Promise.

That same day we were called out to a calving which the owner swore blind that the cow had just started calving that day. Yeah, right.  I could smell the cow at about 50 paces, which is NOT A GOOD THING!  He also swore that she had had about 5 calves previously, and since i doubt that she was more than a year old, he should really write to the guiness book of world records!  Anyway, the cow (heifer) had obviously been struggling for a few days and the calf was very much dead... and swollen... and stinking... and emphysematous. Great.  So there are really only 2 options: 1)shoot the cow (trust me, this is sometimes the best option) or 2) cut the calf up to get it out.  And you just know at 5pm on a Wednesday afternoon that the owner will want you “to do anything to save the cow.” Bugger.  Now, believe this or not, this is not my favourite job in the whole world.  It’s stinking, messy and tiring and the outcome is usually bad.  So i wasn’t in my usual cheerful mindframe when i started issuing rapid fire instructions to students about what to fetch from the car.  So I mentally prepare myself for the task ahead, and ask that the students get the wire and handles ready... No handles. One student swears blind that she bought them out the combi, but do you think that we can find them anywhere?? No.  So we check everywhere, I get them to check their pockets, and send someone back to the car.  No sign of them.  So now i’m about to have a severe sense of humour failure... i know this is going to take me at least 2 hrs, none of it fun, and i can’t do anything without those bloody handles.  Then just as i’m about to completely lose my shit, which would have made the Cuban missile crisis look like small change, the first student miraculously finds them in her pocket!!! Crisis avoided.  So I then set about cutting up the calf, my nose inches from the most disgusting smell ever, covered in all kinds of fluids that i didn’t want to think about, in some tiny stable as it was getting dark.  Not that i needed light to see what i was doing! Anyway, managed to finish in record time. The cow even stood up after all that, so maybe she’ll live to see another day.

So yes, been an entertaining few wks. Will try and keep up better this time! Take care