Running of the Bulls, Dangerous Final Years and using Pi!

So, back in sunny SA - must say that not having to wear thermals in summer is quite a novel experience! Been back at school (well, pretty much!) for the past 3 weeks, and really enjoying it! I even have my own office where i can go and hide when i can't think of anything else to do!! Students are still quite a hazard to themselves, and i've spent a lot of time saying things like,'Get someone to hold that dog properly while you take blood, or it will bite you!' or 'Please put a pole between you and that cow, otherwise she's going to back up and squash you against the crush!' or 'WILL YOU PUT THAT CAT IN A PROPER BASKET BEFORE IT JUMPS OUT ITS IGLOO AND GETS EATEN BY A PASSING BOERBOEL!!!' You can tell i was feeling quite strongly about the last one!! Honestly, i am quite surprised that final year students (us included!) make it through their last year without grievous bodily harm, because there sure is lots of opportunity for it!!!

Like last week, the final year student and i were examining a bull in the crush, when some of the handlers decided to bring in another bull... only thing was, that they hadn't checked the corridor through which the bull was supposed to make his way to the aforementioned crush, and while they were outside chasing the bull in, one of the grooms had walked past and undone the gates that the bull was supposed to go through, to take some sawdust shavings somewhere. Anyway, the first lot of bull wranglers chased the bull through what, when they had left it, was a straight and well organised pathway to the crush, only thing was, as the bull came round the corner, all the gates were open!! So it turned into something akin to the running of the bulls in pamplona... bull takes immediate advantage of his freedom and charges up the corridor towards the equine stalls, only to spot our bull out of the corner of his eye!! So he makes a rapid left turn and charges straight at our bull, who until that point was standing quite well in the crush. Our bull mounts a counter attack, attempting to climb out of the crush to face this interloper! The student hotfoots it out right into the pathway of the incoming bull in an attempt to shut the gate to stop the bull's progress. And there was a split second when it all looked to be going well, and the student looked triumphant at having averted a potentially bad situation….until he tugged the gate and realised that it was firmly chained to the wall. Doh. So here he is, in the pathway of about 1 tonne of bull and i could see that realisation dawn on him suddenly. Anyway, at the very last moment, the bull turned to face the confined bull headon and didn't take on the student. OMG my heart was in my mouth. The student had made it all the way to his final week of clinics only to be mown down!! Luckily not. There was great activity to get the free bull back to where he came from, which was luckily achieved without any harm coming to anyone! Who needs to go to Spain?!

Am learning loads, mainly when to keep my mouth shut! We've got a Prof who is incredibly thorough and who thinks things through to the n th degree, so when ever he asks for my (very humble) opinion on anything and i say something like, 'yes Prof, i think we should castrate it or whatever,' He'll go,'No Kate, there is no evidence to support that particular line of thought.' And that's me, chastised. This was the man who, while with his arm up a bull (yes) worked out the circumference of a bloodvessel using pi!!!!!! Now, i can barely work out drug dosages when everything's in multiples of 5 and i have a calculator (ok, so maths is not really a strong point!) and here's this man, covered in cowshit (the bull had projectile diarrhoea and managed to land some squarely inside the Prof's boot! Almost had to walk away at the point so as not to laugh!) working out things using pi. Amazing.

Am doing a locum down in vanderbijlpark - for those of you who don't know, it's somewhere south of Jo'burg, pretty industrial and pretty flat (hey, i'm from Cape Town, need Mountains and dassies! ;-) ) Everyone keeps asking me where i'm from, and are very surprised when i say SA. My Afrikaans, never a strong point (along with the maths!) has been sorely tested. I keep finding myself in the company of smallish Afrikaans children (I don't know how, it just happens! The vet who i'm locumming for has 3!) and trying to speak Afrikaans and failing miserably. These children must think that i'm a complete idiot (who can't even work out the circumference of a circle using pi either!) Anyway, possibly not having worked in SA for 4 years, not knowing any of the drug names or dosages and not being able to speak Afrikaans very well, should have put me off this one, but for some reason, it didn't. So have found myself in sole charge of a very busy practice, and it seems that all neighbouring practices have gone away for the long weekend and left our after hours number! That coupled with the fact that they’ve got a lot of equipment that should be confined to a museum (including the microscope! Which is not a good thing when you need to find tick bite fever parasites on a blood smear…) But then have a state of the art pulse oximeter… strange. So I have to speed read all the drugs, and found a strange one,’Ketofen 1% For Dogs and Chats’ No, kid you not! Just dogs and chats! The old biddy that I’m working with has been a bit narky and keeps telling me I’m not charging enough for stuff, but then won’t help me find anything on the computer, maintaining, ‘It’s there, luvvy, just go into transactions, new transactions, new clients, new pets, protocol, services, stock, add new blah blah blah.’ Oh yeah, sure, with a consult room full of people, running about 2 hours late, like I have time to do that??!!! And then I hear her on the phone going,’Yes, I have a locum here, so we’re running so far behind.’ Ok, I’ll stop now, I’m beginning to sound bitter and twisted!!!

I’m staying at the vet’s house, so Loki (my dog) has got a bit of company in the form of 3 teacup Yorkies and a lab x rottie. He can’t quite figure the Yorkies out, especially since one is very pregnant and the other one coming into season, and whenever he starts sniffing around they literally bite his head off, saying something like ,’Will you just f*** off!’ in dog! Too much oestrogen and he’s very confused!

Human pregnancy kits (no, not like that!),crazy pilots, clumsy nurses and piglets

The last few wks have been quite busy, one way or another... my furniture arrived!! Woohoo, now i have a couch to sit on!!

So the production animal sister phones to say there is a pig dystocia (difficult birth... welcome to my world! )  So I round up a whole lot of students and we head off into the great blue yonder.  We arrive at the "farm" which is more like a rubbish tip than anything else, with a few pigs scattered about, and I warned the students NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING... the last thing I want is for us to bring Foot and Mouth back to the Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital... not something you really want on your CV!!!  Anyway, the gilt (female pig 1st time giving birth - you'll thank me when you can sneak that word into dinner tabler conversation! ) had managed to have 10 piglets already, but had now given up (I think i would have too, under the circumstances!)  Anyway, we had to help her with the last two... well, we think there were too, because a sow's uterus (another random fact for the day!) reaches like, as far forward as her sternum, which means there ain't no way my arm, even at full stretch is going to be able to tell if there was another piglet in the most cranial portion!  So we attempted to ultrasound her, with one of the student on "remove-piglet-from-ultrasound-probe- and-Dr May's- fingers" duty, because those little blighters have very sharp teeth and they were hungry.  So after a good hour sorting that pig out, one of the students wanders off and comes back saying there was another one having a bit of trouble!! I was like, 'Do not go and look for trouble or more work for us!!!"  Anyway, there was a little piglet stuck - he hadn't assumed the diving position necessary to come out, so quickly rearranged him and then ushered the students out of the farrowing shed (ah ha, another good word!) before they could find any more work for me to do!!  I made them scrub themselves down and disinfect everything before we climbed into the bus!  Touch wood, no Foot & Mouth as yet!!

Then I got a call from a lady who wanted to know if she could use a human pregnancy kit to check if her dog was pregnant?  Um, that would be a no.  But she was quite insistent, so I had to tell her that the hormone that the human pregnancy kits test for is, funnily enough only found in pregnant humans!!! And therefore, making your dog pee on a stick, is not going to diagnose if it's pregant. But she still wouldn't believe me, and I spent about 10 minutes on the phone trying to dissuade her!!  Funny lady!

On a more random note, I was filling my car up with petrol, when a very snazzy 2 seater BMW (I don't know what type!) screamed to a halt in the middle of the forecourt and a tall, angry man leapt out and yelled at the top of his voice, 'You are the 5th person i've asked, now where the f*** is Wonderboom airport?"  Luckily he didn't seem to be addressing this tirade at me, but to the world in general.  I think, according to the logo on his shirt, that he was probably a pilot (wanting the airport, that was also a clue!) and that he was probably late, given the state that he was in.  He then proceeded to rant that,' nobody who lives here knows where the f***ing airport is"  Some, rather brave man took him on, and attempted to explain how he was to get to the airport, but managed to send him the most convoluted and complicated way, and i'm pretty sure that 15 minutes down the line, he was going to be pulling into another petrol station and shouting just the same sort of things!!!  And then he jumped in his car and zoomed off.  Random, huh?!

And then I went to the chemist to get a rabies booster - no. no. it's just the booster, but there have been a few cases diagnosed around here recently, and it's not really something you want to play around with!  I can see i've just put all the oversease people off, what with talk of Foot & Mouth disease and now Rabies....!  Anyway, so I buy the vaccine (R350!!! You'd think it would be free!!!) and the clinic sister was going to give me the injection.  So she's waffling on about her dogs, and the neighbours dogs etc etc. and I watch as she opens the vaccine and the drops it!!! On the floor!!!  Smashed into small peices!!!  Oh dear, she says, i'll just have to get another one! Hmm, at R350 a pop, i don't think her boss is going to be so impressed!  Then she asks if I know the matron at Onderstepoort, which i do, and then proceeds to tell me that when the matron studied human nursing, then this clinic sister was one of her lecturers...  So I did some mental maths, and now our matron is the other side of middle aged which would make this sister, well, quite old!!! And the fact that she'd just dropped my rabies vaccination all over the floor!!!  So I was thinking, OMG, she's going to have to inject me now!!! Luckily, it was not sore at all! 

Ok, think that's enough rambling for today - I'm working on Outpatients tonight, which for those of you that don't know, it's like a normal vet practice, but staffed by students.  So I've got to check that they're giving the right drugs, making the right diagnosis + not forgetting anything important... can be a little stressful at times!!  Like last night, i spent quite a lot of time, carefully getting urine from a rather uncooperative cat via a needle and syringe.  So I carefully give the aforementioned sample to the student, explain what tests i'd like her to do, and then said she should make a smear, and just tap the sample contained to get the urine to re-mix.  So what does she do? She gives it a massive shake.... down the sink!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WTF??!!!!!  I'd just spent the last 15 minutes obtaining that sample, it's 9:30pm, I want to home  AND THERE IS NO MORE URINE IN THE CAT!!!!! Eish.

Mayday, calvings and MASSIVE wild Brahman cows!!!!!!

Ok, so this is a fast track perusal through past emails...

 

Well, another interesting week - we had a whole lot of puppies born last week. They are the University Beagles which are used for student practicals, mainly reproduction ones (no beagles are harmed in the execution of any practicals!) and then the puppies are sold for some exhorbitant amount since they are pedigreed and the pedigree stretches back as far as anyone can remember.  The students are then allowed to name the puppies - so, not been narcissitic in the least, the students all name them after themselves and their friends!  However, the last group were quite adament that they wanted to name one the the girl puppies after me, as there are no beagles named Kate (thankfully!)  Unfortuntately, all the puppies were boys! But one of them got stuck, having failed to assume the correct diving position (arms pointing forward, head between arms) to be born, and was trying to get out with his little legs are his sides.... so he had to be rescued and had been dubbed 'Mayday' as a compromise to not naming any Kate!

 

Then this week we've had a new bunch of students.  They're a pretty handy bunch, as a lot of them come from farming backgrounds and are very enthusiastic! We went out to a calving on Monday, so this was the first thing that they were doing and they were all very excited. So we get to the farm, and the boys all but leap out of the combi in search of this cow.  Then we have to try and get the cow in the crush.  So half the boys take off up the field (way too much energy for a Monday morning!) whistling and shouting and waving their arms, the not so agile students are all milling around the crush, directly in the flight path of the cow that we're trying to get in.  So had to shoo half the students out the way so that the cow would actually go past, and then get the other half to calm the f*** down, and have a bit of respect for the cow that's in labour instead of chasing her flat out around the field!!!  Anyway, we managed to get a live calf, which was pretty good.

 

Then yesterday I was called to sort out a calving in a cow that they had brought into the hospital.  So I was thinking, 'Great. Controlled enviroment. Experienced people on hand to help. Couldn't be better.'  Well, was I ever more completely wrong! I get down to the crush pens to see the BIGGEST cow I have EVER seen galloping full tilt down the crush. Honestly, it looked like an Eland.  It was a HUGE Brahman cow. It was bellowing and charging at people standing outside the crush...  My very first thoughts were, 'Oh, f***.'  I then find out that those enthusiastic students that i mentioned earlier, had very kindly attempted to get her into the neck clamp before i got there (and there was only max 5 minutes between me finding out the cow had arrived and getting to the crush!).  But she'd taken exception to this idea and barged right through, charged a student who was standing in her way and they'd just managed to get her back into the crush pens.  Right, so, attempting to take charge of the situation, I requested that we get her in one of the crushs (without the headclamp!) so that we could sedate her.  Now, i can see all the vets shaking their heads and going, 'hmmm, sedation and Brahmans' but there were very few other options.  One of my prof's helpful suggestion was to shoot her!  So I thought that sedation was probably the lesser of two evils.  Anyway, as Murphy's law would have it (and I knew this would happen) she went down in the crush. Not ideal.  We could then, at least, examine her without her trying to kill us.  So we determined that the calf was dead and that it was coming upside down and that it was huge and that the cervix had closed again since she'd been calving for a while (2 days?)  Right.  None of these things make one want to dance for joy or anything. And we still had a cow that was down in the crush.  So we determined that we'd have to do a C-section, because there ain't no way that calf was coming out any other way!  And we still had to get the cow out of the crush!!  The inital plan was to chase her out backwards, until she reached the back of the crush pens and then some how tie her up.  Then if she went down we could just open the gates. I pointed out that although this was a great plan in the fact that we wouldn't have a cow stuck in the crush, if we opened that gates, that cow would be gone.... out the main gate and off towards Limpopo Province before we could gather our wits about us.  So after a bit of rethinking, the crush gate was opened forward and the cow managed to stagger up (with a little bit of encouragement!), only to fall down a few feet passed that crush. Well, everyone piled on, and before you could say boo, the cow was pretty much tied down and unable to move!!  So then we set about doing the C-section.  Now, i haven't done very many C-sections (ok, 2 in my entire life!) so was feeling a little bit pressurised.  Everything went smoothly, until we had to try and lift the uterus up to the wound edge so that we could cut the calf out.  So the student and I are pushing and pulling and rocking this uterus to try and get it in a position where we could cut into it. The two profs were standing on the side line giving encouragement,'Just grab a foot and try and pull that towards the wound.'  I looked at the student, who looked at me, and i'm pretty sure we were having exactly the same though,'how the f*** are we supposed to find a foot within the uterus of this 700kg cow, with organs and things all over the show?!!!!!'  Anyway, we persevered and eventually managed to get the uterus in a position that both profs found acceptable. By this time, the student and i were sweating like anything, fully gowned and gloved and rock & rollin' the uterus!  So we evetually managed to get the calf out and took bets on the weight... 47kg!!! No wonder we'd struggled!  Anyway, I stitched up pretty quickly after that, since my back was killing me - 2 hrs we'd been busy!  Then we still had to get the cow from her prone position into a pen...  So after some strategic rope removal, a readjustment of the student that was sitting on her head to behind her rather than infront of her... banishing all the students to behind the safety of the crush, the student holding the blindfold in place (he wasn't actually sitting on her head, it was more like her neck!) hopped off, and up she came, luckily straight into the pen!

Of water spouts, eccentric cat owners and calvings!

Ok, so this is my first Blog and you're going to have to bear with me...  these are a collection of things that happen to me and musings about everything in general and nothing in particular.  For those of you that get the emails, then this is a repeat - I was trying to find one that wasn't too, well, weird, to start with!  Don't worry, I'll carry on with the emails!  Ok, well, here we go! Enjoy!

 

Well, it's been a particularly busy week.

 

We had a couple of  Friesan stallions in for semen collection.  So the idea is for them to mount a phantom, which is basically like a gym horse, but probably slightly more robust, with a mare who is in season standing just in front of them.  So, as you can imagine, things are quite tense.  It's a pretty dangerous exercise, because there are so many variables, plus you have a VERY KEEN 600kg stallions prancing about.  So ideally things should be as calm as possible, however, this was the day that the gardeners decided that the grass around the phantom needed watering.  So there was a sprinkler going quite close to where all the action was due to happen.  And the stallions were not too pleased about this and kept shying away, and it was putting them off their stride!  So one of the technicians went over to try and stop the sprinkler, and somehow managed to knock the whole hosepipe out of kilter, and so instead of a small fine spray of water, all of a sudden there was a 10m geyser of water shooting straight up in the air like Old Faithful, completely drenching the technician and everyone else within 20m!!! Needless to say, the prof who was supposed to be collecting the stallions was not amused, and neither were the stallions! Things had to be called off while the geyser was stopped.  The mare was just as clueless as ever, and I often wonder what they think... they stand there next to this big green thing, the stallion comes prancing up, making alot of noise, stallion jumps on the green thing and then it's all over... so she's probably thinking,'what the hell just happened there?!'

 

Then we had a particularly, how shall I put this, eccentric cat owner in last week.  She's convinced that people are jumping over her wall and injecting her cat with hormones... then, so that she knows that they've been, they leave green tomatoes strategically placed on the lawn... She's fired her security company for insisting that there was no way that anyone could be getting into her house without them knowing (CCTV and alarms etc)  Anyway, so her cat keeps coming into season and it has been spayed ... 3 times!!!  Ahem, yes, so we think that the vet who spayed it the first time may have left some ovary behind, hence it was spayed again to removed the leftover ovary, and then it was spayed a third time to try and work out why it was still in season!  So now she's come to us.  Anyway, we took the cat to ultrasound, and usually, clients don't come with, but for some reason, the Prof let this lady come to see what was happening (I think she just verbally bulldozed him until he relented and let her come!).  She then proceeded to tell out ultrasonographer that she thought that the ultrasound screen was too dark, and that she couldn't see anything.  She then also likened the highly technical piece of kit that is out ultrasound machine.... to a photocopier!! And suggested to the uiltrasonographer that she might like to try and lighten the picture, like you do with photocopies....  Let's just say that the ultrasonographer was not impressed and her answers were getting shorter and shorter!  And trying to find an ovary in an abdomen is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack!

 

 Then on Friday I was allowed out for the first time on my own... me and 5 students.  So we all pile in the combi and head out to a calving.  As Murphy's law would have it, it was a rather difficult calving, with the calf being huge (Jersey heifer crossed with a Simmental bull that jumped the fence!) and coming backwards.  Unfortunately, it was dead by the time we arrived and we had to cut it up to actually get it out.  Now, the cow was lying down, and obviously had been for some time.  There were flies absolutely EVERYWHERE.  So there I am, at the backend, trying to make sense of what i'm feeling, and I tend to zone out and concentrate on what i'm feeling inside, so I sort of snapped back to attention when I kept being flicked in the face by something.  Now my first thought was that it was the tail, but somewhere at the back of my brain I remembered that we had given her an epidural, so it couldn't be the tail, then I sort of refocused, and it was the maid, very sweetly swatting flies away with a towel!  Now, the whole process took quite a while, and the farmer went and fetched a rather large beach umbrella!  When he set it up he said that we could be on holiday... hmmm, yes, apart from me being up to my armpit in your cow, lying flat out, covered in shit and blood and foetal fluids and been swatted my your nanny, yes, we could definitely be on holiday!!!!  Anyway, we managed to get the calf out in the end, but I did need a shower when I got back to uni!

 

We then had to go on another calving, about 50km away.  We were supposed to be following the owner, who clearly had never had anyone try and follow him before, because he was driving at about 140km/h, overtaking buses, undertaking cars, flying over speedbumps.... and there's me in the combi!  After about 20km, one of the students tentatively ventured....'You drive faster than Prof Nothling!'  They hadn't realised that i was trying to follow the owner!!!!  About 45km in, I suddenly wondered if I was following the right car!!!!  You know that sudden sinking feeling??  What if we followed the wrong car all the way to the Zimbabwe border!! No, I'm sure I would have realised before then, but still!!! Anyway, he then turned off and it turned out that we had been following the right person! The cow was a lovely Brahman that was also lying down, so one of the students goes and stands right in front of it.  I was like,'will you get away from the front of the cow please?!'  The return answer was,'But she's lying down.'  'Yes, but you'd be AMAZED at how fast a cow can get up, especially a Brahman!!! So i'm going to say again, Get away from the front end!'  Luckily this was a much easier calving.