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
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