So this past weekend I was on call for emergencies. I wasn't really looking forward to it...at all, but such is the fairness of life so I digress. One weekend out of every five isn't anything to complain about. God was good and my Friday and Saturday weren't too stressful. I had a few cases, spent most of my day there Saturday, and had restful nights with no phone calls. And then the cruel villain known as "Sunday" struck. Let me begin the tale...
I arrived at the clinic at 7:00 am. I had a cat with diarrhea to check on, a puppy with parvovirus in isolation, and a horse with an abscess on its hock that needed re-bandaging. There were three other horses in the barn as well who were patients of another vet's, but my responsibility for the weekend. So I checked on everyone and went about my business changing the bandage on the abscess mare who was going to go home at 8:00. Dr. Hopper, bless her heart, had come in to help me with treatments and went about giving medications to the other critters in the clinic. Once the mare was back in her stall and her medications ready to go home, we set about tackling our most critical patient, a young stallion with suspected West Nile Virus who had gone down in his stall the day before. As bad as he had looked the night before, it was ten times worse this morning. He lay on his side, not moving, and struggling to breathe, each inhalation through his nose gurgling as fluid had begun to build up in his lungs. We put on the hobbles and tied on the ropes and three of us girls somehow managed to roll the large body over so that he could lay on his other side. Now, the owner of this particular horse had gone up to the mountains for the weekend and was out of cell phone range. She had left two numbers behind in case we needed to call someone to ask for permission for euthanasia. The first number belonged to a man who happened to live out of cell phone range, and he wouldn't have been willing to make the decision anyway as the day before he'd decided to wait until the owner got home on Monday. The other number was for the owner's mother, and she didn't answer when I called. There are few things in this profession more frustrated than watching an animal suffer and not being able to do anything about it because of legality issues. Finally, after multiple tries, we finally got ahold of someone and had permission to put the poor horse out of his misery. But once the horse was dead, we faced the awkward situation of dragging him out of the stall with a truck without tearing apart the garage door which stood in our way. And of course it was the weekend and we couldn't take him to the dump, so he would have to sit in the trailer in the parking lot in 90 degree weather until Tuesday rolled around. Oh, and did I mention that we had to cut off his head so he could be tested for rabies as well? But I'll come back to that.
Around 10 am, the ER phone began to ring off the hook. An elderly dog came in and had to be euthanized around the same time that a lethargic/inappetant Pomeranian named Roger came in as well as a very sick Chihuahua who had pups two days ago and a rancher with a few questions about his cattle. We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off, taking x-rays of nearly every animal we were seeing. Amongst all of the commotion, the tiny Chihuahua's catheter began to repeatedly clog up. While we struggled to flush it and figure out why it kept clotting, she promptly rolled over and stretched out, taking one agonal breath before she stopped moving. An endotracheal tube was passed and Dr. Hopper started CPR, breathing for her through the bag and giving chest compressions while I ran to the crash cart for the epinephrine. Finding a vein in a healthy Chihuahua is hard enough, but finding one in a Chihuahua that is on the verge of death and has a weak pulse is nearly impossible. We continued our resuscitation attempts for 15-20 min. before Dr. Hopper gently suggested that there was nothing else we could do for her. At this point, we had the euthanized dog in room 6, the dead Chihuahua in front of us, and a dead horse, whose head we still needed to remove, out in the trailer. We took care of the horse as well as the two dogs and I received several more phone calls the rest of the afternoon. Finally, around 8:00, I went home to bed, hoping that the insanity of the night was over. It wasn't. I received a call at 11:30 from a man whose dog had a seizure. I recommended keeping an eye on her as this was the first seizure she'd ever had and there wasn't much I could do for her at the clinic. After I hung up, I received another call from a lady with an ill Rottweiler that she wanted to bring in. I met her at the clinic, took care of the dog, and then returned home at 1:00. At 3:00, the phone rang again with the owner of the seizuring dog on the line. The Labrador had had a second seizure and I recommended that he bring her in to be seen. The poor dog was in rough shape, still confused and neurologic from her episode, and not completely aware of what was going on. Unable to find enough Diazepam to treat this dog, I had to resort to calling Dr. Hopper and waking her up in order to locate the medication I needed. I treated the dog and sent the owner home with medication to give incase she had another seizure. I wanted to see her back in the morning again but I thought she would be ok for the night. Turns out I was wrong. She had another seizure once she got home and then another one at 7:00 and I had him bring her back in and unfortunately we ended up euthanizing her as well. It was definitely a short night and Monday was definitely a long day. But such is the life of an on call vet I suppose.
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