[A birds-eye view of our recovery corner showcasing the classic Africanis dog; form, function, and tanned!]
In the spring of 2017 I spent six weeks in Botswana volunteering as part of a joint project between the Canadian Animal Assistance Team and the Maun Animal Welfare Society. It was an incredible experience that touched me deeply and it is not an exaggeration to say that I think of it every day, counting down the days until I can return (and hopefully one day on a more permanent basis). MAWS does an unbelievable job of offering sterilization and veterinary services not only to their home city of Maun, but also to uncountable villages up and down the Panhandle. Their resources are few but they have truly learned how to make the best of whatever they have! Working their definitely made me a better technician, able to problem-solve (and often by the seat of my pants), MacGuyver equipment, and monitor and maintain anesthetic on complex surgeries with nothing but my stethoscope and a syringe of thiopental.
“The First Three Days (And Three Hours)” is pretty self-explanatory, detailing my first experiences at the MAWS clinic and the lessons I had to learn quickly!
I leave the north in the dark, snow crunching under my boots and the moon hanging behind the clouds; when we break through the cover there’s a dizzying moment of stars that takes my breath away. I travel almost forty hours through night, day, night, day again; my watch is never right as the time zones peel away beneath our metal wings. I lose my veterinarians in Johannesburg. They board for Gaborone and the licensing board, I sprawl across hard plastic seats and wait for the call for Maun. The coffee I’ve been mainlining since we landed is wearing off by the time the announcement goes out and I almost miss it, stumble sleepily to the counter as one of the last passengers. I doze through the flight; the times I’m awake a blur of green and brown and blue beneath me, beauty I wish I was awake enough to appreciate.
I’m reunited with the Gaborone crew at 3:00pm and by 4:00pm we’re anesthetizing a dog. Our first patient picked up a graphically impressive cheek injury that’s nearly pulled his lips off his mouth completely, one of those really satisfying lacerations that looks like hell and sutures like heaven. I’d be happier about it if I could get a catheter in, three tries in two cephalics and one of the resident nurses, Kenny, takes over for me. He assures me in heavily accented English that I’ll get it next time but it’s a real sting to my professional pride. I do my best to hide my sulk.
The second day – really the first, but – is a Thursday and we do twenty sterilizations. It’s a strange mix of spays and neuters in a vaguely two-to-one ratio, old dogs with sagging mammaries and a look in their eyes that says they’ve seen it all, young pups which shriek at an impossibly high pitch at the barest hint of restraint. I get maybe 50% of catheters, smarting with embarrassment each time a vein blows or thin legs refuse to give up a flash no matter how well I can palpate the rolling vein below the surface. The third day is Friday and we do nineteen and from the moment I inject the first one with its sedation something clicks and the catheters slide in like I’m in my home clinic. We may have one less surgery to do but it feels busier and I find myself prepping on my own more often than not, tourniquets to get the IV in and then an awkward one-handed intubation that gets easier the more I do it (and six weeks from now, in my spotless treatment room with a crack team of techs and assistants around me, I’m almost embarrassed to realize that I’m more comfortable sliding in the ET tube without anyone else holding the dog, the strange becoming the familiar).
Saturday is cat day, thirteen cats and kittens and then an afternoon spent packing for the next week’s trip up the Panhandle for outreach sterilizations. We have a little paper that says the communities we’re trying to help: Gumare. All the Etshas. How many Etshas can there be? (Thirteen, apparently. We don’t do all of them.) That evening I absent-mindedly swat mosquitos away from my beer and reflect on just how much I’ve learned already.
That the dogs all look pretty much the same (something I remember from Thailand and WFFT, the village dog template, built for survival): medium-sized, tan to brown, short sleek coats and long noses, tails that curl slightly, bright-perked ears, slender legs and wide paws. Enamel defects eating holes into shining white canines, the ravages of distemper, parvo, the few who’ve been treated as pups for tick borne disease. Most of them are paler than I’m used to and a few are starkly white with only the barest blush of pink to their gums and tongue, more Ehrlichia than blood in their veins. That there is no such thing as a body condition score above 3/9. Animals I’d never dream of anesthetizing let alone performing surgery on make up nearly all of our patients. All gush blood and refuse to clot, all wake up with tails wagging.
That there’s nothing quite like the pleasure of taking a moment to breathe deep and pull a few dozen ticks from between toes and inside ears. The strangest stress relief, the deepest satisfaction. That flystrike is a way of life and after the first few knee-jerk reactions of horror to the bloody welts covering the backs of every ear, all it becomes is an annoyance that I need to find a healthy space for their tattoo. That expiration dates on drugs should be considered amusing guidelines, that tape is the most precious commodity around, that shaving with manual razors is an acquired skill and also not one I have ever acquired. That mosquitos don’t care how much spray you put on. That anesthesia without monitors isn’t as scary as it sounds and when we do have hot water it’s hot and that no one judges impromptu Spotify karaoke so long as everyone’s singing at the same time.
This is the first three days and three hours: dodging snapping teeth using slipleads as muzzles, xylazine and ketamine making for limp puppies that go from zero to prepped in ten minutes flat when I really get into the flow. Keeping half an ear cocked as I shave and scrub and pull drugs and sedate and recover and do it all over again, waiting for the call of top up! as a patient starts to twitch with my veterinarian wrist-deep in their intestines and I’m needed to chemically guide them back under, shh shh shhhhh as the KetVal or thio flows in and the heart rate steadies. They can’t hear me. That doesn’t matter. Recovery fills up fast and I start to get jealous of the sprawled-loose forms on their torn blankets as the day races by and I work past needing to eat and pee and breathe. Then the day ends almost before it’s begun and a truckfull of sleepy dogs return to the city minus a few parts and still blinking in puzzlement. The sun sets, the cottage with its fridge of cider and beer and meat calls. The sun dips low. The doves and hornbills chatter. The air is warm, and still, and tomorrow we will do it all over again and it will be all the sweeter for how right it feels.
3 comments
Great story… and a strikingly beautiful scene photo too 🙂
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