Herding Vets

[The one and only group photograph of Team Rainbow Awesome in its entirety.]

Yes, that’s right — back to Botswana. Will I ever really leave? One of my veterinarians there has returned already, this time with the wife in tow, and reading about their adventures has left me almost painfully nostalgic for my time there. I started the trip with two vets and ended the trip with two different ones, but those couple of days in between when I had all four were something in-between exhausting and magical. I still miss this team and the wild, crazy, incredible surgery days we had together. I was so lucky to work with such talented vets. Despite all my attempts at group photos, we only managed to take a single one mere minutes before the first of us abandoned the group in order to go run a half-marathon (who does that, right?) but the day leading up to the photo will always stick with me.

You wake up with the birds, ringneck doves and small hornbills and the disapproving squawk of lories. The smell of Aeropress’d coffee from the kitchen and someone scrambling eggs, whistling tunelessly. Pulling laundry off the line so you’ll have a clean shirt means dodging the tiger-stripe dog who twines around your legs and begs shamelessly for toast crumbs, as much a fixture of the cottage as the finicky stove or extreme water temperatures. Behind a still-closed door kittens squeak tiny demands for their next feed, a half-hour early but since when have they ever known how to read a clock? The puppy with gums the approximate color of printer paper wags her tail sleepily in her cardboard box, toddles on unsteady legs when you put her down in the garden for her morning pee. You absentmindedly check her vitals with half a mind on the day a head, come back to earth pleasantly surprised at a steadier heart rate and the smallest blush of pink starting on her tongue. She’s probably got a whole five red blood cells now, up from the half she came in with. The rest have gone to the fleas and ticks you’ve industrially picked and bathed off of her. Nothing left to offer but time and good food. The rest is up to her.

The five-minute stroll to work is peaceful. The morning cool is just starting to burn away and the waxing moon still hangs heavy in the sky, sun stretching thin rays up from the east. Small things scurry in the underbrush. The neighbor’s dog offers a few half-hearted barks but the donkey that’s contentedly cropping grass in the pathside paddock doesn’t bother even flicking an ear. Three weeks in and you’re old news, now. Only the birds offer loud screeches of complaint as you dare to walk too close under their trees.

The day’s surgery sheet lists sixteen dogs — four neuters and twelve spays — plus two tiny kitten neuters and a massive old tomcat, scarred and broad-cheeked with testosterone. You get to work unlocking fridges and labeling syringes for the day while two of your vets heft cats single-handedly and guess weights like they’re at a carnival. The other two check the big surgery from yesterday, a spay and amputation who’s already gamely up and hopping around on three legs as though she never had the fourth. She’s unsure about the leash but bounces readily after cookies, taking them with a delicacy that belies her prominent ribs and spine.

Four vets today. Two are new and one leaves at noon but that’s still hours away and as you calculate drugs and scribble weights on your sheet, trying to figure out the best order for the day, you know you’re going to have to fight to keep up. That’s fine. You’ve got a topped-off water bottle and a paper bag half full of kudu jerky, the battered Bluetooth speakers are already pumping out a soundtrack that’s at least sixty percent 80s rock, and you’re ready to roll with the best of them. Bring it on.

The cat neuters are over in what feels like seconds, more time to sedate and prep than it takes to whip off tiny testicles. The big tom proves slightly more resistant and doesn’t go down without a fight but even he can’t deny the irritable lure of intramuscular ketamine and he’s sleeping off his surgery soon enough, tucked in a corner kennel where you can keep an eye on him even as you start onto the dog spays. Careful organizing of the tiny clinic has given you enough room to have three vets running tables at once with your fourth vet rotating on to whoever’s just finished and it should — it should theoretically give you enough time to breathe, a moment where no one needs a top-up and no one needs a vitals check and no vet is calling “Okay, Rose, go ahead and start the next one!” but that just doesn’t happen. Everyone’s on top of their game today and for once less than eighty percent of the dogs are gushing blood from every touch of the blade, which would be great except for how now you’re falling behind and it grates like nails on a chalkboard. You sedate, sedate again, catheterize induce intubate vaccinate shave scrub final prep at the speed of light then ketamine, xylazine, pen-G in the muscle and Mobic under the skin and pull an endotracheal tube from a chewing dog and tattoo an ear and start the whole thing again but still, still! there’s still time when someone’s not cutting.

Your vets are sweet. They point out to you that it’s okay, okay for them to have a break and take a breather, okay for them to check your recovery patients or sedate a dog or even (horrors!) place a catheter or two but your professional pride still stings a little. It manages to recover after a string of single-handed catheters and intubations sideways and upside-down, the successful and satisfying anesthesias that wake up just as they hit the recovery blankets. You start to relax into the rhythm of the day; you give intravenous chemotherapy with one hand while extubating a puppy with the other, one foot keeping a runaway drunk from staggering out the door while your ears are peeled for your vets and their calls of “Can you come check this dog?” of course you can, of course you tie the runaway and flush the chemotherapy and swaddle the puppy in blankets and then it’s “Top-up, please!” so you coax a big spay down with thiopental and sweet whispers that do nothing but make you feel better, and in the back of your head when did you sedate the next one? Is she sleepy enough to start and should you poke that little snappy guy before it gets much later and does that kitten look okay? Rouse it gently and it squalls, the big tomcat in miniature as it tries its fiercest hiss so okay that’s fine but that big girl is taking forever to wake up so you grab the yohimbine and oh, crap, did we remember to take that mass off? “Kyla, how’s that mass look?” mumbled around a mouthful of jerky as you haul another twenty kilos of dog onto a surgery table and “Rob, this girl’s for you,” and you, you are in your element.

The morning passes so quickly it’s almost a blink of an eye, so slowly it’s almost an eon. Your vets break in and out of song and the occasional slurred howl joins in from the recovery ward. Blood spatters decorate the walls and become the cause of much teasing, you dab carmine from your vet’s cheek and pick the occasional insect out of their hair — “Was that a tick?!” No, no, no, as you squash the tick firmly under your heel, “No, just a fly or something.” Laughter. The air is heavy with surgical alcohol and chlorhexidine and dog urine and, from the open window, green and growing things. No one drinks enough water. No one wolfs down enough snacks. No one gets a proper pee break. You poke and prep and carry and poke some more and carry again and pull ticks, trim nails, clean wounds until all at once: it’s over.

Or not exactly. There’s still surgeries to go, recovery is still full and the kennels out front still echo to furious barks from dogs waiting their turns but there’s a car out front and a vet about to leave, scrubbing the last of the blood from his elbows and you think about telling him he’s missed the spot just below his ear but, you figure, payback for earlier teasing about your speed. You try to gather the group. Herding vets is like herding cats but you somehow make it work — one vet’s still sterile, one’s in the middle of inhaling lunch and you have to pee like you’ve never had to pee in your life but this is the last chance — your last chance — “C’mon, guys, we need everyone!” and you crowd together in front of the clinic door for a quick group picture.

This is the last time the five of you will be together. This is the only picture you will have. The camera goes off before you expect it and this, this is what’s left: bittersweet laughing and teasing and half-crouching, sun-squinting and “Smile!” but–

–but after all, how could you not?