[One of my fellow technicians monitors a dog undergoing surgery while a second surgery is performed in the background at our gymnasium field hospital.]
The Tsaxana CAAT trip was a success with twenty-four animals sterilized/vaccinated/microchipped and fifteen animals examined and vaccinated! As always I had an incredible time working with an amazing team who came together and in less than 24 hours were working like we’d always known each other. I can’t wait for the next trip!
My previous clinic was open Saturdays with a single tech and vet working together. Sometimes, when things really hit the fan, another tech would be called in to offer their assistance. Memories from a long-ago Saturday.
[Left: Domino rocking her body cast. Top right: before (top) and after xrays of her sternum. Bottom right: during surgery, using a pen to show the depth of the defect where her sternum was growing ‘in’ rather than ‘out’.]
Domino was a kitten I fostered who had a severe case of pectus exavatum, a condition where the sternum doesn’t grow correctly and instead damages the lungs. She stayed with me for months during her recovery and I became extremely fond of her.
[My beloved Rupert, a big cat in a small world, patiently squishing himself into his scratching post bed. He got cold very easily and loved his assortment of sweaters and coats in the harsh Northern winter.]
You can’t save them all. How many times have we as veterinary professionals or even we as clients heard that phrase? It becomes a mantra at work during the bad days, a way to compartmentalize away the deaths and euthanasias that happen on your watch, the terminal diagnoses, the weeping owners, the pets who don’t know they live under a death sentence. My record of saves is good, maybe a little above average, but every now and then a pet comes along that reminds me — I can’t save them all, no matter how hard I try.
[A very talented friend of mine drew this picture of me after I came home from my second trip to volunteer in wildlife rehab in Thailand. It’s true that raising wild babies (in this case, civets) is one of the highlights of wildlife medicine — but the lowlights exist all the same.]
My time volunteering and working with wildlife — both in Canada and Thailand — was some of the most rewarding work I’ve done in the veterinary field. I saw some very amazing and special things, experiencing the joy of successful rehabilitation and release in both countries. But wildlife rehab is not without its low points and certainly some days were worse than other in the amount of pain and suffering we saw and did our best to treat. Often, the only option was a quick and painless end. Veterinary medicine is a turning coin of life and death at the best of times, euthanasia and recovery, and wildlife medicine is no different. And just like my time in ‘traditional’ vet med, some cases stick with me.
[Punch (brindle male, right front lower limb gangrene) and Zuka (Boerboel female, severe compound fracture of lower right hind leg), two of my Botswana amputations. Both of these pictures were taken at less than 24 hours after surgery — although Punch was pretty sulky about the leash, Zuka wasn’t shy about giving us a smile!]
Limb amputations are a relatively common surgery both in my current practice and during my volunteer trips. There are many reasons why a vet may wish to remove a leg; the presence of a tumor, a break which cannot be fixed for whatever reason physical or financial, nerve damage, severe soft tissue damage, infection…the list goes on. But amputations are one of my favorite surgeries to participate in for the simple reason of just how successful they can be at restoring life and removing pain. Read on for a glimpse into the life of just a couple of the amputation cases I’ve been privileged enough to work with.
[The first reluctant cuddle with her pups. Roxy keeps a quiet, anxious eye on both me and her little ones as she tries to figure out unexpected motherhood.]
On Thursday I was asked to step up and foster a young dog who had just had a Cesarean, lost several of the pups, and was struggling to adjust. My foster work for the BCSPCA has always been a huge part of my life and I agreed without a second thought. Probably I should have thought about it — Roxy’s anxiety turned out to be a little more than I bargained for! Her improvement since then has been tremendous and I feel so lucky to care for her and her two remaining ups, Esther and Cyrus, but there’s no denying that our first night together was…well, rough!
[One of our clients on Christmas Eve brought one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever gotten: homemade bread, still warm! My vet and I snapped a quick selfie to commemorate the occasion.]
Christmas on call. Always an adventure, and this year no more or less than any before.
[The end of the trip and the entirety of our equipment packed away, leaving nothing more than an empty firehouse with a few disused sets of equipment on the wall where hours ago had been 50+ dogs, three surgery tables, two prep tables, a recovery area, a pharmacy, a makeshift reception table, and a crowd of people.]
In 2015, I went on a trip with the Canadian Animal Assistance Team to two small communities in northern British Columbia (Fort St. James and Hazelton). With 11 team members during the first round and 12 during the second, we sterilized and vaccinated two hundred and eighty two animals, along with performing an additional one hundred and forty one vaccination/wellness exams. The time will always stay in my mind as an example not only of the amazing camaraderie in the volunteering veterinary community, but also the incredible generosity of the communities which hosted, housed, and fed us along with bringing us their animals. To see so many people come together from so many different walks of life and unite in the common goal of improving animal welfare was inspiring. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” Our last day in Hazelton made that clear for me.
[I originally posted this image (a dog’s ear covered in ticks) on Facebook captioned “I guess he was a little…ticked off!” The dog was treated for tick infestation and at time of discharge was parasite-free!]
Black humor and other coping mechanisms are a fact of life in veterinary medicine. Sometimes I forget that not everyone sees things the same way we do. The above picture, much to my surprise, received quite a bit of flack for the pun in the caption. People were upset not because the pun was terrible (I will freely admit that!) but because they saw it as making light of an animal’s suffering. The sad fact is that veterinary medicine is full of suffering; whether you’re in general practice or specialty, wildlife or shelter medicine, spay/neuter or disaster relief, and we all find our own ways of dealing with it. I think I had forgotten that. For me, this was an interesting picture showcasing a heavy parasite infestation in a village dog. The dog was with us to be sterilized and treated. I knew that we would be alleviating his discomfort as well as we could. I also knew that in the weeks before and after I had seen and would see so much worse, from gangrenous legs to massive blunt trauma, emaciation and deliberately inflicted injury. And I knew that my sorrow, my discomfort, my anger, my personal emotions — none of that would help my patients.