It was my last night on call, the night before leaving my job and house to return to Scotland. Weeknights tended to be pretty quiet and I had an evening of packing ahead of me, cardboard boxes liberally scattered across the living room. I had decided that when I moved home, Millie the cat was not coming with me – she loved it here. She could go out if she wanted to, sit on the windowsill watching people walking past, have stairs to run up and down at 3am, all the things a cat should do. Taking her back to a second story flat in Glasgow just wasn’t fair. Jill next door had fallen in love with her over the course of a weekend when I was away and she was chief Whiskas disher-outer, and it seemed the perfect solution. She would move in with Jill and enjoy being an only cat with the undivided attention of a single lady lavished upon her. A single lady with a sun room where a lazycat could bask all day
I packed up all her effects and took her round to Jill’s. We stopped for a cup of tea and chat as usual, putting off the packing as long as possible before I surrendered to the inevitable and headed home for a jolly time of labeling boxes. I hadn’t got my foot through the door before Bill called.
“Where are you? Got a stitch up for you, said you’d be there in 15 minutes. A dog that ripped itself out lamping rabbits. Just needs a few stitches. They don’t have much money” I grabbed my keys and headed out.
They were waiting for me at the surgery in a rough looking van, two young guys and a wee black dog. I opened up the surgery and got them inside. The whippet was wrapped in a jumper soaked with blood. “Is that all his?” I asked them.
“Aye, it was pissin all ower an all I could think like to do was put pressure on – I’ve had my fist in there all the way.” I peeled the hoodie back to reveal a substantial gash with a fist rammed in it..
“What’s his name?” I asked, just as the second lad went in for a closer look, turned green and staggered out of the consult room to throw up in the car park. His mate took over. “It’s Ronnie. Sorry about him like, it was dark an we couldn’t see and we ran all the way back carryin him an..” “Don’t worry pal, go get your mate some water and I’ll take a look at this.” The wound was deep, the muscles were ripped all down the front of his chest. There was a clear entry wound where he had run on to a stick at full pelt. I flicked some splinters off the edge. “Right guys, you’re going to have to leave him with me, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“Will he be able to work again?”
“Let’s worry about that later, right now we need to save his life. This is really serious. I’ll call you.”
I sedated him immediately and gave him some hefty pain relief. The poor dog hadn’t made a noise yet, despite me prodding at a gaping hole in his chest. I left him to get sleepy whilst I gathered a few things I thought I would need – an operating kit with drapes, suture materials, swabs, a tray to keep everything sterile, gloves and anything else I could think of. But first I had to clean it up. With Ronnie asleep I was able to examine the wound properly. I pushed the general anaesthetic into his bloodstream and turned him on his back into a cradle to keep him propped with his legs in the air. For the first time I appreciated the full horror of his wound. The stick had pierced the skin, plunged into the muscle and been deflected by the breastbone so it ran parallel to the ribcage, cleaving the muscle off the bone and leaving a large tear. When the dog tried to reverse off the stick, the tip it had caught on the muscle fibres, and the rip had made a right angled flap. You couldn’t see the extent of his injuries at first, but making a slit in the hollow skin above revealed something akin to a butchers shop window. I took a couple of pictures so I could show his owners the extent of the damage.
I sedated him immediately and gave him some hefty pain relief. The poor dog hadn’t made a noise yet, despite me prodding at a gaping hole in his chest. I left him to get sleepy whilst I gathered a few things I thought I would need – an operating kit with drapes, suture materials, swabs, a tray to keep everything sterile, gloves and anything else I could think of. But first I had to clean it up. With Ronnie asleep I was able to examine the wound properly. I pushed the general anaesthetic into his bloodstream and turned him on his back into a cradle to keep him propped with his legs in the air. For the first time I appreciated the full horror of his wound. The stick had pierced the skin, plunged into the muscle and been deflected by the breastbone so it ran parallel to the ribcage, cleaving the muscle off the bone and leaving a large tear. When the dog tried to reverse off the stick, the tip it had caught on the muscle fibres, and the rip had made a right angled flap. You couldn’t see the extent of his injuries at first, but making a slit in the hollow skin above revealed something akin to a butchers shop window. I took a couple of pictures so I could show his owners the extent of the damage.
Using warmed saline I flushed the wound time and time again, removing as many splinters as I could with my fine forceps, chanting “Dilution is the solution to pollution”. It was a painstaking job, I knew that any foreign material left in there could potentially cause an abscess and stop the wound healing, or worse, set up life threatening infection. When I thought I had removed everything I could, I started the repair job.
I was on my own at the surgery so I had to try to think ahead to everything I might need, then have it ready and laid out as once I was scrubbed up I couldn’t break sterility by touching anything and risking further contamination of the wound. Satisfied that I had everything within easy reach, I started to reconstruct his chest. It was cold in the building, midnight in the North in January, but I was sweating. First I had to establish which bit went where, which muscle belonged to which ripped end, then try to stick them back together as seamlessly as possible without leaving any little air pockets. It took a couple of hours and dozens of little stitches, but I was making good progress when his paws started to twitch. He was waking up. I was alone, unable to tend to anaesthetic gas and was doing the surgery under a ketamine general anaesthetic – very effective and cheap, but with a time limit. I stopped stitching, drew up some more drugs and tried to get a vein, but he had been laying on his back with his feet in the air for and hour and a half by this time, and the veins in his forelegs were collapsed. I started to scrabble about in desperation as he came ever more awake. With the certain knowledge that it was medically a very bad idea, but the only hope I had, I stuck the needle into the femoral vein and pushed the plunger. He settled and slid back into deep anaesthesia. I took a second to breathe, sort myself out, scrub my hands again and reapply myself to the gory jigsaw. Eventually I reached the point where I thought I had done the best I could, and put my instruments down. The dog was starting to come round and fight against the anaesthetic. It was 2.30am.
I took him back to my house and slept beside him all night, waking briefly to top up his pain relief.
When morning came, I opened my eyes and was greeted by the sight of a pair of soft dark eyes staring back at me. When I groaned and sat up, his tail tip flipped.
He went home later that morning, his young owner so pleased and grateful that he brought me a present.
“Some pork chops for you missus, I 'ad a pig.”
I laid the chops on top of my already rammed car, and set off for Scotland.
I phoned down to the surgery a week later for an update, and was delighted to hear that he made a full recovery. In time he returned to work to live out the life of the poachers dog, wild and happy.
The chops were delicious.
**DISCLAIMER**
If this were to happen today I would handle it very differently, but I did the best with what I had at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment