It was a chaotic and stressful day. An op turned up that was booked as just an appointment on the diary, meaning that we hadn’t allocated the time properly and would be pushed to get everything done by evening surgery. An emergency had called in and needed seen right away - fortunately it didn’t need anything extensive and was quickly resolved, but that was another 20mins taken out of the day. Every dog had managed to poo in its kennel, then dance around in it a bit. The feral cat was so frightened and aggressive that when we approached the wire basket he was in, he pee’d himself whilst scrabbling around, spraying the nurse liberally. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the last procedure started to go wrong. After a little sedation to take the edge off I had scooped him up and carried him to the theatre, which was when I noticed his abdomen was tight like a drum. Immediately I went into emergency mode, called in an off duty nurse to help, informed the owner and got him knocked fully out. When dogs begin to bloat up, it kinks the pipe into the stomach so they become unable to burp, exacerbating the problem. If the stomach twists, it becomes really serious very quickly as it both cuts off the blood supply to the stomach wall, but also the grossly distended organ puts pressure on the main vein returning blood from the back half of the body, causing circulatory collapse and death.
I started a general anaesthetic, placed the biggest endotracheal tube I could into his windpipe, measured out what length of stomach tube I would need and fed the thick walled pipe down his throat. I knew I had hit the jackpot when a huge hiss of stinking gas hosed out of the tube, and he deflated in seconds. I stood back and smoothed my forehead, sharply aware of how close he had come to disaster.
We got on with his scheduled investigation, removed the tubes and lifted him to a padded area on the floor to recover. Looking down at my hands, I realised that there were streaks of blood up my hands and arms.
“Where’s he bleeding from!?” I squeaked, having visions of having torn his oesophagus with the stomach tube. “I lubed it up, I was so careful! Where is it?!” His mouth was clean. His fur was clean. His IV cannula was clean and dry. I rocked back onto my haunches, and Angela looked up at me.
“It’s you” she said.
“What?”
“It’s you. Your nose is bleeding”
