Exam mascots

     It was the middle of exam time,  and there was a nervous tension all over the University. You could feel it just walking up University Avenue, students brisk and urgent on their way to the library or one of the many exam halls.  I was similarly agitated, but it was a bright clear day in late early summer and my head was a mixture of pharmacology and the call of the open countryside just half an hour away. I looked to my left before stepping off the pavement to cross the street, and it was then I saw it, lying in the gutter. A squirrel. It was perfectly intact, not a spot of blood or any sign of trauma, but it was dead as a doornail and rigid with rigor mortis in a Shakespearean pose. Without pausing to think, I scooped it up and carried on to the exam hall. We filed in immediately, dropping our bags and coats against the wall, clutching our lucky pens, a packet of polos and whatever superstitious trinkets we had brought. I placed the dead squirrel on the desk for retrieval afterwards.

     The exam was rigorous and demanding, and within a couple of minutes I was fully absorbed in a panicky world of my own.  I hadn’t prepared well, and I was struggling to triumph over the negative marking system: one point for a correct answer and one point deducted for a wrong one or a pass, meaning you need to get at least 75% right. I knew about half. A further quarter I could whittle down to two possible answers. The rest were a complete guess.

     When the invigilators announced our time was up, I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough and down to the union for a sorrowful pint before going home to prep for more exams the next day.  I grabbed my bag and rocketed out the door.

     It was several hours before I realised what I had done. I had taken a dead squirrel into a vet exam, and left it there, on a desk.

Nobody ever mentioned it.  

Client Conversations #6

Whit dae ah caw you?

Sorry, what do you mean?

Weel, dae ah caw you Vet? Or are ye doactor or whit but yer no a doactor but like a doactor?

Most people just call me Heather

“Right.” (she thought for a minute) Can ah caw you hen?

*smiles* Aye, if you like.

She turned to leave. “Thanks hen”

Client Conversations #5

My, she’s a big cat! 

“Yes, I’m her feeder”  

*awkward silence*

You for whom I have cared

After your owners have gone

And the light has left your eyes

I lift you up

Cradle your head in the crook of my arm

Gaze softly upon your brow

and say

You were a good boy.

Making it up as you go along.

Sometimes you are faced with things that they don’t tell you about in Vet School and you just have to wing it. When I was called out at 1am to a cat which had unexpectedly had kittens, I realized this was one of those times. She had prolapsed her whole uterus, it was swollen and engorged, an angry looking mass of flesh. I had never heard of a cat prolapsing before, normally we only see it in ruminants. She had five new kittens, mewling and squirming in a washing basket beside her, still damp. Although I didn’t know how I was going to do it, I knew I had to help her. I called my nurse, and rushed back to the surgery, the cat beside me on the passenger seat in a washing basket with a towel on the top, my dog relegated to the back of the car.

I anaesthetised her and to the surprise and horror of my nurse, liberally dusted the uterus with sugar.  Sugar draws the water out of the swollen organ, reducing its size and making it more pliable. Despite my old fashioned tricks however there was no way that this one was going to go back inside the cat; when I pushed one horn in it simply involuted and folded itself up inside the other horn. There was no choice, I had to open her up. I looked at the nurse, bleary eyed and already convinced that this was fatal. “I have to go in. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it, I don’t know what to do, but we’ll work it out – we have to or these kittens are dead.” She nodded. The owner was already braced for the worst so it was do or die.

I made a midline incision and tried to orientate myself. The guts were all in order, the bladder slightly skewiff but identifiable. I hunted the ovaries and eventually found one down in the groin region. I tried to lift it but it was strung taught like a piano wire, and as I touched it I could feel it starting to give under the strain. If it ripped off it would leave a major artery loose in the abdomen, spouting blood. I had to try something different. By this time it was 3.30am and I was feeling a little desperate. But my patience was rewarded, a deeper hold, some gentle traction and miraculously the uterus was suddenly the right way round again, in my hand, inside the cat. I quickly tied off the ovaries, then took great care with the cervix – if I tied it too low she could have bladder problems for the rest of her life. It was flabby and misshapen, but it did close. Suddenly fearing that the final section might somehow fall out again, I tacked it to the inside of her abdominal wall securing it in place. I fell back against the wall and wiped my forehead whilst she got cleaned up and started to come round.

I texted the owner to say she was through the surgery and we would have to await the outcome, and waited with the cat until she woke up, snuggled in beside her kittens. I staggered off to the mattress on the floor for a few hours rest. It was 4.15am and I started work again at 8.30. I lay awake unable to sleep for another hour, high on the adrenaline, wondering how it was going down there.

When I arose in the morning she was up and feeding her kittens. The operation was a success and she went home the next day once I was sure she had suffered no ill effects. I have a friend who says that when you drive through the dark, you can’t see the whole journey, just the little bit ahead of you lit up by the headlights, but nevertheless you can make the whole journey that way.

The Doctor will see you now.

Last week the RCVS decided that vets can now call themselves "Dr" if they wish. Don't get me started on what a pointless ego stroking waste of funds I think this is. The main point is - I was against it, in an eye-rolling "it's not very British" sort of fashion.

Today I was in a supermarket, and I was waylaid by a chirpy young man with an ipad who was doing a survey about all sorts of seemingly unrelated things. I think the main drive was to get your details so they can cold call you. Anyway, he was being annoyingly cheerful whilst I was feeling slightly put upon, and so when he said - "Is it Miss or Mrs?" I heard myself say "It's Doctor."
"Right, of course Doctor, sorry" he said.

Everyone loves a good power trip, but in half a second I turned into the very sort of arsehole I had been complaining about. It will be interesting to see how this pans out!

Tales of Bill

I returned from a weekend in Scotland to find my boss bleary eyed in the surgery on Monday morning. 

“Hard weekend?”

“Five bloody horses kicked each other one after the other, all needed stitched, and one was bloody mental, I gave it 50mls ketamine and it was still standing. In the end I put a rope on it, tied it's head to its feet and sat on the bugger, just bloody stitched it from there.”

I grinned and went to put the kettle on. There was always a shaggy dog story with Bill. Unlike me he didn't have to report when he was going out on a call and when he was back safely, so he could make up any story on a Monday and I couldn't say otherwise. My on-call weekends were usually fairly steady, a couple of call outs, maybe a colic would involve visiting every four hours but otherwise it was manageable the most part of the time. Speak to Bill on a Mon morning and you would think he'd been sent to a war zone.

He followed me to the kettle. 

“Went to see Marg’ret Cook yes'day, one of her granddaughters’ dogs, that bulldog thing, went for Foxy” Foxy was an old one eyed mongrel with big pointed ears that suggested German Shepherd ancestry somewhere along the line. “ She had a big rip doon her side an needed stitched up. So I went up to the house 'cause you allus get a good feed up there. Well, I goes inta the livin room and there was this coffin laid out, an wor Andy was in it! After Auwl Andra died he went tae bits an drank hissel tae death. It's taken him a coupla year like, he looked rough as hell last I saw. There was no tellin him like. So Young Andra’s in this coffin, an Foxy's lyin underneath it, an poor Ma’gret's there wi aw the family roon. And I had to knock it oot and stitch it up right under the coffin. So I flattened it an got into it wi the needle and there's this big bang ootside. An Ma’gret's sons all come back in wi the gun an say – he'll no dae that again. The granddaughter starts greetin an twistin on. Wild like.”