Tag Archives: Birthday Cake

Ghost Trees

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Sunrise/sunset: 08:41/ 14:21. Daylength: 5hr 40min

It’s been an eventful week. As Donald Trump and Joe Biden totter towards a final result in the US presidential election, coronavirus is surging worldwide. On a more personal level, the abattoir season has ended (hooray!) and I had my 2-3 month review.

The review went well. I knew I had done all the online coursework I had been set, but there were one or two tasks I hadn’t really had a chance to get my teeth into. One of my tasks is to find out what my colleagues do. Some of them are involved with aquaculture, others with quality control of drinking water and those in my own small section are involved with animal health and welfare. But with many of us working at the slaughterhouse, there has been limited time for other tasks.

Before my review, therefore, I had a quick look at what my colleagues were up to. Øivind (who works with drinking water) had a trip next Thursday to Husøy, and so I decided I would ask Hilde whether it might be a suitable trip for me. I was unsure where Husøy was. Øy means island and I know that there are some far flung places in our region. If it involved an overnight trip, it was unlikely I could join at this late stage. But Husøy, I discovered, is a small island off the coast of Senja. No ferries required – there’s a bridge across. Hilde told me that Husøy had been the subject of a Norwegian documentary, “Da Damene Dro” back in 2008. All the women on the island were taken off for a ten day holiday in the sun, while the menfolk were left to fend for themselves and their children.

This seemed like the kind of social experiment I could get behind, so a taking a trip there would be fascinating… but it wasn’t to be. When I caught up with Øivind at lunch time, he told me that the trip had been cancelled. With the surge in coronavirus cases, nobody wanted to take any chances and the trip was not urgent.

I left after lunch as Charlie had texted me to let me know he was arriving soon. Charlie is John, Anna and Andrew’s dad and he is here for the weekend. He came up to watch Andrew in a school concert. Andrew has been learning the piano and the music group had put together some songs, which were to be performed in a local café. But that too was disrupted by coronavirus. The venue changed from the café to the school and then the message came through that it would be broadcast online. So Charlie flew all the way up here from Stavanger to sit in the living room and watch the concert on TV. There were advantages though. Charlie and I were going to support Andrew, but with the change in the agenda, both Anna and my parents were able to watch from the UK and Wytske, a friend from the Netherlands also joined us.

The weather this week has been stormy, but despite the forecast, Charlie, Triar and I took a walk this morning in Ånderdalen National Park. It was a wonderful place to explore. There is a trail up into the park which has been made suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs, and beyond that, the tracks are well marked, so even if the weather had taken a turn for the worse, it would have been possible to get back safely.

The park is stunning, even at this time of year, when everything is lowering into winter. Fir trees dominate the landscape and in the distance, snow covered mountain peaks, but the trees are sparse, the landscape shaped by the long winters. There are many dead trees amongst the living, their trunks and branches still rooted deep against the winter winds. The weather was changeable, one moment bright and clear, the next darkening as snow or hail began to descend.

I love trees and found myself as fascinated with these beautiful ghost trees as I am with the living trees that stood alongside them. Lichen caught my eye, and wonderful shapes on the trunks of the bigger trees.

And so, tired and damp we returned home. It was Charlie’s birthday yesterday and there was leftover carrot cake to go with our coffee. And now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy the rest of the day. I’ve taken Monday and Tuesday off and I am looking forward to going back to work fully refreshed.

Many happy returns Charlie.

Happy Birthday

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Tomorrow is Jan-Arne’s birthday and at nine o’clock this morning, I received a message from Wivek to say that she and Marita were planning a special lunch for him at the clinic. I immediately wondered how I could contribute, and after some careful questioning, I managed to ascertain that whilst the savoury food was all planned, they were lacking a coherent cake strategy. Armed with only butter, eggs, flour sugar and cocoa powder, I began to throw something together. Luckily I also found some decorations hiding in my cupboard and so with only moments to spare, I made it in on time to join in. The other food was delicious. Marita had baked the most fantastic focaccia and aioli, and Wivek had provided a wonderful chicken salad. Somehow or other, I failed to take a decent photo of either, which is not like me at all. Like many food worshippers, usually I can’t resist taking photos of beautiful meals. Still Jan-Arne certainly looks happy.

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Last weekend, Tu Klinikk held its first CPD weekend on the subject of anaesthesia. CPD is vetspeak for Continuing Professional Development and in the UK, all vets are required under their agreement with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to do an average of thirty five hours each year. The requirement in Norway is not quite so stringent I understand. More a recommendation rather than a requirement, as it was in the UK until only a few years ago.

Anyway, the subject of the weekend was anaesthesia. I confess I was delighted by this as I have spent a good part of the year working as anaesthetist for Dagny and Magne. It is unusual outside of the universities for vet practices to have a dedicated anaesthetist who is a fully qualified vet. Generally the vet who is carrying out the surgery also technically oversees the anaesthetic as well, and the patient is monitored by a nurse (or more rarely, an assistant). I find it very rewarding to have a ‘specialisation’. The lectures were in Norwegian (the lecturer came from Oslo). In the morning this was fine. I found I could follow quite easily, though my one-cylinder brain stopped translating as soon as I tried to write anything down so I had to make do with listening very carefully and plucking at Wivek’s sleeve at the end of each section for the bits that I knew I should have noted down, but didn’t manage.

I also managed to answer some questions that the lecturer posed about anaesthetic circuits, though slightly to my chagrin, I had to answer in English. I still don’t actually know how to say “one-way valve” in Norwegian, though as Wivek already laughed at me for my translation of “gas-flow rate” on my poster in theatre, I should have remembered that I really didn’t have to translate that one, other than adding an extra “s” onto the word gas. Just to make it more Norwegian you understand.

On my return to the practice on Tuesday morning, I discovered that Dagny and Magne had invested in some lovely new kit in the form of a drip driver, an infusion pump and a new oxygenation unit, so we will be able to make some positive changes to our anaesthetic regime. Whilst I fumbled through the set-up on my first run-through, it was obvious that Tornado Tawse already had everything running as smoothly as a weir in high summer. I only wish I could make everything look so effortless.

Infusion pump and syringe driver.
Infusion pump and syringe driver.

Wivek, true to form, was the first to use the new anaesthetic kit, putting her first heart-murmur dog on a propofol infusion. Like Jacqueline, she too seemed perfectly calm and utterly self-contained. I must say I was relieved when she confessed to me later that she thought that her own heart was hammering away far more rapidly than the happily anaesthetised patient.

Feeling that I had to make some contribution to this wonderful new era, I managed to create two pages of flow rates for ordinary surgical patients and shock patients, but the final task I set myself on Thursday afternoon was the rather complicated calculation required to work out the flow rate for post-operative patients where we won’t be using the drip driver. To give a brief oversight, you first have to work out how much fluid the patient will need in an hour. From that, you have to calculate how many millilitres will have to pass through in a minute. Then you have to work out how many drops that will be… and finally you have to split the minute into that number of drops so you can give a “time between drops” specification. Given that there are also two types of giving sets: one that gives 20 drops per millilitre, and one that gives 60, it is perhaps unsurprising that my brain came unstuck somewhere in this process and exploded messily all over the computer screen. Fortunately Jacqueline was there to clean up the vetty mess before anyone noticed. Just as well she’s as patient as she is efficient.

Happy birthday Jan-Arne.

Cake worship.
All hail the chocolate cake..

 

 

Jan-Arne and the Well Preserved Eye

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Intravenous catheters can be frustrating things. When I was working in the emergency clinic, almost every patient we admitted had to be put on a drip, so back then I got quite good at inserting them. Nowadays it seems a bit more hit and miss. There’s a definite pattern though. If I’m on my own, generally I can get them in without too much problem. Under the benevolent gaze of Magnificent Magne or Jan-Arne, it’s usually not too difficult. But both Dagny and Wivek make the thing look so simple that I seem to go to pieces whenever they are watching. Dagny doesn’t even have to be watching. She only has to be in the room for the difficulties to take effect.

Early on Tuesday morning, Dagny had all her kit laid out for an operation and (tactfully) wasn’t watching me in my attempts, but stood chatting to one of the other staff. The dog was a dachshund, and its legs were so short, that even after I had shaved quite an extensive area of its foreleg, its body hair was so long that it obscured almost everything. With shoulders that were becoming decidedly tense already, I selected the smallest possible catheter and took aim. Slipping the stylet through the skin, I was encouraged by seeing a tiny droplet of blood moving up into the breach. Quickly, I slid the needle a nanometer further in… and the bleeding stopped. I had gone right through. Trying to keep my breathing steady, I withdrew a little, but it wasn’t to be.

I decided at that point upon a tactical withdrawal. Often it is better to start again with a fresh catheter, which can’t be blocked and hasn’t been blunted by its first traverse through the skin. Selecting a slightly bigger catheter (sometimes this works better as they are less flexible) I set the tourniquet back in place to raise the vein and once again tried heroically to keep the hair out of the way with the final two fingers of my left hand whilst still stabilising the vein between my finger and thumb. This time, the catheter went into the vein, but when I tried to slide the sheath down off the stylet, it just bent. Through all of this, Dagny had been carefully not watching, but I could tell she wanted to get on. I confess I was relieved as she finally elbowed me out of the way and did it herself. A few moments later, with the catheter triumphantly in place, she looked around for the laryngoscope so that she could put the tube into the trachea for the gaseous anaesthetic but it wasn’t there. Ever efficient with her cleaning, Irene had already tidied it away.

A little later, and another dog, this time a little pug dog (or mops, as they are called here). This one was having its corneas treated with the cryoscope. Marita came into the room and began to ask Dagny about the freezing effect, and how strong it was. Ever the scientist, Dagny thought it would be a good idea to try it on herself. She held it against the back of her hand for a moment.

‘It’s not sore,’ she announced airily, and moved the tip to a different place with a smile.

‘Ouch!’ A moment later, she was staring at a white mark on her skin- ‘Okay,’ she admitted ruefully, ‘Maybe it does hurt.’

Jan-Arne managed to injure himself this week as well.  On Wednesday, he had taken a biopsy and opened up the small container filled with formaldehyde that would preserve the sample while it was sent to the laboratory. With an aim that he presumably couldn’t recreate, even if he tried, he managed to drop the sample into the pot in such a way that some of the formalin splashed up into his eye. After much salt water washing, he was packed off to the doctor’s to get it checked over. Fortunately there was no permanent damage.

He has though, been evilly trying to tempt me with birthday cake all this week. He brought in the leftovers on Tuesday. Heroically I managed to resist. I’m not really sure how many birthday cakes one person needs, but he seems to have been very well supplied. Then again, he’s so generous to everyone that he deserves good things in return.

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The remnants of the cake were still there on Thursday, but I confess I found it much easier to abstain. Also, someone had brought in a pack of freshly baked boller. Boller are widely available in Norway. They are a kind of sweet bread roll or bun, often with raisins or chocolate chips inside. These ones had bits of Smash: chocolate with caramel and salt. After taking one and eating it, Irene announced that she had discovered a new taste sensation. Jan-Arne and I, both foodies, were looking at her very intently.

‘I had a piece of the boller with a bit of cucumber,’ she said, with wonder in her voice. ‘It was lovely.’

There was wonder in my head. Specifically I was wondering whether such a combination could possibly be delicious or whether Irene had finally lost the plot. I hadn’t come this far with my resistance to eating extraneous sweet things lightly however, and somehow I managed to curb my enthusiasm towards this idea.

‘You could design a new boller,’ Gerd offered. ‘An Agurk Boller.’ (Agurk being Norwegian for cucumber).

‘A Cucumboll?’ suggested Marita.

‘What’s English for boller?’ Irene asked.

‘Bun,’ came the reply.

And so the CucumBun was born. At least it will be, when someone takes the time to make it.

 

Todays picture is Chika who was in for her first vaccination.