Tag Archives: Magne

Fest!

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There’s only a week left until Christmas, but there is still lots going on in Tu. Tuesday started with a bitch spay. The patient was a lovely little dog, and naturally her owner was worried. Happily, with Dagny and Magne’s nimble fingers, the operation was very swift and her owner was hugely relieved to see her friend back safely. Even with surgery that seems routine to us,  for every owner it’s a unique and frightening experience.

For some reason, every time I walked into the laboratory, Marita was there using the hairdryer. We have quite a lot of technical equipment in Tu, but there are also some much more down-to-earth items that we use, and the hairdryer is one of them. It’s used on microscope slides to dry the material before staining and to me this is usually a very prosaic action, but as Marita stood there with her left foot at a rakish angle, right hand merrily oscillating, she looked very glamorous. Maybe in a previous life she was a stylist to a famous film star.

Although the day was busy, somehow in the afternoon, Magne and I managed to sit down for a cup of coffee. I think it must be a first for us to have time to do that. As well as coffee, Magne took a chocolate from his advent calendar and immediately afterwards he began to cough. I wondered whether he was so over-excited that he was choking, but when I asked he assured me it was only kennel cough and he acquired it because he hadn’t been vaccinated with sufficient aquavit.

Thursday was the day of our Christmas lunch in the klinikk, but before that, I had to help Magne clean out a dog’s ears. Pio, who weighed in at about seventy kilos was probably the biggest dog I have ever seen. Happily, he was also very good-natured. He and I had a lovely cuddle.

Pio
Pio

As for the fest (party) of the title, everyone in the clinic was invited, including the large animal vets whose office is in the same building. In the UK, an office Christmas party might consist of crisps and mince pies, or on a good day, sausage rolls and turkey sandwiches. Here they serve risgrøt, or rice porridge,  which is liberally sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, and garnished with butter. I still always find it slightly disconcerting to be presented with a plate of rice-pudding for lunch, but it’s definitely not objectionable. Somewhere in the risgrøt, there is usually an almond or two, and whoever finds one wins a prize. In this case, the winnings were three large bars of chocolate, and they were won by Gerd, Jaqueline and Jan-Arne.

Of course, no Christmas party would be complete without the Christmas Banter. This year it was provided by Scary Boss Lady and her Whipping Boy. It began with Dagny laughing at Jan-Arne for the fact that he had been caught for a second time leaving his trousers on the  floor of the changing room. Then she asked,

‘Is it true as well that you came to work in your pyjamas?’ Jan-Arne flushed slightly, but valiantly defended himself.

‘Well at least I don’t scuff my feet along the ground when I come in in the morning.’

Dagny frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t scuff my feet.’

‘You do. Everyone can hear when you arrive.’

Dagny opened her eyes wide. ‘It isn’t true,’ she said and looked challengingly around the room. ‘A show of hands please, who can tell when I come in?’

I fear that the vote would have been unanimous, if only I had been keeping up properly with the conversation, but as usual, I was five steps behind.

I suspect that Dagny is one of those people who believe that attack is the best form of defence, and so she returned to a subject that had been going on since before the meal had started.

‘Well at least I didn’t open the chocolates that were meant to be eaten with this lunch. I think you should give your bar of chocolate back so we can all share it. Without another word, Jan-Arne carefully lifted up his prize and slid it into his pocket.

But all in all, it just goes to show, that however much effort you make, and however far you travel at Christmas, there will still always be someone who has to argue over who it was that ate all the chocolates.

Benedict who?

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New Year is almost here. I feel I have come a long way in 2014. Strange to think that less than a year ago, I drew up outside Tu Dyreklinikk and decided it was too daunting to walk in and ask if I could look around. I’m glad I changed my mind. That decision allowed me to meet some wonderful new friends, and has given me the opportunity to return to a life I hadn’t realised I was missing so much.

As I said in my last post, I was pleased that I was not working over Christmas. Jan-Arne was however, and somehow he managed to get himself on the front page of our local newspaper, JaerBladet after a Japanese Akita called Frøya accidentally got hold of a whole fruit and nut bar. Happily for Frøya’s owners, Jan-Arne was able to treat her, and by the next day, she was fine.

The picture at the top of the page is another of Jan-Arne’s patients. Lukas is a young Staffordshire Bull terrier with itchy skin. Feel better soon Lukas.

This week, I have only worked one day because New Year falls on a Thursday. I spent most of yesterday in theatre with Magne and Wivek. As usual I was on anaesthetic duty and it was an interesting day for me as Wivek was trying out a new form of pain relief called Recuvyra. Recuvyra is an opioid pain-killer, which is applied to the skin of a dog under its coat. It lasts for four days, so for operations which require analgesia for a few days, it is a good alternative to remaining in hospital, or coming back in for several days for injections. As always with new treatments, it will be interesting to hear from the clients how they got on. Yesterday’s patient, a sweet little Tibetan Spaniel with a displaced hip, seemed very stable throughout her anaesthetic and contented during the recovery period so I hope that when she went home, everything continued to go well. I remember when I started out in veterinary practice, there was much less consideration given to pain-relief, and very few pain-killers readily available. It’s one area where I feel the veterinary profession has made enormous leaps in progress and it is important for our patients that we keep up.

There were a few things that made me laugh. Obviously my Norwegian is still patchy, as when I asked Wivek how big the bladder dog was, (a lovely Schnauzer which was suffering from stones in her urine) she told me it was about the size of a grape. She was referring to the stones of course. No idea how I would go about anaesthetising a dog that weighed less than a box of matches.

For some reason, I was having difficulty with intravenous catheters, probably because Wivek was watching, and she always makes it look so simple. It’s much easier to find the vein with good lighting, so before I made my second attempt of the day (on the Schnauzer), I walked over and switched on the big overhead light. Except somehow, I got the wrong switch. I confess I was surprised when the light failed to come on, but not quite as surprised as Magne, who suddenly found himself plunged into darkness as he waited for us in the operating room. His face was a picture as he emerged.

The high point of the day though, was the moment when Wivek and I were discussing the Christmas period.

‘I went to see a film yesterday,’ she said, and gazed into the air for a moment. ‘I can’t remember the name of it though.’ She shrugged and then looked down to continue her suturing.

‘Not very memorable then,’ I suggested.

She frowned. ‘Good film, not a good name,’ she said. ‘It was about Alan Turing.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The one with Benedict Cumberbatch?’

I have never seen such a blank look on anyone’s face. ‘Benedict who?’ she said. ‘I don’t know his name. The one who played Sherlock Holmes.’

I confess I was astonished. I thought that everyone in the universe knew who Benedict Cumberbatch was. Even if we had woken up the patient and asked her in dog language who it was that played Sherlock Holmes, she would probably have barked his name. So there you have it. If you want to consult Wivipedia, it’s probably better to stick to animals and Norwegian cookery. Whatever you do, don’t consult her about Tom Cruise. For her that would be Mission Impossible.

Anyway, to all of you who have supported me this year, thank you very much. I can hear fireworks outside already. By midnight, the sky will be bursting with light and colour. Happy Hogmanay, and I hope you have a wonderful time in 2015.

 

 

Luna and Lusi

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Dagny and Magne both seemed on good form on Tuesday morning. Our first patient was a still-youngish cat with an eye that was massively enlarged by a tumour. From an anaesthetic point of view, eye evisceration can be slightly complicated. As the eye is removed, the nerve at the back of the eye can cause changes in the heart-rate and breathing, so I was keen to ensure everything was stable and the monitors were all functioning well. The eye was so enlarged, that I wondered how easy it would be to complete the operation, but happily it all went very smoothly and the wound came together well.

Much later in the day, and another lump removal, this time from a dog’s leg. As happens sometime, Magne asked me whether I would like to suture the wound after he had removed the tumour. I know he doesn’t much like the stitching part of operations, and I rather enjoy it. There’s something very satisfying about bringing everything together and ensuring the end result is as aesthetically pleasing as possible. So as Jaqueline was available to monitor the anaesthetic, I told him he could go and get a cup of coffee and I would close up for him. As I was finishing, Magne came back into the room.

‘She’s very good,’ he said to Jaqueline, ‘No-one can stitch as elegantly as her.’ I was caught between delight and humour. As pleased as I was with the compliment, I had to laugh at the word elegant because I don’t think even my nearest and dearest would ever use that term. In fact, my mum once told me that I walk like a gorilla. Still, gorilla-steps or not, I did walk out of theatre feeling pretty good.

The weather in Jaeren recently has been wild: storm following storm. My drive to work takes me along the coast and there is little shelter, so on Thursday, as another gale flung hailstones horizontally at the window, I decided I would head to work early. In the event, the road was clear, and the wind, though gusty, didn’t affect my speed much and so I drew up in the car-park some twenty minutes before I was due to start. As I dashed through the rain, I was happily contemplating a cup of coffee with Magne before work began, but as I pushed the door open and stepped inside, I was greeted by an unpleasant odour. Working in a vet practice, you get to sample a number of different smells, most of them quite unsavoury. This one I identified as diarrhoea, though as I paced along the corridor, I was alarmed to see what appeared to be a trail of blood. Even more worryingly, on closer inspection, the bright red trail was in fact the faeces that I could smell.

Entering the prep-room, I found Lusi, a black Labrador retriever, panting on the floor. Her head was on her owner’s knee. Her eyes were frantic, her body stiff. I had seen Gerd as I came in, and rushed back along the corridor, to see whether she knew where Magne was. It only took a moment to ascertain that I was the only vet in the building. A few steps back and I was crouched on the floor with the little grouping. Wivek had made a tentative diagnosis yesterday of a prolapsed disc in the spine. Lusi was meant to go to Bergen this morning for an MRI, but had become very distressed, and the bloody diarrhoea was hers. I assessed her immediately for shock, but she seemed mostly to be distressed. She already had a catheter in her vein, and my first act was to grab some Vetergesic because she was so obviously in pain.

A drip next, and as she still seemed very unhappy, I decided to give some diazepam to try to relax her. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that yesterday’s venous catheter (now attached to the drip) was fully functional and anyway, I wanted to take a baseline blood sample, so I felt it would be better to place a second catheter.  As she was still lying on the ground, and I didn’t want to move (and thus hurt her) unnecessarily, I ended up lying full length on the prep-room floor as I angled my head to try to get the best possible view. Not necessarily the best idea in a cream-coloured sweater. Fortunately the floor was, thanks to Gerd, now spotless again.

Diazepam (better known to the UK public as Valium) works partly as a sedative, but with spinal pain that is causing muscle spasm, it can really make a difference. As I injected, I could see her visibly begin to relax, and though she was obviously a bit disoriented, the panicky panting stopped, and her rigid muscles became pliant.  According to Gerd, Wivek was going to be in at nine, and any decisions regarding the next step would have to involve her. I waited with her for a few minutes, but as she now seemed much more stable, I was able to go and get changed.

What with the weather, and with all the distress, Lusi didn’t make it to Bergen yesterday, but spent the day at Tu with her owner. The plan was, that if she continued to be stable overnight, she would travel up today. I’ll try to provide an update when I know more.

Working with Lusi reminded me of one of the reasons I love being a vet. There are few things more satisfying than knowing that you have helped an animal that is in pain. It often seemed to me, when working in the emergency clinic, that giving intravenous pain-killers to dogs in distress gave such immediate relief that they were genuinely grateful afterwards. Often in general practice, our patients become frightened of us because they associate the vets with injections and pain, and to see the opposite effect in action, was always a happy event.

I still don’t think Lusi liked being at the vets all day, but I very much hope that she goes on to make a full recovery.

Last, but not least, today’s photograph is Luna, a Tibetan Spaniel that came in this week to see Marita. Isn’t she lovely! Have a good week.

In Which I have to Speak Norwegian.

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So it’s been an exciting week for me on two fronts. Firstly on Monday, I was lucky enough to spend a day out with Åsulf from the large animal practice, and second, I am now officially employed by Tu Dyreklinikk as a Veterinary Surgeon and not as an assistant. Of course, the terminology might be confusing to those who work in veterinary practice in the UK, because there my official title was always “Veterinary Assistant” because that is the normal term for vets who are not partners. Anyway, I feel very proud of my new role.

Mostly the transition has gone smoothly. I have handled consultations before at times when things have been especially busy, or clients have arrived unexpectedly, so it wasn’t wholly new. But like most people I find any kind of change comes with a degree of uncertainty. My mind was distracted doing my assistant work in the morning (I start consulting at twelve) as I contemplated the cases I was to see later. Indeed I had a particularly embarrassing moment when I started to shave a dog’s leg for a cruciate operation. Unfortunately, with my head wrapping itself around the potential complications of a male dog who had blood in his urine, I started to shave the dog’s hip instead of the knee. It suddenly came to me, about two clipper strokes in, when the damage to the coat was so great that there was no way to hide it. I contemplated just shaving a massive area off to try to cover the error, but it would have been obvious, and so I had to crawl red-faced to Dagny and tell her. Happily she just laughed, although she did toy with me evilly when she came through by suggesting that I had shaved up the wrong leg. I was very restrained though. Even after she carefully aimed a spurting artery at me in a later operation, I refrained from trying to drop sharp scissors into her toes.

One of the conditions of my change of employment is that I am strictly to speak Norwegian at work from now on. Although I had started out well, I had fallen into the easy habit of speaking English most of the time with my colleagues, although to clients I have always tried to stick with Norwegian unless they have indicated that they want me to do otherwise. Naturally though, Dagny’s is very concerned that the practice’s clients are satisfied with my performance, and therefore she did spend some time with a very serious look on her face urging me to always speak Norwegian to the clients.

On Tuesday then, my appointment list was full. Happily my first client was Kari-Anna, the nurse who is on maternity leave, and her dog was in for a blood test, so that was pretty much stress-free, as was my next case which was a cat with a cut on its neck whose owner had left it for examination, so there was no owner, no history to take, and until the owner returned, no discussion at all. It fell therefore, that my first genuine official client was the owner of a dog that had been in a fight and had a wound over its eye.

Gerd brought the owner and patient through, and as I led the them into the consulting room, the owner said to me

“It’s okay if you would rather speak English.’

With Dagny’s dire warnings about language still ringing in my head, I replied in Norwegian that it was quite alright, and if it was easier for her, that would be fine. She started to laugh,

*I’m actually from Scotland,’ she announced, and after that we got on like a house on fire. I really hope that she will ask to see me if she comes back in.

Thursday was a little less busy than Tuesday. Today’s photo is of Trøffen, who came in to have a cyst removed from his head. Wivek was operating, and she called me through to the consulting room before she started to check with me whether I felt that she would be able to bring the skin together on his head if we removed the rather large lump. Trøffen is only eleven and a half though, and the cyst had already been emptied and had refilled, so there was a risk in leaving it as it might have become bigger. She decided to go ahead, and as you can see, she has done a beautiful neat job. Trøffen is a really lovely cat. Indeed I’m finding great pleasure in working with so many cats. Both Jan-Arne and Magne prefer dogs, and so I like to help out wherever possible. Magne was really impressed with me yesterday, when having easily taken a blood sample from a patient that has not always been wholly compliant, I also managed to give it a worming tablet. I guess I’ve always been fortunate, as most cats seem to like me as much as I like them.

The day out with Åsulf though was a revelation. It was utterly delightful from start to finish, even though the first visit was to a pig farm, and because of the way pigs smell and squeal, they have never been my favourite patients. I was very impressed though with Åsulf’s injection technique. He made it look easy, when experience has taught me that really it isn’t. As we went around, checking calves, examining cows (and yes, I did have my hand up a few cow’s bottoms) I felt completely at home. It just seemed so natural, and I really felt I could just slide right back into that way of life. It’s very different from small animal practice. And for the first time, I found I had very little difficulty with the language. For the first time, I felt that at some point in the future, it might not be impossible for me to work with production animals again. Anyway, for the moment I will continue with improving my Norwegian, and maybe I will ask Jan-Arne if I can go out with him again one Monday, as he now works there one day a week. Who knows. I might even be able to teach him something.

 

 

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.

Waltzing along

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This week’s blog is going to be brief. Not only are we off to Scotland tomorrow for a wedding (Charlie has spent the last three hours on the computer writing his best-man speech) but also due to the impendingness of next week’s surgery, my brain has become as flaky as a West Highland White terrier with atopy.

Dagny’s neighbour Matilde has been in doing work experience this week. She has amazed me with the way she mucks in and helps with clearing up and holding things. I confess that when I was 14 or 15, I would probably have been too scared to touch anything without being specifically asked. She has also been with Dagny and me in the operating theatre watching some quite gory stuff. Again she impressed me by looking on with interest as Magne wielded his bone drill, rather than horror or faintness.

Of course, even my initial interaction with her showed signs of my erratic brain. I asked her on Tuesday morning what her name was, and completely forgot to tell her mine. Fortunately Dagny was there to remind me. I was trying to remember though, how introductions tended to occur back in Scotland. Here in Norway, it is a very set thing that when you meet someone new, you shake their hand and introduce yourself. Whilst this is probably very practical for most people, my available memory is now smaller than that of a fifteen year old laptop so within three seconds I have forgotten. Still, I suspect in Scotland that there might have been occasions when I could get through a whole week of work-experience student visits without them ever knowing what I was called. If they were lucky, the receptionist probably told them. Despite the readiness of the words “Sorry,” and “Thank you” on my lips, I fear that the reality is that I am just terribly rude sometimes.

Still I have been pleased to go into work this week. The (probably unwarranted) adrenaline flow over next week’s tonsillectomy has made me jumpy and there’s something reassuring about arriving in the morning and going through the consulting rooms to check the drawers whilst automatically assessing how many surgical kits are awaiting assembly and whether there is enough distilled water. Routine is my friend. As are Irene, who noticed I was quiet and gave me a hug, Wivek who is driving me to hospital next week, Marita who helped me with a dental this afternoon, Dagny, who told me to take the rest of Tuesday off after I have been for pre-op blood test and check-up, Jaqueline, who volunteered to speak to the owner of the dental so I could go home and Jan-Arne who made me laugh when I walked into the changing room and found a cuddly man there dressed only in a pair of stars-and-stripes boxer shorts. How lucky I am.

So I’m not sure whether there will be a blog next week. I will be in hospital overnight from Wednesday, hopefully home Thursday. Who knows, maybe something will happen on my ward that is so ridiculous that I can’t wait to share it with you. Au revoir mes amis. See you all soon.

 

This week’s photo is of Mika, who had been managing to lick his stitches. Hopefully his new, larger buster collar will discourage him. He is just as cute as he looks!

Touched (in the Head)

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It seems like an age since I have written here. In my last post I was about to head off to Scotland. That weekend already feels like a distant memory. It was a wonderful wedding. I won’t share all the details, but just as a random sample of how great it was, here are some photos of the venue and the  wedding cake.

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The day after I returned was a whirlwind of hospital appointments and seeing Charlie off to the airport and then suddenly it was Wednesday and time for my operation. Wivek very kindly drove me to the hospital, and to my surprise (and relief) rather than dropping me in the car park, she accompanied me up to the ward, helped me find where I had to go and then waited with me until the nurse arrived. I was bundled into a bed and given some pain relief. I don’t know what it was, but somehow I managed to fall asleep and they had to wake me up to take me into theatre.

I came round a while later to be presented with some ice-cubes to suck. These were oddly soothing, but there was a horrible taste in my mouth and I remember a strange moment of overwhelming gratitude when the nurse came over to me proffering a lurid pink and yellow ice lolly.

At some point I was reunited with my mobile phone and it struck me that it might be a good idea to let my nearest and dearest know that I had survived. Having sent a boringly factual message to Charlie, I then concluded that I should also let Wivek know. I’m not sure what kind of madness seized my brain at this point. Rather than repeating the factual tone, my fingers sketched in the abstract statement ‘Ice-cubes are my friends.’ At least I think it was something like that. Having typed this gibberish, my clouded brain then decided it would be a good plan to include Dagny and Jan-Arne. To their credit, Dagny and Wivek just wrote back saying they were glad.

Jan-Arne however was obviously confused. Unlike the other two, I suspect that he didn’t have my number programmed into his phone, and faced with some random babble about ice-cubery, he rapidly texted back ‘Que?’ Followed by another message saying ‘Who is this?’ When I let him know it was me, he decided to call me. Goodness knows what I sounded like with a swollen throat and a brain filled with opiates, but it was lovely to hear his friendly voice.

At some point, the surgeon also very kindly visited to let me know that although they wouldn’t have the definitive pathology back for a week or so, there had been no sign of anything severely wrong with my tonsils. As the reason I skipped the waiting-list was that there was some concern over my history of melanoma, this was an enormous relief.

Anyway, my two weeks off raced past in a blur of writing (trying to get Ready. Vet, Go edited in time for a summer onslaught of literary agents) and Come Dine With Me on the TV. In defence of my (appalling) taste in TV programmes, I must say that I only watch such drivel when my brain and body are drained.

And so yesterday, I returned to work. I had been there less than an hour when I began to feel shaky and exhausted. Somehow, everyone but me was swamped with work and this was doubly frustrating as a vomiting cat had been booked in for me and left by the client, and despite having time to spare, without another pair of hands, I was unable to examine it. In between flurries of washing, topping up and resetting the haematology machine, I spent quite a while sitting in the lunch room feeling utterly drained, mentally and physically. I struggled most of the day, both with my veterinary work (thanks are due to Wivek and Marita, who very patiently helped me with each and every case) and with my Norwegian. At one point, I saw a very stressed owner whose dog had been hit by a car. Whilst my emergency-clinic primed brain was still ticking over well enough to asses the dog,  I struggled so much with explaining the concept of keeping an eye on the dog’s breathing that I was worried that I wasn’t managing to reassure the owner well enough that she could cope with monitoring the dog for the rest of the day.

I was also still horribly aware of the poor cat which was awaiting a full assessment. I had checked him out and put him in a comfortable kennel with some water so I knew his condition wasn’t critical, but as soon as Jacqueline had arrived, Magne had rushed her in to help him in theatre and I was beginning to wonder whether I was ever going to get a chance to examine and blood test him. I think the emotional roller coaster of the past few weeks was taking its toll, because there were moments when without logical reason, I found my eyes were suddenly threatening to overflow. It’s a long time since I have felt so oddly helpless.

Still there were a few lighter moments which kept me from being overwhelmed. Marita had two cats booked in for clipping and grooming under sedation. She appeared in the prep room clutching the wrong end of one of those evil plastic aprons that come in a roll and from the quizzical way she was examining one of the side tapes, I could tell that she had no idea which part of the thing she was gripping. It became apparent to me at this moment, that despite the fact that most of the logical and language sections of my brain were running on empty, spatial awareness was still fizzing away in a miasma of over-efficiency. I took it from her, tore away the throwaway sections and handed it back to her the correct way up.

‘What kind of IQ do you need to sort out one of those things?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

‘Not very high,’ I responded. ‘After all I managed it.’

I think this probably demonstrates just how disconnected my brain was. Fortunately, instead of thumping me as I deserved, she just laughed and fixed me with a fake glare.

‘So are you saying my IQ is really low then?’ she demanded. In response, I just grinned rather weakly.

After the road-traffic-accident dog, I managed to snaffle Jacqueline to help me with the vomiting cat. Having tried unsuccessfully earlier to take his temperature on my own, I finally managed it with her there to help. Logic however, had deserted. Somehow I had forgotten  it might be better to blood test him first before winding him up by inserting an object up his bottom, however fortunately for me, despite turning into a wildcat with the thermometer, he reverted to sweet pussy cat while I wielded the syringe to take blood from his jugular.

Time was going on, and we were broaching the Thursday communal lunch hour. There was no meeting as Dagny was absent, but people kept urging me to come and get my lunch. Thinking that this was mainly out of concern for my health, I stubbornly sat and waited for the cat’s blood test results, and when they came through, I burrowed my head in a laboratory book to check the significance. I think I had been once or twice into the lunch room. I had started to prepare my lunch and was frankly oblivious to what was going on around me. Suddenly someone started to sing ‘Happy birthday’ and I finally looked up from my book.

‘Whose birthday is it?’ I asked.

‘We’re singing it for you,’ they replied.

I confess that, at this point, I was a million miles away, utterly disconnected from the clinic and wishing I could go home.

‘It’s not my birthday.’ I said in grumpy confusion. There was a rather long silence, filled with suppressed giggles and when I finally managed to reconnect my brain, I realised they were all  glancing between me and some stunning flowers rather obviously placed right in the middle of the table.

‘They’re for you,’ they said. The message on the card welcomed me back and said they had missed me and it was signed by Irene, Wivek, Jan-Arne, Jacqueline and Marita. Suddenly my eyes were filled with tears again, but happy ones this time. This was a gift from my friends, not an official token from the clinic and that meant a lot.

Finally, as I was leaving, Jan-Arne came up and gave me a huge hug.

‘I really missed you,’ he said. ‘It just isn’t the same when you’re not here.’

Magne appeared in the passage behind him and said something, at which point Jan-Arne went over and offered to give him a hug as well, but he was humorously rebuffed. For a moment, I considered giving Magne a hug as well as I suspected that might have been more to his taste, but somehow at the last minute, we both lost our nerve. Instead he patted me rather awkwardly on the shoulder and told me how glad he was to see me back. Despite the fact that yesterday was my worst day at work for a very long time, I am  very grateful to all my colleagues for their obstinate insistence (despite all the evidence) that I am lovely.

Spray that Again

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Holiday season has begun. This week Scary Boss Lady was off for her summer break. Just in case we were thinking of having a wild party with the Dechra rep who had made an appointment to come and tell us about their range of skin products, she left her daughters Ena and Sara in charge. Tornado Tawse was also presiding over the nursing duties and therefore the whole clinic was a hive of efficiency. Four pallets of pet food arrived at lunchtime on Thursday and within about ten seconds, the entire delivery had been redistributed onto the shelves. Before I knew it on Thursday, all the rooms had been cleaned. Luckily Gerd and Irene had booked me in some cases to see, otherwise I might actually have been at something of a loss for what to do.

One of the cases was desperately sad. A cat had been attacked by a dog and its injuries were serious enough that it had to be put to sleep. There was a little girl there. It is so difficult watching a child having to say goodbye to a loved pet. At the other end of the spectrum, Magne and I performed surgery on a lovely Cavalier King Charles spaniel for pyometra (infection in the uterus). Without our intervention, she would very likely have died. It was a pleasuritself to operate with Magne. This is the second time we have worked together on an uncomplicated pyometra and everything just clicked into place both times. It’s a delicate operation that requires nimble fingers and great care and the process itself was intensely satisfying, but the end result, when the dog comes round safely and greets its owner is the best feeling there is.

Due to the efficiency drive I mentioned above, I did have time to pop in and out of the dental room where Wivek and then Jan-Arne were working. Wivek was enormously helpful with the injured cat and so I was keen to do all I could to help her in return. Obviously she is much better than me at the actual work, but I was able to fetch things that she wanted. Jan-Arne was on good form as usual, telling me how simple Norwegian was. After all, he explained, there were very few words and some of them sounded exactly the same as each other. Prayers, beans and farmers are all pronounced in the same way, he said. At this point, he was about to set to with the ultrasonic descaler. His foot, he thought was not quite on the floor-pedal that operates it and so he reached out with his toe to pull it towards him. It was only when the instrument sent a jet of water right into my mouth that he realised that actually his foot had been on it the whole time. At least that was his excuse anyway. Personally I think it’s odd that that jet was pointed so accurately at my face. If I now come down with some awful cat-tooth disease, I know who is to blame.

The Dechra rep I mentioned at the beginning turned up late. He was meant to arrive at two thirty with lunch and so by two thirty five, everyone in the clinic was sitting in the staff room with bright expectant faces. For some reason, he had called into the clinic in the morning with boxes of sweets for everyone and as the clock ticked onwards, it seemed more and more likely that we were actually going to lunch on forty eight chocolate hearts and seven slightly-worse-for-wear grapes that someone had found lurking at the back of the fridge. However, at three pm, he finally arrived clutching a bag of seven enormous sandwiches to be split between the eight of us who were present. Looking around the table for someone to deal with this delicate situation, Gerd, officially recognising my superior surgical skills asked me if I could dissect each baguette into two. Sadly nobody had thought to tell the rep that Jacqueline was vegetarian and so she was left removing pieces of chicken to leave her with a lettuce and dressing salad. Hungry as ever, Jan-Arne demanded that she hand over the meat. Oddly though, when we later offered him the massed bits of cucumber, mayonnaise and chicken that had fallen from Ena’s sandwich and the slice of lemon that I had removed from mine, he seemed strangely to have lost his appetite.

The afternoon ended with Jaqueline delightedly swapping her Toffifee pack for a box of Sara’s chocolate hearts. Rarely have I seen such a pleased look on her face. Magne had to make do with the enormous pile of leaflets and pamphlets that the Dechra rep had left. For some reason, when I suggested he could take them home for a bit of light holiday reading, he seemed less enthusiastic. Anyone watching might easily have been fooled into thinking that really we clinic staff were actually more interested in the food than in the important information about what drugs the man was trying to sell. As if we were both hungry AND shallow people. Obviously though, as all of you kind people that read my blog know only too well, that could never be the case. Thanks for reading.

Today’s photo is Billy, who was in to see Wivek for some blood tests.

Bottom

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Monday morning, Marion and I headed up to Ognaheia. Sandwiches and coffee and some Norwegian scenery. I was feeling good.

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Monday night saw Marita, Jacqueline and me heading into Stavanger for some Continuing Professional Development (CPD). VetScan (the diagnostic imaging company, which carried out the MRI on Lusi) will be starting up in Stavanger later this year, and Stavanger Smådyrklinikk had invited a speaker from the UK to come and talk to us about CT scans. Although it was interesting, it went on later than I had thought, and as I drove home at eleven o’clock, I found myself feeling unusually tired.

Tuesday morning dawned, and I was still tired. I couldn’t really understand this, as there was nothing obviously wrong, so I drove to work, and dragged myself around, trying to find some enthusiasm for cleaning. I realise that enthusiasm for cleaning sounds almost like a contradiction in terms, but usually I find an odd enjoyment in it at work, but on this day I was very relieved when Magne claimed me to help him with an operation.

The patient was a young Yorkshire Terrier, which had an inguinal hernia, and happily for me, her anaesthetic was very stable. It’s always a relief when the oxygen sats remain steadily between 98 and 100 percent. I found myself watching Magne as he carefully worked around the defect, meticulously dissecting away some protruding fat and tying off the larger blood vessels. Having closed the hole, he turned his eyes to me and smiled.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

I confess that at that particular moment, I wasn’t feeling all that well, and what I was actually thinking “I wonder if I passed out, whether Magne would attend to me first, or whether he would stay sterile and just call for someone to help me”, however it seemed melodramatic to say that and my brain seemed stuck. Faced with my dumb silence, he fortunately made things easier for my befuddled mind.

‘What do you think? Is it closed?’ he clarified. With relief, I said I thought it looked good, and he continued with the task of closing up the wound. I don’t know whether  Irene sensed something was wrong with me, but happily she came into theatre and gave me a hand at the end of the op. I was very glad she was there, as I just felt dysfunctional.

Of course, after twelve, I have started to consult. Fortunately the flow of adrenaline did seem to help a little. It was another male dog with urinary tract problems, and so at least, after last week, I felt I had some idea of what I was looking for. Before they arrived, I went into the consulting room that Magne usually uses, and tried to sit down. Somehow as I tried to hoist myself up, the chair slipped away from me, and I sat down very suddenly on the ground. Limping through, I found Marita.

‘Have you broken your tailbone?’ she asked. ‘Do you call it a tailbone in English?’ I was able to assure her that I hadn’t.

‘It’s only my bottom that’s broken,’ I told her. I didn’t enjoy the consultation. I don’t feel it went very well, which I guess wasn’t surprising under the circumstances, but I do know that with Wivek’s help, everything was done very thoroughly.

Wednesday night was really odd. I had felt unwell most of the day, and the night was riddled with weird dreams. At one point, I dreamed that Magne was sweeping the floor, and with admiral logic, I worked out that I must be dreaming. After all, I concluded, Magne never sweeps the floor. Having at some level congratulated myself for my deductive abilities, I went back to sleep and for some reason Magne made another appearance, but this time he seemed to have gone crazy. This time I was more confused. I couldn’t be sure that I was dreaming as although I could be certain Magne wouldn’t sweep, it definitely didn’t seem impossible that he could go mad. With hindsight, the fact that Magne’s irrational behaviour involved turning over a table and sitting cross-legged trying to fish in the underside of it using a rod made of spaghetti might have been a bit of a giveaway. I think possibly I might have been a bit feverish at that point.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t go to work yesterday. I wasn’t looking forward to phoning in, but Irene made it easy for me.

‘Have you got the flu as well? she asked. ‘Dagny has been struggling with it all week.’ I don’t know whether it’s flu, or some other virus, but I am certainly exhausted. So if you have read all this, and it doesn’t make much sense, then I can only apologise that you have wasted the past five minutes. Still, at least I have made it out of bed today. Maybe by next Tuesday, I will be smart enough to start consulting again. For the moment, daytime TV is beckoning. Have a good weekend.