Tag Archives: Veterinary

Cute

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The first thing I saw on Thursday morning when I got in was Dagny. Officially it was her day off, but she had received a message in the early hours of the morning about a whelping bitch, or more accurately, about a bitch that was not whelping, and by nine in the morning, Ninja’s owners had decided that she required some veterinary assistance. For the record, Ninja is a sweet little Chihuahua with big eyes, though when she arrived at the clinic, those big eyes looked definitely troubled. Not surprising because when Dagny carried out a vaginal examination, there was a puppy stuck in the passage.  Using plenty of lubricant, Dagny managed to draw the pup out into the world. Sadly despite all her efforts, the pup never started to breathe. An x-ray showed that there was another puppy, and by measuring its skull, Dagny estimated that it might still be born normally, and so instead of spending her time off relaxing, she stayed in the clinic while Ninja’s owners gave their pet some time to try to give birth naturally.

For me this could be only viewed as an opportunity. Thursday is the day that Irene has designated that the dental room and laboratory should be cleaned and maintenance carried out. I think everything in the lab is jogging along fine, but it was only recently I realised that there were weekly and monthly services to be carried out on the dental machine and that they weren’t being done. There is a sheet on the wall of the dental room that I hadn’t noticed, and on that sheet were daily and weekly spaces for initials. Leah had been doing the checks, but in the weeks since she left, the boxes have all remained blank, and when I checked with Irene, it transpired that she didn’t know either. Most of the time in between I have been distracted by other things, but now and then my imagination would go into overdrive as I pictured the whole dental machine seizing up through lack of oiling.

Dagny had tried to call the maintenance rep, but there was no reply and so  she suggested phoning Kari Anna, who is still on maternity leave. ‘After all,’ she said with a laugh, ‘It’s not as if she will have anything else better to do.’

This proved to be incorrect. Dagny held the phone away from her ear for a moment, and even I could hear the wails of the baby from across the room. Still, the dental machine is VERY important, and Kari Anna is VERY patient, so with her help, we managed to oil the handsets. All that was left then was to oil the compressors down in the bowels of the appliance, and so, by ten a.m., Dagny and I were crawling around on the floor of the dental room, pointing a handily discovered ultra-violet light into the guts of the machine.

There was a horrible moment when Dagny thought she had been pouring oil into the air-compressor itself, but happily, it did turn out to be the correct orifice (obviously it’s very important for a vet to get the right orifice).  Finally, the oil levels were back to the right place. As we finished, I pushed myself up from the floor and stretched. I fully expected Dagny to do the same, but for some reason, she was still on the floor.

‘I’m not sure if I should get up,’ she said. ‘This is my day off. Maybe I should just lie here.’  I offered to get her one of the cushions we use for patients, but she turned it down. She checked the time on her phone. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I should be at the gym,’ and before I knew what was happening, she had started to wave her feet around in the air.

I was taken away from all this excitement by Wivek. Her daughter had hurt herself at school, and as Wivek had run to work (what a healthy lot of people I work with) she had no car. I drove her to the school, but happily it transpired that the injury was not as serious as had originally been thought. I arrived back at the surgery to see Ninja and her owners taking a walk down the road and I assumed all was well, but when I went back in, I discovered that they were still waiting for pup number two to arrive.

She returned from her walk, and still was making no progress, and so finally Dagny and Ninja’s owners decided  it was time to go ahead with a Caesarean.  Dagny is a quick and decisive surgeon, and so within a very short time, the gorgeous little pup in the photo at the top of the page was born. It’s always lovely to see how all the staff gather round to help when there is a newborn to be revived. Somehow, even after years in practice, there is always something magical about the gift of birth.

Ninja still sleeping while her pup begins to explore.
Ninja still sleeping while her pup begins to explore.

 

 

 

 

Metzenbaum Meltdown

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It’s been a week of instrument incidents this week, at least on Tuesday anyway. I didn’t sleep well on Monday night, and by nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, I confess I was wafting round the practice, trying to be all efficient. It wasn’t easy. Somehow the standard tasks of ensuring the rooms were well stocked with needles and syringes seemed unusually complicated. I thought I was finally getting into my stride though, as I emptied the instruments from the autoclave, put them away, and packed up a raft of new kits for sterilisation.

Irene came into the room at this point and started to chat. My brain being otherwise occupied (the routine tasks were taking up all of the limited space in my one cylinder brain) I looked at her vaguely and failed to answer to her satisfaction. She looked at me with narrowed eyes and her head on one side.

‘Are you tired this morning? You’re not usually this quiet. I went to a concert last night. I’m tired.’

I admitted that I wasn’t at my best. My inclination was to remain silent, but it seemed impolite. ‘What concert did you go to?’ I had to try to appear normal at least. She named a singer I had never heard of and I tried to carry on the discussion as I set up the autoclave to sterilise the instruments I had just packed.

The autoclave has something of a pre-set routine. When you first switch it on, it automatically says that the door is open, and the locking mechanism doesn’t work until the programs become available. So I meticulously emptied the outflow, ensured the distilled water was topped up and then, to pre-empt the frustrating period when the door won’t lock, I carefully pushed the door to and set the locking mechanism in place. With a sigh of relief that everything was beginning to settle down, I turned my back as the machine began to run through its program. Irene had continued chatting, but now she was looking at me with a very confused look in her eyes.

‘So what’s in the autoclave?’ she asked. I frowned at her for asking such a crazy question. Obviously the packs I had just set up so carefully, but her eyes weren’t looking at me. They were directed towards the neatly stacked rack with the kits all neatly packaged in their white paper parcels. I had just set the autoclave off on its hour long programme with nothing inside.

All day long, I seemed to be all fingers and thumbs. There had been a spell lately when it seemed I was unable to do the simplest task without dropping something on the floor, and on Tuesday the effect was magnified. Opening up some suture material while Dagny was operating, I thought that rather than risk handing it directly to her from the package, I would drop it on the instrument table. Of course, it flipped out of my hands and missed by several inches. Somehow, every needle I used became detached from the syringe. I spent so much time running in and out of theatre to get new ones that I began to worry that someone would comment. It was a relief therefore when Dagny, usually so efficient, managed to drop the straight scissors from her kit. I retrieved them and offered to get a new pair.

‘I’ll need some Metzenbaums anyway,’ she said ‘you can just get some of those and I can used the curved scissors for everything else.’ Metzenbaum scissors are long slim scissors designed to cut delicate tissue. I collected a pair from the instrument cupboard. Once again, Dagny being occupied with her operation, I decided to drop them directly onto the instrument table. I should have known better. They too slipped to the floor with a clatter that seemed so loud in the quiet operating room. Fortunately, Dagny was not in Scary mood (in fact, she has been so unscary lately, that if I didn’t know how much she loved her nickname, I might feel the need to change it) and she just laughed and asked if we had another pair. At this point, Magne, ever the gentleman obviously felt that he should join in with this game of throwing things on the floor and dropped the chuck-key of the drill. Really I didn’t feel so bad then. The final flourish occurred as Dagny was stitching up. As she went to set the scissors back on the table after cutting her suture material, she misjudged it and the last pair went toppling to the ground. She completed clipping the line of sutures using a scalpel blade. Obviously the idea of asking for yet another pair seemed too high a risk. After all, judging by earlier events, I probably would have stabbed her in the toe.

Thursday, thank goodness, was much more relaxed. Dagny’s sister-in-law brought in her lovely little dog (that’s him in the picture at the top of the page) to be castrated. In contrast to Tuesday, theatre was a hive of extreme efficiency. I’ve never seem Dagny operate so swiftly. So much so that I barely had time to stabilise the anaesthesia before it was time to switch the machine off. I spent the rest of the morning discussing some modification of the anaesthetic regimes with Wivek, who is thoroughly knowledgeable in this, as with so many other things. We want to be sure that the patients are as comfortable and as safe as possible during surgery, and so we are reviewing the analgesic (pain-relief) protocols. When all is said and done, however many times you throw your scissors on the floor, in a good veterinary practice the well-being of the animals always comes first.

The Eyes Have It

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It’s been an interesting and busy week in the clinic. Dagny and Magne were both away on holiday, and what with working an extra day and with not being so intensively taken up in theatre, I felt a wonderful growth of teamwork with Wivek, Jan-Arne, and particularly Marita, with whom I spent more time this week than ever before. Given that we were two vets down, and the clinic was still busy, I was pressed into more directly clinical work than usual, and although it can be stressful at times, when things go well there is a huge satisfaction in meeting the challenges and knowing that you are making things better for the animals.

Of course, as soon as Scary Boss Lady and Magnanimous Magne, the ocular specialists were out of the picture, two of the cases that came in were eye problems. The first, a handsome spaniel who had been out for a long moorland trek the day before, arrived with a very sore looking eye. He was in so much discomfort that he wouldn’t even let me look at it and the first thing I had to do was sedate him. It was then quite hard to examine the cornea, because his eye rolled down as he got sleepier and so I asked Marita to come in and give me a hand. The cornea looked to be all clear, and it was at that moment, that Connie, a student who has been helping out for the past couple of weeks pointed out that there was actually a tiny splinter of wood stuck on the white part of the eye. I was tremendously glad of Magne’s special tiny eye instruments as we clipped a tiny hole in the conjunctiva and removed it. It was wonderful to see him yesterday for his check-up looking much more comfortable.

The second case, the gorgeous seven-week-old pup at the top of the page came in on Tuesday morning. He’d had some kind of accident with his mother, and his eye had completely prolapsed from its socket. He too was in a lot of pain, and needed a full anaesthetic before we could start to try to put his eye back into the right place. Again Marita and I worked as a team to place some stitches into his eyelids before carefully sliding everything back into position. The stitches in his eye have to stay in for two or three weeks and although everything went well, we will only know for sure how much damage has been done to his eye when the sutures are removed. Happily Dagny and Magne will be back by then.

Jan-Arne has been his usual crazy, endearing self. I love the way he takes his time and gets to know the patients really well and goes out of his way to make them feel at home. I went in at the end of one of his consultations on Tuesday to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor. When I worked in the emergency clinic in Scotland, I gradually got more and more idiosyncratic and often consulted sitting down on the floor at dog level and I think he is the first other vet I have seen doing the same. I also overheard him yesterday singing back at a German Shepherd who had been singing at him. It was a beautiful duet.

And somehow, though the quiet week I had anticipated with only two or three vets consulting didn’t emerge, I still found a few minutes on Tuesday to complete the first part of a project I am undertaking with Wivek to set up a consistent anaesthetic protocol for the practice to ensure that we are completely up to date with providing anaesthesia that is both safe and provides a high level of pain-relief for all our surgical patients. Of course, as I am in Norway, I thought that it would be a good idea to provide the poster I was creating about Gas Flow Rates in Norwegian. Having showed it to Irene, who assured me it was fine, I proudly printed it out and laminated it… and then went to show Wivek. How was I to know that the word that means flow when it is water and electricity doesn’t apply to gas? And of course my assumption that if you exchanged the “c” in “maintenance” to an “s” would turn it into a Norwegian word seemed logical enough at the time. And litre… apparently the Noregians prefer the American spelling. Ah well, after six years in Norway, I am probably one of the most proficient writers of Norglish that the world has ever seen, and that is something to be very proud of.

A Little Bit Crudie?

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This week saw my return to work after three weeks off following my operation. I was delighted to be back. There is so much more humour at work than on the Jeremy Kyle Show. Having checked all the other rooms were stocked, I found myself in Magne’s, where as happens every now and then, he asked me a question about an English word he had come across.

‘What does crude mean?’ he asked.

I found myself wracking my brains over that one. It definitely depends on context. Crude oil and crude humour are rather different. Both imply that the things they describe are unrefined, but that word carries almost as many difficulties. We discussed crude oil (because that one was easy to explain) and of course, being me, I had also to try to explain crude humour. ‘A bit rude’ doesn’t really cover it. Finally I think I got through when I told him that farting jokes would be a good example.

Of course, none of this got us any further with translating his medical text. I asked him if he could clarify, but when he said ‘it said that the cells were crude or something,’ I was more confused than ever. Finally he found the text and it described the cell collection technique he had used as ‘a crude method for detecting oestrus’ so finally we were able to get to the bottom of it.  As ever though, Magne, when presented with a new word, and especially one attached to humour, was unable to drop the subject. He spent the rest of the morning asking me. ‘Is that a bit crudie?’ ‘Is this a bit crudie?’ Of course Scary Boss Lady then wanted to know what we were talking about. She asked me whether my humour in this blog was a bit crude, so I pointed out that mostly I wasn’t crude. I was just rude and mostly to her. She seemed happy with that.

Thursday morning’s computer check revealed that I had a patient coming in to see me at 9a.m. Lucy was to have her claws clipped under sedation. Her owner had asked to see me… the first time that has happened here. I was delighted, especially as Lucy is such a lovely dog.  It all went very well. My only failing was to forget to ask to photograph her before she went to sleep. She was just waking up when I took the photo at the top, but I think she’s gorgeous.

Despite being very happy to be back at work, there were some complications. I’m not supposed to lift anything for six weeks so I had to ask other people to do all my heavier tasks. Gerd carried the water distillation container, Marita carried the reagent box from the blood biochemistry analyser, Irene carried the big soap bottle and put away all the dog food. We have a new nurse as well who started on Monday, Jacqueline, and she helped too. She’s been in the practice before, and so she knows her way around. Really I was very well looked after. Despite all this, I found myself quite sore by lunchtime on Thursday. Realising this, Dagny sent me home. She keeps trying to pretend that she is only worried that I will take more time off, but really I can see through the disguise.  I was hugged by Marita and Jan-Arne too and Irene wished me ‘God bedring’ (Get well soon) before I left. Really it’s lovely to be back.

Wivipedia

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Nicknames are strange things. Sometimes when you meet people, something just clicks. Scary Boss Lady and Magnificent Magne have had their names almost from the time I started working at Tu. At some point, even though I have never mentioned it in this blog, Jan-Arne has become The Whipping Boy in my head. Obviously this has all to do with the fact that I took my whip into work for Irene to use when he wasn’t calling his prescriptions through to the pharmacists and nothing at all kinky. After all, that would be a little bit crudie, and we have already established that I am rarely that. However, Wivek has very kindly outed herself this week with a new name. Marita came into the dental room to ask Wivek a technical question, and I was already there asking Wivek a technical question. Following a short and hilarious discussion about how everyone was always asking Wivek technical questions, she announced that from now on, she would be known as Wivipedia. If Scary Boss Lady is the tag we are using at the Christmas Party, then Wivek has surely earned herself a new tag as well.

I also finally caved in to the pressure bit the bullet this week and told Dagny that I would begin to work on Fridays after the New Year. As a veterinary surgeon rather than as an assistant. Oddly enough, after being so keen, she suddenly seems to be panicking about whether I will manage or not. I don’t really have any qualms on that front. After all, I’ve done it before  for years and years and at some point it did stop scaring me, and that confidence seems to have returned. The language barrier might cause a few problems, but so far when I’ve been left to it, it’s not as difficult as it seems when I’m thinking about it.

As it’s been a bit quiet this week, I have spent some time in other people’s consulting rooms (thanks Wivek and Jan-Arne for putting up with me) mangling their computer systems and generally muddling things up. It is interesting (though I can’t say it surprises me) that Wivek plays the computer system as if it is a Stradivarius violin, whilst I’m still plucking away on an ancient school instrument with a chipped veneer. The system is not at all instinctual. There are random buttons for all sorts of things scattered all over the screen, so to perform any particular function, you have to know where the correct button is. Even if you manage that, there is normally a pop-up box which asks if you want some modification. They are all in Norwegian, which would be fine if they said “Save” or “Are you sure?” Unfortunately they say things like “Are you treating this in reception with a new appointment and ten prescriptions?” or “Will you add some fishcakes to the filing system?” ( I suspect I may have got that slightly wrong, but that’s about how much sense they make for me) and so even when I triumphantly click on the correct function button, I end up confused again. Still, there are a few weeks to go before I have to go it alone, and even Jan-Arne tells me that Irene had to keep correcting things for him in the first few weeks, so maybe she can do the same for me.

This weeks picture features Marita as she is cleaning Luke’s teeth. Luke is a gorgeous little Pomeranian… with lovely clean teeth. Smile for the camera Luke!

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Ye Crowlin Ferlie

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This week’s picture is of Daisy, a West Highland White terrier who came in yesterday morning to be inseminated. I have seen cows inseminated before, but never a bitch, so I was interested to watch Magnificent Magne as he took a swab to check if Daisy was ready, and looked at the sperm under the microscope to see whether the sample was healthy. Apparently both were good enough. Daisy’s mum used to come in for Magne to inseminate her as well, so her owner told me, so obviously it’s a successful technique. Hopefully in 63 days or so, there will be some more puppies as beautiful as she is.

The microscope in the practice does get very well used. Far more so than any practice I worked at in Scotland. I was very interested when Jan-Arne called me over to look through the lens a little later to show me a blood-sucking louse. For some bizarre reason, when he showed Irene, she said ‘Awwwwwww’. Obviously her idea of cute differs slightly from mine.  I wonder whether this extends to her taste in men.

On Thursday, Jan-Arne came in in his pyjamas again. He actually admitted this time that they were his pyjamas. Obviously an eleven a.m. start is too early for him. I went into the changing room a few minutes after he had left and found his trousers decorating the floor and his boots haphazardly strewn . This amused me, so I took Irene to see, then asked him if he thought we were his servants. I threatened to take a photo, and he rushed to tidy them away. ‘Otherwise my mother will say I’m just the same at home, and Steinar (his partner) will as well,’ he groaned.

Still, he made up for it easily by bringing in the biggest Suksess Cake I’ve ever seen. For those of you not in Norway, this is a delicious cake with an almondy base and a sweet creamy yellow topping. It’s definitely my favourite Norsk cake. When I asked Jan-Arne what the success was that we were celebrating, he replied that the success was getting the calories out of his house. A few of them are undoubtedly now in mine. Still it was worth it. And just in case that wasn’t enough, at the meeting yesterday, everyone was handed an advent calendar. It seems that Scary Boss Lady really is into Christmas.  It all looks veldig gøy. I wonder how many dogs will enjoy the tree.

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Tornado Tawse

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It was Jacqueline’s turn to earn herself a new nickname this week. Irene and I were standing discussing something (something very important you understand, we would never stand around gossiping) when something whizzed past us so quickly that it was almost invisible. My eyes tried to follow, but the thing moved so rapidly that I wasn’t able to focus. Fortunately Irene’s younger eyes were more efficient.

‘It was Jacqueline,’ she said with a smile. ‘She’s just so fast all the time.’

I couldn’t help but grin. ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘The only way you can tell if she’s been there, is because everything  is suddenly tidy.’

‘Yes,’ Irene agreed. ‘Everything sparkles after she’s whisked through.’ And so Tornado Tawse was born.

But by now there was a sad look on Irene’s face. ‘When do I get a nickname?’ she asked. ‘Nearly everyone else has one.’

‘What about Scary Boss Lady Junior?’ I said, but she shook her head.

‘It has to be something like Magne’s, you know, starting with the same letter.’

‘You mean something like Impetuous Irene?’ I said. She looked at me suspiciously.

‘What does Impetuous mean?’

I thought about that for a moment. I didn’t know the Norwegian. ‘Well, jumping into things without thinking about them. Kind of crazy and wild.’

At this point there was a disturbance of the air, and we realised that Jacqueline was hurtling past. ‘Hey Jacqueline,’ I called out. ‘What’s impetuous in Norwegian?’ (Jacqueline is Norwegian, born of British parents, so she is bilingual).

Jacqueline stopped, but after a moment’s thought, she admitted that she didn’t know either.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘We’re trying to think of a nickname for Irene. Something starting with ‘i’,’ I said.

An evil grin spread over Jacqueline’s face. ‘Irritating?’ she offered. ‘Irrational?’

Irene’s eyes widened as she glared at Tornado Tawse. ‘How about Irresistible?’ she said. ‘Incredible? Inspiring?’ I was glad to see she was smiling again.

‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I think that Impestuous Irene, is my favourite.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely nothing,’ I replied. Personally I like it. It may be a made up word, but it definitely suits her.

Thursday was a whirlwind day. It started quietly, and I had time to clean both the dental room, and the lab before the first operation, which was a cat spay of Marita’s. It turned out to be rather a difficult one, as the chest was quite deep and the ovarian pedicles were tight and so I scrubbed up to hold everything out of the way so that she could tie them off safely. It all went very well.

After we had finished, I saw a beautiful English Setter going into Magne’s room, and something made me follow. There then followed an interesting history taking session between Magne and the owner, which I managed to follow almost in its entirety, despite the fact that both were speaking quite quickly. I also, to my pleasure, came up with the correct diagnosis. The pleasure was only related to my diagnostic prowess, however. From the owner and animal point of view, it wasn’t great news because the lovely dog was suffering from pyometra. For those who don’t know, pyometra is an infection within the uterus. In some cases this is obvious because pus is discharged, but in some cases the cervix is closed and there is an internal build-up, and that is particularly risky as there is a chance of rupture. Magne and I took the bitch through to the ultrasound machine, and Wivek came and confirmed the diagnosis and measured the size of the uterus, which was quite distended.

I was unsure whether Magne would have time to go ahead with the operation immediately. Dagny wasn’t there, and she normally assists, but as the dog was already sedated, it was better to go ahead. I considered offering to operate alone (with Jacqueline to monitor the anaesthetic) but as it is normal here for two vets to work together on such operations, I didn’t want to risk anything going wrong. I’ve done many such operations alone in Scotland, but they were quite a long time ago now.

Anyway, after only a short consultation with the owner, and with Gerd, Mellifluous Magne announced that he would go ahead with the operation. He asked me to get the patient prepared while he saw his last patient of the morning, so with Jacqueline’s help I put in a catheter, set up a drip and intubated her. Jaqueline had set up the anaesthetic machine, and very smoothly everything was set in place.

The operation went amazingly well. I repeated my actions of the cat spay, holding everything out of the way for Magne to tie off the ovarian pedicles, and the enormous uterus was removed safely. All that remained was for me to stitch up, and Magne seemed delighted with that too.

After lunch, I helped Marita with another cat spay. It’s an odd thing. Normally a bitch pyo would be a complicated operation, and a cat spay straightforward, but not on this day. Cat spay number two was very unusual. Again I scrubbed in as Marita was having difficulty locating the uterus, and between us, we eventually managed to find what seemed to be the left ovary, which looked cystic. Odder still though, there was no uterus attached. We called Dagny through, just to make sure, and for a moment, my heart was in my mouth. If she immediately pulled out a normal uterus, I was going to look rather stupid, however she only found the same thing as we had, so after a brief discussion, she told us to go ahead and remove the one ovary that we had found. It was very unusual. There had been no sign of a scar on the midline when we went in, and after the operation, we carefully felt the cat’s flank, but there didn’t seem to be a scar there either. Anyway, after I had sutured the second cat-spay, it was time to go home, and I collapsed into my car tired but happy after a very busy day.

It only remains to say that the Julebord (Christmas party) is tomorrow. Irene, Jacqueline and I are all getting together for a beauty session. Irene always looks stunning, so I’m relying on her to do me proud. Hopefully there will be some photos to share.

Co-Operation

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Tuesday morning began well with Dagny and Magne operating to remove the most enormous piece of detached cartilage I have ever seen from a dogs shoulder joint. It went so smoothly that I had a good feeling about the remainder of the day. Reality reasserted itself when I went through and carefully laid the dog in the kennel… and stood up, bashing my head off the door of the left upper kennel. Instinctively recoiling, I ricocheted and thumped the other side of my head on the door of the other kennel. It was that kind of day.

Next came a mammary tumour, which I had seen on the computer. I confess I had expected a dog (I saw the operation, and didn’t check the species because mammary tumours in dogs are incredibly common, and in cats incredibly rare). Again the same pattern, the operation itself went very well. I was doing this one on Magne’s behalf because he was running slightly behind schedule. As I inserted the last stitch, stripped my gloves off and walked out of theatre to wash my hands, Mobility Magne rushed into the room, brandishing a cat cage at arms length.

‘Can you do something with this,’ he gasped, before disappearing. I confess, I was somewhat surprised, but as the most disgusting stink assailed me, I realised that the cat in question had deposited something utterly rank in the cage. Luckily I have a strong stomach, so without further ado, I cleaned up the mess. Being a vet really is a very glamorous job. I am reminded at such moments, of James Herriot, comparing his vocation with that of a small animal surgeon and humorously self-deprecating as usual. He mentions that after his operations, “the final scene would have been of Herriot the great surgeon swilling the floor with mop and bucket”. Well even though I now work in small-animal practice, it’s not so very different. ReMorseful Magne (see what I did there) did proffer a partial explanation later when he told me that the awful smell was literally making him gag.

In the afternoon, I had a cat spay booked in, but somewhat to my surprise, two turned up. The owners, after being told by Magne that I sutured very beautifully, had asked that I be allowed to spay their cat, but they seemed confused when they arrived and saw only me. They had been expecting Magne to supervise. Fortunately at this moment, the man himself turned up and smoothed everything over. The highlight of my afternoon however, was when Irene was attempting to shave up the second spay for me. Because most cats here are spayed midline, she needed to be reminded of the landmarks I use when deciding where to incise. She had the cat laid out on a chair and seemed to be paying close attention as she felt around for the bony protuberances of the hip and thighbone. Finally, she found what she thought felt right.

‘Am I in the right place?’ she asked. Rounding the corner of the table to take a look, I was somewhat surprised to see her eyes were close to shut as she concentrated fiercely on what she was feeling, and that one of her fingers was on the shoulder and the other somewhere on the neck.

‘Um… well it would be if the cat was the right way round.’ I commented with a giggle. Fully expecting her to join in with my hilarity at this very funny joke, I was amazed when she opened her eyes wide and looked mortified. She really hadn’t noticed.

‘This stays strictly between us.’ Red-faced, she tried to silence me, but unfortunately nothing so amusing ever stays private here and she did continue giggling at herself for at least half-an-hour, so I guess she must have seen the funny side. I fear she may try to get her revenge by commenting to mention the very loud fart I let out when I was bending over to clean the floor in room B last week, but of course everyone will know that couldn’t possibly be true. I could never be so crudie.

Thursday morning began with a Caesarean. Dagny and Magne again, working as a team. Magne did the first part of the operation while Dagny revived the puppies, and then Dagny took over to stitch up. There were four healthy puppies, which is always a lovely event. Dagny had only had two hours sleep, but was still working as efficiently as ever. I have a feeling that her amazing cheekbones can get her through almost anything because she looked as good as ever too. Fortunately after the operation, she was able to go home and get a couple of hours sleep before the lunchtime meeting.

This weeks picture shows Wivek operating. It doesn’t get much more glamorous than this.

Holiday

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Even after many years, I still greet Christmas and the New Year with a heightened sense of joy that I don’t have to work on either day. All round the world, many wonderful people in the emergency services give up those days to help others, and I send my good wishes to all my friends and colleagues who have been, and will be working over the holiday period this year. I expect when I return tomorrow, there may be a few Christmas related cases. It only takes a moment or two for a dog to eat something that he or she shouldn’t, and chocolate and raisins can be toxic for dogs, as well as the simple problem of too much turkey.

Last Tuesday, the day began as I walked through the prep-room on the way to change into my uniform.  Linus, (whose picture you can see at the top of the page) had been very ill and vomiting for a few days, and he was in a lot of pain and seemed utterly exhausted. His abdomen was so painful that Dagny had to sedate him to examine him properly, and when she did, she could feel something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t visible on the x-ray (some items show up clearly, but not all do) so the only way to help Linus was an exploratory operation. His owners were naturally very fearful. Linus is eleven years old and as the lump wasn’t visible on the x-rays, it could be anything from a peach-stone to a tumour.

As Dagny readied herself for surgery, I prepared Linus for the operation. The monitors attached, I was concerned to find that the oxygen levels in Linus’ blood were very low: not very surprising as I could see that his gums were pale, nothing like the fresh pink colour they are in a healthy dog. I turned the intravenous drip as fast as it would go, and kept the anaesthetic levels to a minimum as Dagny began to cut.

It didn’t take long for her to locate the lump, and it was immediately obvious that it was a foreign body and not a tumour. The gut was inflamed where whatever-it-was had already passed through. I opened up the set of special clamps and the  multiple packs of gauze I had ready and Dangy placed them around the gut to keep everything clean.

Pausing for a moment, she looked up and smiled. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘I’m betting on a kongle!’ Kongle is Norwegian for pine cone. Her attention firmly back on her work , she cut carefully into the segment of intestine and drew out what proved indeed to be a section of pine cone. Poor Linus. No wonder it had been so painful.

From that point in the operation, it was obvious that things were improving. As Linus’ guts began to function again and the fluids from the drip got to work, his oxygen levels climbed from sixty-two right up into the high nineties, which is where they should be when everything is functioning well.

‘Would you mind just quickly going and telling his owners that it wasn’t a tumour?’ Dagny asked, as with the hole in the gut closed, she began to stitch the abdominal muscles. ‘They were so worried.’  As everything was stable, I was delighted to run through and tell them. What better Christmas present could there possibly be for me and them?

There are one or two things I find difficult about being an assistant. It’s not so easy for me to telephone owners and ask for an update, as I might do with one of my own patients. But I hope that the signs that I saw during that operation boded well for Linus and that he and his owners have had a wonderful Christmas together.

Merry Christmas everybody.

 

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.