surgery Archives -

Best Christmas story or nightmare. You choose.

One day I had a new client come in with a 7-year-old Bernese mountain dog. Chewy presented with a lack of appetite, diarrhea, and vomiting. When the clients came in, I immediately recognized their dog. He had an unusual white stripe on the forehead. The puppy I remembered had the same color pattern and white stripe as Chewy. So, I asked my technician to leave the room and look up Bernese mountain dogs that I have seen over the past 7 years.

I asked another technician to come in to help me perform the physical examination on Chewy. Chewy was clinically dehydrated, his abdomen was tense, the fur on his face smelled like vomit, and his rear end had remnants of diarrhea still on the fur. I told the clients that we would need to start with some blood work and x-rays, and my technicians recruited some help to pick up this 135-pound beast onto the x-ray table. I went back into the exam room and started to talk about the other Bernese mountain dog with similar markings.

Looking back, it was about 7 years ago when a young couple bought a puppy from a breeder. It was in December and the young couple went away for Christmas and left the puppy with their friend and my client. They didn’t leave a cage or toys and the young woman who took care of the puppy left him in a spare bedroom where the puppy did tremendous damage.

One day the puppy got out of the bedroom and destroyed their Christmas tree. He knocked it over, ripped open presents, chewed up ornaments, and ate the stockings. I remember informing the young woman when she brought him in that I was going to have to perform surgery to retrieve all the things that he ate. It ended up being a problem because we couldn’t communicate with the owners based on their travel, but the surgery was an emergency. I ended up performing the surgery which went without complications. The friend ended up paying for the surgery and I found out later that the whole ordeal ended their friendship.

My technician who was doing the deep dive into the research came in and told me that my instincts were correct and it was the same dog. His name was John. When the new owners found out that his name was John they asked if the original owner’s name was Hortensia. It was.

Same dog, similar situation. I ended up telling the new owner my history with John. They adopted John about a year ago, hated the name and call him Chewy because he always has something in this mouth.

My technicians came back in with Chewy and we put the radiographs on the examination computer and we could see the problem right away. Chewy had about 9 pacifiers in his stomach. I asked the owners if they have a child and they did. Each parent thought it was the other one that got rid of the pacifiers, but it was Chewy. I told them that Chewy needed surgery. The fact that there are 9 pacifiers means that they are not passing. I thought it was fortunate for them that when they adopted John the previous owners transferred the insurance to them, and they never canceled it. And I told them that they never will. Best holiday news ever. Love, Chewy.

I guess we are all getting older, but occasionally, there is a situation that reinforces the fact that you have become part of the older generation. That situation happened to me this past spring when I was lecturing at Auburn Veterinary School. I was part of a group of speakers talking to the veterinary students about life post-graduation. Speakers from around the country were mentoring young minds, eager to hear about their profession. There is nothing more rewarding.

While I was waiting to speak, I decided to walk around the veterinary school. It was cold outside, so I stayed inside and walked by a man and woman. When I walked by, I could hear them talking about me, and I heard the woman tell the man that she knew me but could not remember where.

I continued to walk around the building when I heard her loudly say down the hall, “she knew it,” and before I knew it, she was walking briskly to catch up to me. She tugged at my jacket and apologized, but she wanted to say hi to me.

She introduced herself as Paulette and said that I might not remember her, but her mother, who recently passed away, was a client, and I would remember Rocko the Rottweiler.

Rocko the Rottweiler was one of a kind. The owner used to call the dog stupid because I performed four exploratory surgeries to remove foreign bodies from his intestines. A little biology lesson here: Rottweilers have large diameter intestines, so a foreign body would have to be large to obstruct Rocko. Interestingly, each of the four foreign body surgeries was for either the husband’s athletic socks or the knot on the end of a large rawhide dog bone. Rocko was one of a kind. He got into the fishing tackle box and got a fishing hook stuck in his tongue, and the one time he went to the beach, he got stung by a jellyfish. Thank god the owner had pet insurance.

Paulette introduced her husband, who also said he recognized me. He told me I probably would not recognize him, but he spent a day shadowing me for a school project when he was in high school. He told me that he was the kid who fainted when watching me in surgery.

I told him that it happened all the time, and he should not be embarrassed. He said that experience changed his career aspirations from wanting to be a human surgeon to pursuing his love for numbers, and now he is an accountant.

It was great to see Paulette and her husband, but it was strange that it happened at a veterinary school in Alabama. I asked her if she was here because her pet was sick. She said she didn’t currently have a pet because she was too busy traveling. So, I had to ask her again, why is she there? My daughter is in Vet school at Auburn, and we are taking her out to dinner after the conference.

So, here is the circle of life. I took care of the grandmother’s dog, and I am lecturing to the granddaughter at veterinary school. Where did the time go? I ended up going to dinner with the happy family and hope to continue to mentor the young veterinary student throughout her career.

Tag: surgery

Something about him was familiar

In the blink of an eye