More on Molly

Molly's blood work is back from the lab. Not a whole lot interesting here. Her blood sugar is fine, so she's not a diabetic. Her kidneys seem to be working properly. The only real abnormality is a modest rise in her alkaline phosphatase levels (one of her liver enzymes) which could be due to many things, but is consistent with Cushing's Disease.

Molly's biggest concern at the moment are those two bright round things sitting to the right hand side of the x-ray I posted earlier. Those are very likely bladder stones which explain the blood in her urine and why she seems a little painful when I palpate (have a good feel of) her bladder. So we're going to take those nasty little rocks out tomorrow and send them off to be analyzed. Some bladder stones can actually be dissolved with a diet which makes the urine acidic. They're made up of Struvite. If you look closely at Molly's uroliths (bladder stones), they look kinda 'spikey'. These are more likely made mostly of Calcium Oxalate. A special diet won't dissolve these. They have to come out.

All the drinking and urinating that Molly's doing right now is actually beneficial for her bladder. It's helping flush things through. However, if she continues to drink excessively after surgery (there's a small chance that her increased drinking is due to pain caused by those stones), we're going to have to do some more specialized testing to find out why. People always wonder why so many tests. Unfortunately, our patients can't talk to us, so each test is another piece of the puzzle to try to come up with a diagnosis. I'll let you know how her surgery goes tomorrow.

On another note, I had clients bring their little obese dog in today because he 'waddles'. They were worried, yet again, that he might have arthritis, even though he's only four years old. I palpated all the dog's joints again; no pain. I watched him walk. Yup, he definitely waddled, but I betcha I would too if I was carrying almost three times my body weight around all day. I've gone over this so many times with the owner, I'm at the point of giving up. Both owners are also overweight, which makes it a delicate subject. They're also worried because he's starting to vomit when he eats his cat food (you heard me) or hamburger. Seems he can only keep down ham and the incredibly rich kibble they feed him. The dog also has some other issues which makes me wonder if he's not developing a food allergy. I sent them home with a special diet to try, but the odds of them sticking to it are slim. I see these kinds of cases all the time. The owners mean well. The dog loves to eat and they love to feed him. They don't see that their 'kindness' is doing immeasurable harm to the one they love.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

A busy day today, with relatives arriving soon. I thought I'd post a pic of Molly's radiograph for you to ponder. As is standard when viewing a 'lateral' radiograph (meaning Molly was lying on her side with her back legs stretched out), Molly's front end is to the left, and her back end to the right. More words tomorrow!

The Peeing Dachshund

I'm currently working towards a diagnosis on a little dachshund I'll call 'Molly'. I've known Molly since she came to me as a wiggly little puppy 10 years ago. She's one of those special patients who, no matter how much I poke and prod her, always comes into the clinic with bum wiggles and kisses for me. She's a real sweetheart. Last week her 'dad' brought her to the clinic because she was urinating in the house; something she hadn't done since a puppy! When I asked her dad if she'd been drinking any more water than usual, he said 'no', she seemed fine aside from the need to pee all of the time! Molly was her happy self on physical exam, though her coat seemed to have a little more dandruff in it than usual and her fur seemed a little thin on her neck below her chin. Thinking she may have a bladder infection, I sent some of Molly's urine off to the lab. It revealed that her urine did contain blood, though there was no evidence of bacteria. The results also showed that Molly's urine wasn't very concentrated. This explained her urinating in the house! When I questioned her mom this time, she admitted that had been drinking increasingly large amounts of water since the summer and was now up to a quart a day! That's about twice as much as she should be drinking! She had been spayed as a puppy, so a uterine infection was out of the question. Now I'm starting to wonder about Molly's kidney function. When the kidney's aren't functioning properly, they can't do their job of concentrating urine. As a result, the patient drinks and drinks and pees and pees. Other diseases, such as Hyperadrenocorticism, or 'Cushing's' Disease popped into my head. With Cushings, the adrenal glands don't function properly, causing a whole whack of problems. We'd have to do some more testing to find out.

I had Molly return the next day. Her blood's currently at the lab being analyzed and I took a radiograph (an xray) of Molly's bladder. The blood in her urine made me wonder if she may have a bladder stone. I'll hopefully have the results back when I get back to work in a couple of days.

Things Dogs Must Try to Remember

Many moon ago, I wrote a weekly column for a local paper. Some of those articles are still floating around, so I may post them here once in a while. There are a bunch of these 'must remember' lists floating around. This one was mine.

Things Dogs Must Try to Remember:

1) I will not play tug-of-war with dad's underwear when he's on the toilet
2) I do not need to suddenly stand up when I am underneath the coffee table
3) The garbage collector is NOT stealing our stuff
4) I must shake the rainwater/snow out of my coat BEFORE coming into the house
5) I will not eat the cat's food before, or after, they have eaten it.
6) I will stop trying to find the remaining bits of clean carpet in the house when I'm about to throw up.
7) I will not throw up in the car.
8) I will not roll on dead birds, fish, frogs etc.
9) "Litter Fritters" are not food.
10) I will not eat any more socks and then deposit them in the backyard after processing.
11) The diaper pail is not a cookie jar.
12) I will not chew my human's toothbrush and then not tell them.
13) I will not chew crayons or pens, especially the red ones, or my people will think I'm hemorrhaging.
14) I will not steal my mom's underwear and dance around the backyard with it.
15) The sofa is not a facecloth.
16) My head does not belong in the refrigerator.
17) We do not have a doorbell. I will not bark each time I hear one on t.v.

A Sad End to the Day

We tend to book our euthanasias at the end of the day, so that the clinic is quieter and we can take our time. The downside to that is it often ends the day on a sad note, which can linger with you on your drive home.
In many cases it's a bittersweet sadness for me. When the patient is suffering, I'm glad I was able to send them off to sleep for the last time in a painless way, usually surrounded by the people that loved them.
The other day I had such a case that I found particularly difficult. The client was an elderly woman who was accompanied by her daughter. The patient was an equally elderly and very ill budgie. After repeatedly answering the same question from the frail, older woman, I could tell she had issues with her short term memory. Her daughter told me later that her mom had Alzheimer's. I took the little bird away, euthanized it, wrapped it in a soft cloth, and brought it back into the exam room so that the owner could have some closure. Except this owner couldn't have closure, because even for the short while I'd left the room, she'd wondered where her bird had gone. Back in the room, the woman, crying softly, kept touching the bird, hoping to stir it back to life. It was heartbreaking and I wondered, once she was home, how many times she's go looking for her little feathered friend.

A Snake's Sticky Situation

Had a rather unique case! Another clinic called to say they had a snake in distress and could they send the family and their reptile over as an emergency. Cool for me! Not so cool for the snake. The patient in question was a 12 inch albino corn snake; just a baby! It had managed to escape its enclosure (snakes are notorious escape artists), but its freedom was quickly curtailed when it encountered the remarkable adhesive powers of duct tape! The poor little guy was tightly glued to the tape along his entire length, causing his jaw to be pulled out of alignment. He was definitely in distress. As his diameter was akin to that of a pencil, any attempt to manually remove the tape would have caused significant damage. Nothing I'd normally have in the clinic would have dissolved that kind of strong adhesive. Then I thought of "Goo Gone", that stuff we use to take sticky labels off of things. A quick Internet search revealed that it shouldn't cause the snake any harm to use it, as long as we cleaned him up afterward. Plus, I was out of ideas and the snake was out of time. It worked like a charm. Bit by bit we dissolved the glue and released the stressed patient from his sticky situation. Once he was free and found to be remarkably intact, we gave him a quick bath to remove any of the product that might have been left on his scales. His teary teenage owner was very happy to take home his snake, with instructions to escape-proof his pet's enclosure!

By the way, the pic is of a friend's 'creamsicle' corn snake, but bigger than the little albino I saw!

Vet's Pets Aren't Perfect

*due to the graphic nature of this post, viewer discretion is advised*

ok...

So I'm getting home after the morning portion of my split shift at the clinic. As I headed up the sidewalk, I could hear a large, animate object hurling itself at the front door. This was NOT good. Timber wasn't in his crate, which means that SOMEONE, who shall remain nameless (temporarily) didn't shut the crate door properly! My stomach sank. I opened the front door and the white wonder (my Samoyed, Timber) flew past to do his thing on the front lawn. I entered the house to inspect the carnage. It appeared that Timber had gone from room to room wreaking havoc. He had vomited in the den (likely due to the excitement over our apparent largess in leaving him the whole house to himself). The guest bedroom had the pillows and covers stripped from the bed. The master bedroom had received the same treatment, with the added touch of dirty laundry being strewn around the carpet. The bathroom had the towels removed from the bars and the bathmat was missing. The main destruction was, of course, in the living room. Ah! THERE'S the bathmat! The TV Guide and a Reader's Digest had been shredded, but he spared the Harrowsmith Country Life magazine (good boy!). One of the cushions from one of the living room chairs has been annihilated. Yellow foam was scattered hither and yon around the room. He had dragged individually wrapped rolls of toilet paper (Costco brand) from the bathroom baskets into the living room, unwrapped them and chewed them to bits (I betcha THAT was fun). Dog toys were mixed into this debris, as well of one of my husband's $19.99 sneakers, mercifully untouched (though he ate one of $200 special order New Balance's merely 2 days ago!). I betcha Toby (my Silky Terrier) sat on the couch through all of this thinking, "Boy, are YOU gonna to be in trouble when mom gets home!" Of course the beast looked quite pleased with himself and couldn't understand why he was forced to sit on the deck and watch, through the glass bay doors, the cleanup of his object d'art and his mom leaving a voicemail for his father, berating him for his lack of crate closing abilities.
sigh......................

Painful Quail (My pain, not the Quails')

Would you like your daily chuckle at my expense? Yes? I ended up doing surgery at 9 am this morning and recovered 10 cm of elastic, waistband type material from a cat's small intestine. Cat survived, as nasty cats are wont to do. I was feeling quite good about the whole situation and life in general. Came home and discovered that the little quail that we had been raising as part of a reintroduction program had been quite badly picked on. My husband had recently moved them from their abode in the garage out to the main flight pen where their evil brethren decided to make haste with the pecking. Needless to say I felt compelled to rescue the little guys, so my husband and I began to gather them up. 5 were missing. We found them huddled under a tarp near the back of the pen. As my hubby lifted the tarp I darted under and began snapping up quail as quickly as possible. I had managed to snag all 5 which had become a writhing mass of avianness in my hands when I stood up and smacked my head straight into a 2 by 4 that sits across part of the pen as a perch for the peacocks. I felt like I was going to black out or throw up. Both were certainly not out of the question. I implored my other half to 'take the g**damn birds' which were dropping from my hands one by one as I contemplated that I now knew the true meaning of 'exquisite' pain. I can see the headlines now.."Heroic vet saves cat in emergency surgery this morning, only to brain herself on a 2 by 4 in an attempt to rescue helpless quail."...sigh...

Why the Blog?

It is with some trepidation that I join the ever growing league of bloggers on the vast world wide web. Why bother at all? The profession of veterinary medicine can be incredibly fulfilling, intellectually stimulating and a perfect career choice for someone who wants to combine their love of science with their love of animals. Every little girl wants to be a vet when she grows up. What could be better than playing with puppies and kittens all day? The reality is that, although the good stuff definitely outweighs the bad, there are also frustrations, tears and a lot of emotional moments which can make you wonder why on earth you picked the profession in the first place.

This blog is a place for me to share my happy cases, but also my sad cases. It's a place for me to vent and rant if I need to, or to share a laugh if I can. Come along for the ride if you like.