From dying kittens to living dogs: a vet’s life
Many careers have a steady tempo, steering a predictable, stable, steady path through the days of work and through life. It’s very different in the veterinary world: the working lives of vet clinics tend to be peppered with gloomy lows and exhilarating highs. This past week has been a typical example.
I’ll tell the low story first. I arrived at work to find that our nurses had discovered a cardboard box had been left at the clinic gate., containing a cluster of four young kittens, no more than two weeks of age. They were weak and hungry; a few more hours on their own, and they would have died.
Our nurses had leapt into action. The kittens were soon warmed up, bottle fed with formula milk, and settled into a snug bed with cosy heated pads. However, the challenge had just begun: the kittens had suffered a major ordeal: separated abruptly from their mother, deprived of their continual supply of milk and taken away from the warm comfort of their mother’s nest.
It was too much for the two smaller female kittens; by the end of that first day, they had succumbed, dying quietly in their sleep. The two male kittens were stronger, suckling greedily at the feeding bottle, and vocalising loudly.
I brought the kittens home that first night, setting my alarm clock to wake to feed them at three hourly intervals. Thereafter, a different member of our team took them home each night. The kittens did well at first, but on day four, they stopped suckling so strongly, they seemed to weaken, and their miaows quietened. We hoped that they were just having a minor setback, but that night, the vet on kitten duty had trouble getting them to suckle.
The following day, the fading continued. By lunchtime, one of the boys had stopped breathing. By that evening, the final kitten had died. All of our efforts had been in vain.
There were many possible causes for the kitten deaths, with a viral infection highest on the list. But the real underlying reason was simple: they had been neglected. First, their mother should have been spayed; there is no need to bring unwanted kittens into this world. Second, their mother should have been vaccinated, so that her kittens would have been protected by the antibodies that she’d have given them in her milk. And third, they should have been cherished by the household that had allowed them to come into this world. The kitten deaths were preventable, and that was what was particularly upsetting for our clinic team.
At the same time as the kitten saga, our clinic was busy with the usual stream of cases that make up our days and nights. And the good news is that we had a story with a happy ending that helped to counter the tragedy of those unfortunate kittens.
Ben was a twelve year old German Shepherd who epitomised the best of his breed: he was huge, at over 50kg, but he was gentle, affectionate and loyal. He had been taken on as the family dog when the three children were under ten years of age. They were now all at college, but living at home.
Ben’s illness came upon him rapidly. He had enjoyed a normal evening, going for a run in the local park, and scoffing his supper hungrily. But the following morning he didn’t want to get out of bed, and he refused to eat anything. He just gazed at his owners, with pleading brown eyes. They had to lift him to get him outside to do his business, and even after this encouragement, he refused to get up and walk. They called our clinic, and I headed out to their house to try to help.
My examination of Ben told a distinctive story: his heart was racing, his gums were pale, and his abdomen was pot-bellied. He had all the signs of an abdominal tumour that had started to bleed. I needed to confirm this with blood tests, xrays and ultrasound, so we lifted him into my car, and I brought him back to the clinic.
Half an hour later, I phoned the family: our work up had confirmed that he had a tumour on his spleen that had been growing for some time, but which had presumably started to bleed overnight. The only way his life could be saved was by radical surgery, and he’d need a blood transfusion before we started, to make sure he was strong enough to cope. Even then, there was a risk he might not survive, and there was a chance the tumour could be malignant, so that the surgery could be in vain. The family gave us permission to go ahead.
Four hours later, I called them back: the operation had been successful. We had removed his spleen, including a tumour the size of a man’s fist. This had burst like a ripe tomato, leaking blood into his abdomen, which is why he had collapsed.
Ben stayed in intensive care for 24 hours, but by then he was fit and strong enough to go for a walk. The laboratory tests of the tumour told us that it had been a benign tumour, so Ben had been fully cured by the surgery. He’s still an older dog, but he could have another three or four years of good life.
The witnessing of his reunion with his family was the lift that our clinic needed last week: smiles and laughter from the humans, wagging tail and body from the dog, and happy emotions all around.
The lows and highs of a vet clinic: that’s the life of a vet.