A day at the clinic

[cjsmith]

Today's HBC is probably going to make it. (HBC = "Hit By Car", and this one is badly messed up but has not only a good chance of survival but also a chance of recovery.) I am very glad it wasn't my job to sit out in the lobby where the family waited, nor to duck into the back occasionally to come bring the family a status report. Young girl: devastated, crying. Father: annoyed that his day was derailed, snarky to staff, scolding daughter. That poor kid.

My incontinent kitty is probably really incontinent. Culture hasn't run its full time yet but as of yesterday it "looks like it's going to come back negative". X-rays don't seem to show stones, though we'll be more certain after the radiology specialist comes by. Good news = back legs are strong and reliable. That's good because the nerve damage version of this problem has no workaround. Next step is probably one of the medications that strengthens the urinary sphincter.

I "checked in" several patients today & even got a good heart rate and respiration rate on one. (The others were either wriggling or purring. Stethoscopes no work good then.) I got LOTS of puppy kisses and some nice vigorous puppy gnaws. I saw the cutest Lab puppy in the world (until the next one, of course) and the most elegant Sheltie. I got hissed at repeatedly by a cat who was missing both of his fangs on top. I cleaned a whiteboard that had been used as an impromptu stretcher, and I got to help tie down my own cat for X-rays. Even learned a good trick for giving liquid medication by mouth to a very angry cat: put a gloved hand in the cage with him, and when he hisses at it, squirt with the other hand.

I fall down go boom now.

Comments

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

That sounds like an interesting day.

Travis gets vetted on Tuesday and I am kinda excited about it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Cool! What's Travis in for?

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Just a check up and shots.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This stuff is probably boring as hell to anybody but me, but I'm loving it. I'm such a weirdo. It's a wonder my mother let me live.

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

I'm the one admitting that I like taking my animals for check ups!
If I had the money I'd run them in for every hairball.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh I thought you were being snarky! (Which would be well deserved.) Ha!

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Oh god no! I'm my vet's groupie. I wish he was my doctor.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I would totally trust my vet to spay me. (So what if my innards aren't shaped quite like those of a cat? Neither are hundreds of thousands of other species on earth, and she's got books.) My only regret would be that they don't have laparoscopy.

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Does your vet have lasers and ultrasound machines?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nah, we're pretty low-tech. I hear we're getting ultrasound but I don't know whether that's rumor.

[evilegg.livejournal.com]

Do you guys have a good 24 hour clinic close by?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yes; several. That's where we sent the cat who came in on the whiteboard. He was very shocky & needed stabilization before anything else could be done for him.

We do a lot of that kind of transfer on weekends. We're open Saturday while many non-24h clinics aren't, so we get a disproportionate number of emergencies on Saturday. But we're closed Sunday, so anybody not stable enough by 4pm Sat that they can wait two days has to transfer.

[platypus]

Hee. I remember when we first took Penny to the vet, she was purring so much the vet couldn't hear her heart. She finally plunked her down next to the sink and turned on the water, which is apparently an effective way to shut down purrs :).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Heh! Yeah, we shut down purrs too sometimes, but I figured I had better let the doctor do it. Some clients seem to be so happy when their cat purrs at the vet's. It says that all is well, that their cat is a Nice Kitty and not a Mean Misbehaving Kitty, and that the vet (or whoever) is probably an okay person too. I hate to derail that! :-)

[nurvuslee.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow! I never thought that a cat sometimes purr so much that the vet has to do something to shut it down. That's pretty hilarious!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? Some cats do purr out of nervousness, so there's that too. But some of them are just plain CHEERFUL!

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

i thought of you yesterday when i dropped by my vet to pick up food for the boys. a handful of very energetic pups coming and going, and one very unhappy kitty yowling from her carrier. i chatted with kitty's human over the ordeal of getting any kitty to a vet: how they go from 4 legs to 45769457 legs once the carrier comes out, how strong 7lb of animal can be, etc. the x-ray on the light board had me curious, but i couldnt' identify anything but ribs and spine. as i pulled away, i thought it might be fun to play with the pups in the kennel yard.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how cats suddenly turn into octopi, isn't it?

If the clinic owners weren't worried about liability issues, they might well have let you play with the pups in the kennel yard. If I ever have some slow time at the clinic, I just go and give the animals some attention. They crave it, poor things; they're missing their humans and they're stuck in cages or runs.