Big Highs & Lows
Rayya The Vet 
Aug 19, 2011 
NGOs, Rayya The Vet 
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This week has been a very interesting one. It was pretty hectic the first half but then it slowed down on thursday and friday. I think it got quiet because of the horrid rainy and windy weather. Lots of our clients either cancelled their appointments or simply rescheduled.
It has also been a week full of mixed emotions. I have had some big highs and some huge lows.
I started my first day at work at discovering I lost one of my sweetest patients Bella, a 9-year-old Cavalier, to a suspect bladder tumour. Her poor owners had just lost their other much-loved dog Scamp, another Cavalier, only 6 weeks earlier to heart failure. Bella had died overnight and they brought her in to organise cremation. It saddened me so much and put a damper on my Monday morning.
I then soon discovered that Katie, one of my ongoing cases, had already been admitted to hospital even though she was scheduled for surgery the next day. Poor girl had gone downhill over the weekend and required iv fluids. She looked bright and alert so that was comforting. ‘Travis’, the 5-year-old golden retriever, admitted four-day before looked great. He finally looked bright enough to be able to withstand his required bladder surgery (cystotomy) to remove his bladder stones & urethral stones. The rest of the monday went according to plan.
Tuesday was another very stressful day because I had to operate on Katie. She was in very poor body condition and posed a high anaesthetic risk. Thankfully her surgery went well but we were not too happy with our findings. We resected a section of her intestinal tract that had sinister lesions. We were quite concerned it may be cancer but could not rule out an inflammatory disease. We sent off Katie’s samples to the pathologist to get some answers and were waiting impatiently for them. They can take up to a week to give us histopathology results but hers were marked URGENT so we expected results earlier than that.
We were also concerned about Travis even though he was looking bright as a button.
He was leaking urine and had not attempted to urinate on his own yet which can be expected right after bladder surgery. I think we were just getting impatient and wanted speedy recoveries to engulf us with positive energy!
Wednesday came and the day looked much more promising. I received a phone call that boosted my morale enormously. I found out that the ewe I operated on a few months ago pro bono had given birth to a gorgeous black lamb. We had thought it would be impossible for her to ever lamb and had in fact recommended her owners not breed from her. The owners had decided to name the little lamb after me. I could not wait to see the pictures and the owner is in the process of emailing them to me.
Thursday, we saw Rusty and I did not recognise him at first. He was the adorable kelpie that we treated a few weeks ago for a chest infection (pyothorax). This handsome boy was on the brink of death when he first presented to Alana. He was so full of spring and happy to see us all and seeing him was like a breath of fresh air.
He reminded us of why we should never give up hope no matter how grave the prognosis may appear…
I also got to spend time with Scamp, one of my favourite JRT, as he was admitted for a dental. He smiled his heart out and even provided me with nervous smiles…
He obviously wasn’t too smiley when we first admitted him .
And finally Friday was pretty cruisy…I got to examine lots of my regular patients that I adore. I reassessed their progress and enjoyed taking heaps of pictures of them and with them. From Lucy, my loving lab to Blossom, my soft and tender kitty cat. I ended my day on a very good note. I got involved with another re-home case. I took in Ro, a 15 month old lab cross, who we refused to put down based on his history. I left him at the clinic tonight because he is an escape artist but will be picking him up tomorrow to spend the weekend with me and then will start working on finding him a suitable new home.
I have never failed in finding a pet a new home and so this is my new challenge and it will really drive me…
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Filed under: Medicine Cases, Surgery Tagged: advice, anaesthetic, ask, bladder surgery, bladder tumour, cats, Cremation, Dogs, Gribbles Veterinary, health tips, Heart failure, help, histopathology, how to, info, iv fluids, kitty, leaking urine, lesions, Online vet, re-home, surgery, vet care, vet practice, veterinary question, veterinary surgery Source: http://rayyathevet.com/2011/08/20/big-highs-lows/
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