Bank Holidays Night's

Had a busy 4 bank holiday nights, with a high but not uncommon good weather case load which was yet again a good example to have pet insurance for dogs cats and rabbits.

Surgically we had a mix of major and simple cases with stitch ups, x-rays and repairs for dog or cat RTA’s or attacked by dogs (quite common), bloats, splenectomys, diaphragmatic hernia repairs (abdominal contents end up in chest cavity, breathing becomes somewhat difficult), pyo-metras (get your bitches spayed and avoid this), eye removals and other surgical cases.
Eyes always turn my stomach when they are hanging out; Eye pop outs happen a lot in the smaller flat faced dogs, a bang on the head and no proper orbit to hold the eye in place…. Splat.

Recovering all the above post op and general medical cases in such as: FUS (blocked bladder cats), fitting dogs, kidney or heart failure cases, haemorrhagic gastro enteritis (bloody shits-pouring out) vomiting and a general mixed medical bag of other medical cases.
There seems to be a spell of fitting dogs going through the area at the moment. Not sure if human nurses have spells where you get a lot of a certain type of medical case in.

In the exotics section we had a head tilt duck belonging to one of the staff who was very sweet, various rabbits another common patient, rats and ferrets.
Finally isolation was occupied just to make sure that there was a long extra walk to trudge during hourly obs checks.

One stray that was uninjured but came in as emaciated was not, he was just hyperactive. Weight did not get a chance to settle on him. He spent the weekend in as none of the rescue kennels collected.
When he came in I put him into a walk in kennel, went back 5mins later to dog ward and as l opened the door this white streak shot past me, stopped for a chat to Wibble and on my “oy you git” looked at me with a catch me smirk and shot up the passage. I cornered him at the connecting door.
Needless to say climbing out of a walk in kennel earned him a place in a smaller inescapable standard hospital kennel and he treated us to the “staffie bull terrier scream” all weekend. This seems to be an inherited trait that certain SBT have, no other dogs do. Think magnified nails on a board with full lung power for hours and it gives you an idea. He wanted out, his fault he could have had space.

A lunatic cat who was a recovering surgical case from yesterday decided last night he felt better and played the game of ‘fling yourself out the door because the human will catch you before the floor’. He also grabbed me nails out (the only way!) when checking the patient next to him so l had to have one hand fending off or tickling him through his kennel door.
I was playing 'squeeze the head' last night whenever l did his stats. Hold head between hands and squeeze gently but firmly. As soon as l stopped he would hassle me for “more more squeeeeeze pleaseee” honestly you would think he was the only patient in the place, a total purr bucket.

On Sunday l was holding a cat and trying to stop him pulling out the vet's eyes as he was in a bad temper when the evening nurse standing chatting mentioned that did l know the cat was peeing. I suddenly realised what the warm wet feeling was. I was soaking my entire tunic had soaked it up like a sponge. Needless to say l went on a dry top hunt.

A splenectomy (tumour ruptures on the spleen) came in on the second night and off the table at about 03:00.
Last night, which was thankfully my last night, we had a bloat dog with splenectomy. This happens quite often as the stomach twists the spleen gets involved and also flips and is unsaveable this does not involve tumours but trauma. He came off the table at about 4am.
On change over the student VN went to triage a dog and came back with a dog who had been retching. One look and l told her to go meet me at prep table while l set up drips as he was another bloat case.
The vet came over stole him for an x-ray which was great because he lifted him onto the x-ray table for me and saved me the hassle of lifting the dog onto anything so l could do his iv lines and take bloods. Rugby playing vet’s have a use l keep telling him that.

At least l was able to avoid the op. After l got fluid lines in and sent the bloods off with the student for running l passed it over to one of the newly arrived vet nurses who gave me a jaundiced “no need to be so happy” look over her mug of tea as l went off to finish patient change over, before running away to my bed.