Many little excitements

Last workdays, I had many little adventures happen at work. A lot, actually! Many little stories: read whichever ones seem interesting to you. Enjoy! I did.

Belly Seroma. Another one! A sweet, and extremely hyper female Labrador retriever came in, for a spay recheck. When the nurse saw it, however, she was shocked-- a huge swelling at the surgery site was present. It turns out that it was a seroma-- a collection of fluid around the healing wound. It measured about 7x8cm, which is very big for anything unusual on the body. They said it had probably been caused in part by the Labrador's hyper attitude, and constant movement. The incision never really had a chance to heal, and problems happened. She was happy, though, in spite of this! Since it would be very complicated and difficult to drain the seroma right there, because she would been to be placed under anesthesia for the moment, the doctor simply prescribed antibiotics for her, to see if it would work. Therefore, I assume that it was an infection.

Little Critters. Friday, there were many cute young animals... three small puppies and one little kitten. I'm not sure what was wrong with the kitten, I think she was just there for vaccinations or something. She was gray and was going to be a long-haired kitty, so she was very fluffy... I just couldn't leave her out of the story, she was so cute! One puppy came in with a painful swelling on his shoulder that made him shriek whenever someone touched it. I'm not sure what it was, but he went home, so it obviously wasn't a huge problem. Good thing. Two pet shop puppies came-- one was a boston terrier with giardia-- a contagious intestinal disease. It was just a recheck, so he wasn't as sick as he could have been... but boy, was he cute! Little sniffing guy. The other puppy was a king charles cavalier spaniel, and she was cute too. She just had an ear infection, but was enjoying making all of us feel sorry for her when we heard her pitiful cries. Her loud pitiful cries, haha!

Chinchillas. There were three chinchillas there from the pet shop, all with ringworm, but they were so well socialized, they deserve to be mentioned. Most of the time the little animals from pet stores are handled very little, and are shy and sometimes skittish and nippy. But these obviously were played with--they behaved themselves very well.

Corneal Ulcer Debridement. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? Well, it kind of is. A cat came in with vision problems, I suppose, and after running the tests, they discovered that he had a very large ulcer on the surface of his eye. I was holding the cat for the procedures, and the doctor was explaining to me what she was doing. She said that the ulcer is like a wound, and a scab-like tissue had formed over it. It needed to be taken away in order for the new, healthy tissue to grow, so we had to debride the eye. In other words, the doctor took sterile cotton swabs, and gently rubbed it in circles on the eye ulcer to pick up stray pieces of the dead tissue on the ulcer. The cat had eye anesthesia on the surface of his eye, of course. He was a good cat, considering! They then sent him home with medicines to further the healing.

A Fight. A bulldog picked a fight and lost. Sounds rather unfortunate! That's what I heard, and then a big, tough-looking bulldog came to the back for repair of the lacerations on his front right leg. That was all that was wrong with him, just on that leg, but the other dog had certainly filled the space on the leg up with wounds! There were lacerations (gashes), and puncture wounds. We had to clean them up and then staple the large lacerations closed. Of course, it wasn't ME doing the cleaning... I was just holding. He was heavy, though, and drunk from pain meds, so he was trying to sit on me while they were cleaning him. He was such a baby! Haha. Very cute!

An Eye for an Eye. Well, not really. But there was a little dog with a superficial tumor on the eye (not sure if in the corner of the eye or somewhere on the eyelid), and it was somewhere where it bothered him to blink, of course. It was just a little bubble, so the doctor numbed the eye, and simply snipped it off. Easy as pie! It was a bit of bleeding, but after some pressure, it stopped, and the eye was as good as new.

Diabetes--smell? I didn't think that it had a smell. But when I smelled this poor sick elderly dachshund, I thought otherwise. I had thought he smelled funny, but then the doctor asked me if I smelled it. She said that it's not the ketones that make it smell (something in the urine from diabetes), and she didn't know if it was the extra sugar in the urine that made him smell sickly sweet, or what. I don't know either, but it's interesting.

Crazy Dog. Guess what? Our crazy little adorable dachshund puppy who had been there for overdose on medicine was back..... She just came for a recheck, but we all kind of moaned jokingly. She was the one who had been chewing through the IV line a post or two ago! She was cute, though. One of her eyes was blue and one was brown. All the while people were examining her, she was wagging her long whip tail ferociously. Then, when I approached her kennel at all, even if not to go to her, she began wagging her entire body along with her tail, in the excitement of it all. Haha, it made me laugh!

Ear? Abscess. A poor cat entered the hospital with, pretty much, a hole in the side of his head, below his ear. It was caused by a lot of scratching and itching on his part. We didn't know what had caused it, perhaps something in the ear. But, it became known as an abscess, and filled with pus and infection, so they had to clean it out and drain it. He went home soon after, though. As soon as he recovered from his groggy anesthetized self!

Raisins Galore. Well, not really. Raisins are bad for dogs. But, these two apparently didn't know it. Two dogs, from the same family, had eaten a bunch of raisins before I got there, and the unknown poisons in the raisins made them very sick, so they had to stay for a few days. I assume that they were induced to vomit when they first came, and then they had to be on fluids for a few days. Both were huskies, and were quite squashed in their kennels. One was loudly complaining this, and it drove us all nuts. But both of them will get to go home shortly, probably. They were still there when I left, but I'm sure they'll get better. Sleep will cure anything, and they got plenty of it!