Thursday, June 6, 2013

Circle of life and its balancing act


I’ve learned that you need to expect the unexpected when it comes to veterinary field work.

In one day, I woke up to the announcement that the foal that we were waiting for had finally been born at the clinic. The mare was at the clinic for observation due to having the tendency to retain her placenta after birth. We had been patiently waiting for this foal, even as the mare went past her expected delivery date. By three weeks. At first we had thought maybe there had been a mistake in her breeding history and she was actually bred later than had been written down. But that was not the case; she was indeed three weeks overdue. This has been a fairly common occurrence this breeding season for some reason, possibly due to the crazy ups and downs in the Michigan weather. Regardless, we were gifted with a happy and healthy, solid black Standardbred colt.

After visiting with the new addition, we went about our scheduled farm calls for the day. However, within a couple hours, it was obvious that this was going to be anything but a typical day. Emergency calls poured in one after another. The first was to a mare that was found down after what appeared to be a full night of rolling due to colic. When we arrived to the barn, she was up and walking around but clearly depressed. A rectal exam was performed and a belly tap resulted in serosanguinous (thin and blood-tinged) liquid which is indicative of a twist or rupture of intestines. The owner made the decision to put the mare down immediately instead of taking the gamble to ship the mare to MSU for colic surgery that had no significant promise for recovery. It was crushing to see the guilt that the owner had for not checking on her horses the previous evening like she always does. We cannot say when the mare began to colic or if she would have had a better prognosis if her situation had been noticed earlier. That is probably the most frustrating and scary thing when it comes to colic in horses. The fact that perfectly healthy horses can colic at any point in time for any reason is terrifying.

Another emergency following that call was up at a warmblood breeding farm. A promising imported filly had gotten tangled in a fence and cut deep into one of her hind cannon bones. When we arrived, she had layers of clothes and makeshift tourniquets around the leg to stop the bleeding. We laid her down with sedatives to get a better look at the injury. After unwrapping all of the layers, we could see that the wire had sawed through the common digital extensor tendon running down the front of the leg and through the superficial flexor tendon down the back of the leg. The damage was too great for us to repair in the middle of the field, but the filly was worth enough money that they were willing to trailer her down to MSU for surgery and aftercare. After splinting the leg for support and cutting several strands of fence to bring in the trailer, we loaded her into the trailer and sent her on her way. She is doing well and will be heading back to the farm in a few days.

The last call of the day was emotional as well. The family had scheduled two euthanasias during the same visit. The first was their family pony with a long history of laminitis and she could no longer move around comfortably. Her quality of life was suffering and putting her down was the best decision in this situation. The second euthanasia was more difficult. It was for one of their dogs with child aggression. The dog had belonged to the oldest daughter and she had trained him for 4H obedience and agility. He was the first one to meet us when we had pulled up into the driveway. He was bouncing around and as happy as could be. Unfortunately, he had bitten a few children over the past year including the family’s youngest daughter. His aggression was unpredictable and they had tried many different options, but nothing had worked. It was difficult thinking about euthanizing a young, healthy dog, but all of the other options had been exhausted.

Needless to say, having all of this happen in less than twelve hours was emotionally overwhelming. I know understand when professors and practitioners talk about “compassion fatigue”. As a future practitioner, I will have to learn how to balance this aspect of veterinary medicine.

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