Your Pet's Best Friend

Flood waters cause abandonment of animals - ASPCA to the rescue... and me.

Lots of flooding in the Caruthersville, Missouri area, even before they dynamited the levee upstream.  Many people left and abandoned their animals.  Last week the Humane Society of Missouri rescued a horse from a flooded area by putting  a sling between two boats.  The problem has gotten worse since then.

Today, the A.S.P.C.A. is here putting up temporary caging and corrals at Kennett's Delta Fair Grounds.  They have brought a lot of people and resources.  I went out at noon and looked at some horses and brought a dog back for treatment.  His owner had tried to splint his leg before he left.  It didn't work out well.  The horse on my facebook page is not dead.  This is the mare standing up and eating grass, but she's got a leg that's not working.

I'm heading back out there now.  More pictures later.

Menagerie Fire - Day 10 - Going Home

Well, the Alligator-Man is mending.  He still has a lot of bandages on his hands, but seems in good spirits.  Big Brownie is feeling well now, eating well now.  The homeless shelter has agreed to take in Big Brownie along with the Gator-man, and they will share the basement with five other travelers. So, I'm out of the shelter business for a while.  It remains to be seen what will happen with the rest of the menagerie.  They are all safe in their foster homes for now.

Menagerie Fire - Day 5

Big Brownie has got some liver problems: really high bilirubin and alkaline phosphatase.  Ultrasound of her liver doesn't look bad.  Gall bladder is really full, but you expect that when she doesn't have much appetite.

She acts bright and okay, attitude-wise.  She is coughing some, despite her good-looking chest X-rays. 

Today she got a visit from the Alligator Man, and that made her pretty happy (and him, as well).  He looks okay, wearing big gloves over his hands, which he expects to be free of in a couple of weeks.  Second-degree burns really hurt, but your skin grows back without having skin grafts and taking six months to heal.

So, I hope they'll be back together soon, but I'm not sure how the burned-out truck thing is going to work. Sheesh.

Our program at Kiwanis Club cancelled today, due to snow on the roads.  I substituted by delivering the saga of the menagerie fire.  It's a good thing I love to tell a story, because the story is the only compensation I'll be getting out of this mess.   That and that good feeling, of course.  If all my stuff ever burns up, I hope someone's around to help me.  There but for the grace of God go I.

Menagerie Fire - Day 4

Well, I'm down to just Big Brownie, here.  Her blood-work has been delayed.  I could have run basic stuff here, but I wanted more info, so I was going to send it out to the reference lab.  Unfortunately, FedEx decided they had a problem and couldn't make it until tomorrow.  So there's a bit of a delay.

Amazingly enough, she doesn't have heartworms, but she did have hookworms in her intestine.  Probably they all did.

Now she's developed a bit of a cough, possibly part of what was wrong before the fire, but maybe related to the smoke.  We'll see.

Turns out the Alligator Man is not as badly burned as was feared.  He was discharged from the burn unit in Memphis:  they gave him a bus ticket and sent him on his way.  Now he is a in a nursing facility here in town.  Of course, he still can't use his hands or care for himself, and the truck is a burned-out mess.  Fortunately, the animals are all fostered at present.

What a twist of fate.

Menagerie Fire - Day 3

The saga continues.   Today some reptile rescue folks came down from St.Louis to take charge of the turtles, tortoises, snakes, and gators.  They were surprised to find that the reported "six-foot alligators" were actually six feet long.  Usually they find that reports of reptile size tend to be seriously exaggerated... but not this time.

Apparently, animal control decided to leave the large alligators in their shelving in the damaged truck, unlike all the smaller animals that had been moved indoors.  When they went to retrieve them they found a cat who had been hiding the whole time.  Also, raccoon number two decided to come in to roost.

The reptile guys are members of the St.Louis Herpetological society, and do this as a hobby.  You can tell that this man is comfortable with an iguana, and the feeling appears to be mutual. So that's all good.

The other gentleman asserts that this snake is not a really big one, and I'm sure they come bigger.  The local yokels all feel that it qualifies as large, however.

So now we just have to get the dogs situated.  Big Brownie doesn't feel well (which dates from before the fire), so she'll be getting some blood tests and so forth tomorrow to see if we can run down the problem.  So far I've just given them Capstar for fleas, and dewormed for hookworms and roundworms.  The other three are eating well and seem to feel fine. Still no word on how the Alligator Man is doing.  I hope that his burns are not as severe as reported.

Menagerie Fire - Day 2

I haven't heard definite news about the owner of the menagerie yet, but last word was that his burns will require long-term hospitalization.  This means that finding foster homes for the livestock is a high priority.

After transferring the little gators from ice water to warm water, they have all re-animated.  The turtles are all hunkered down, but that's a turtle for you.

The big snake and iguana and the four dogs seem fine today.  Two had on Rabies Vaccination tags from a friend of mine up in Shelbina, Missouri.  Now I know that Big Brownie is 5 years old and Little Brownie is two years old.  I guess I'll call the white one Little Whitie and the black one Little Blackie (like in "True Grit").  The snake can be Big Scaly and the Iguana can be Iggy-Ziggy.  Gosh, I feel like Adam in the Garden of Eden.

  I did talk to Dr. Pope in Memphis about the reptile situation.  He feels that if the chickens didn't suffer from smoke inhalation that everybody else should be fine.  Apparently chickens in a truck fire are like canaries in the coal mine - the first to go.  Also, the period of hypothermia will probably not be a long-term problem.

Dr. Pope gave me a turtle-rescue resource, and he knows some snake people, as well.   I also have a lead on a big snake guy in a nearby town.  The gators will be a more difficult situation.  He didn't have any good ideas.  The Memphis Zoo absolutely is not interested.

Our city's humane officer, Tena Petix, has been in contact with the Humane Society of Missouri in St.Louis and they have led her to believe there are some resources for the gators, as well as the dogs. Raccoon rescue is already lined up locally.

I'm thinking I may try the tattoo parlors.  Usually my snake clients have a lot of tattoos and piercings.  Be the first Goth on your block to give a gator a foster home.

Then there's my brother's suggestion:

"I wondered how the gator-man's story might end.    You just need a Polaroid or  digital equivalent.   Plenty of folks have paid $ 5.00  to get their photo taken with a python around their neck at the  circus.   If business is slow, you may need one of the staff in fishnets and heels -- meet the Snake Woman." 

She's alive, folks, they're all alive.   I could so be a carnival barker.

Menagerie Fire

There's a fellow who calls himself "The Alligator Man" who has wintered in Kennett the last couple of years.  He lives in a big panel truck with a menagerie of animals: 2 big dogs, 2 little dogs, 2 raccoons, 2 chickens,many small gators, 3 large (think 6-feet) alligators, many snakes (including a 29-pounder), many turtles, and that's just the ones that I know about.

His truck-home caught fire Friday night.  He suffered 3rd degree burns or worse to his hands in trying to remove all the animals.  Many of them were in plastic tubs which were melting.  He has been taken to Memphis for treatment.

The initial call from the police department was that there were burned reptiles suffering from smoke inhalation.  Then the second call was that there were dogs and a raccoon, but the owner did not want them treated by a veterinarian.  Knowing the gentleman's situation, he was probably afraid he'd be unable to pay the bill. 

The third call was a request to meet the officers.  There were so many police cars at the clinic you would have thought I was serving donuts (or pizza).

The wife of our Police Chief has a dog-grooming shop, and she has taken many of the aquariums and tubs to her shop.  She has the turtles, gators, and small snakes.   The chickens were in individual cages, and are going home with an animal-loving police officer who lives out in the country.  The raccoons are in box-trap cages at the dog pound. 

The four dogs are with me for observation, as is the 7.6 pound iguana and the 29-pound albino python.  The python looks great, and I wouldn't have kept it, but it was "housed" in a cloth sack, which was wet and cold. 

The iguana was an ice cube.  He's looking better after being under a warm-air blanket for a couple of hours. The end of his tail had already been lost due to poor husbandry. 

The reptiles were all stone cold, so it remains to be seen how they will do.   The immediate plan is to get rid of the ice water and get them in a warm environment. We're looking for foster homes.  Tomorrow I'll call my exotic animal vet friend in Memphis for advice about aftercare, as well as potential foster homes.  Gators, anyone?

If the dogs are okay tomorrow, they'll probably go to the pound.  They are not burned, but hard to say about the smoke inhalation.   No respiratory distress after 3 hours, so I'm pretty optimistic about that.

Night calls from the police department have never been boring, but they also have never been remunerative.   I expect that all I'll get out of this is a story... maybe some kind of exotic infection,too.   Of course, I like a good story.

When the problem changes, re-evaluate the diagnosis.

And the diagnosis is:   I do not know.  One thing seems evident:  it wasn’t a hematoma (ruptured blood vessel).  

Things really changed in the next two days after I posted last on my poor hand.  The swelling became greater, the finger more red, and a spot near the first bend in my finger started turning white (i.e. dead –- white = no circulation).  It began to look like a hot-dog with two rubber bands around it.  It looked bad, and felt worse.

When I went to bed that Sunday night, I took a culturette swab in case it burst during the night.  I wanted to see what was growing in my finger.  It didn’t burst on its own, though.  This picture is the next morning on November 22, before I went to the doctor.  It had to be an abscess (pocket of pus).

That afternoon, the surgeon looked at it and said, “I think that is MRSA.”  [Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus, a bad bacteria to have]  He split the swelling down both sides to drain “a lot of pus”.  I wasn’t looking --  just gritting my teeth, looking the other way and moaning softly. 

He took a swab to culture the mess, then irrigated the pocket to remove as much debris and dead tissue as possible.  I already knew this from my own patients, but local anesthetic doesn’t work in an abscess, so the process of opening and cleaning it out is pretty painful.

The wound was packed with Prisma, which is a cool material made of collagen (the body’s natural connective tissue) and treated cellulose.  This eliminates the dead space in the pocket and absorbs new crud that forms.  That is, it absorbs moderate amounts of drainage.  There was a little more than “moderate” draninage on the first day.  By the time I returned to the office, the bandage was already soaked.  I had to apply another layer to keep from contaminating other folks, and from wicking new bacteria in through the wet bandage.

He also prescribed antibiotics, pain meds, and suggested taking extra vitamin A, C, and zinc.  I complied.

The next day, the dressing was changed, the wound flushed, and the packing changed.  This feels a little like having a rasp up your nostril, pain-wise.

The next day, he had to remove some more dead tissue.  This time the local anesthetic did help a little.  Since I had experienced so much drainage before, he gave me a more impressive dressing.  It looked like a boxing glove.  The culture results were back: normal skin bacteria, no MRSA.  No MRSA is good, but (in the words of the surgeon, and I concur) “this makes no sense”.

Other than the weight-lifting a week before, I can recall no trauma of any kind: no splinter, no cut, no scrape, no nothing.  Was there some “micro-abrasion” during weight-lifting?  My weight-lifting gloves have open fingers.  I’ve ordered new ones that cover my whole hand.

Two days later, after Thanksgiving, another bandage change, new packing.  The pain is subsiding, and I can bend my finger, but things still don’t look good.  I made myself look this time, but no picture.

That packing was supposed to come out with a bandage change three days later, but the surgeon’s wife went into premature labor and had to have an emergency C-section.  The guy put his family ahead of my finger, so I had to wait an extra day, but things went okay [finger, momma , baby, everything]. 

Here’s a picture on December 1.  There’s enough improvement that I can change my dressings myself now.  The wounds from the lancing haven’t completely healed yet, but they are getting there.  The surgeon tells me that being a  non-smoker and a non-diabetic have been my saving grace.  I just wish I knew what the inciting cause was, so I could make a serious effort not to repeat the mistake.  At this point I am mystified.  It could be a spider bite, or maybe alien abduction.  I'm open to suggestions -- constructive suggestions, I mean.

Here is today's picture.  The finger continues to improve.   At least it feels better, though it still looks pretty rough.  It’s functional – I played the recorder for a Renaissance Feast last night, and I can do surgery (though my right hand needs a size 8 glove, instead of the usual size 7).

This is why I am pretty careful not to bad-mouth the previous doctor when I see a case for a second opinion.  Sometimes the problem looks  a LOT different  when I see it a week (or a month) later. 

 

Pain is Nature's Way of saying "Don't do that."

When one of my patients isn't using a leg, it's usually because it hurts.  If something hurts,  I try to stop doing it.  That pain is a signal that I'm making it worse, and I'll slow down the healing (or prevent it).

Hey, but what about those times when you know something is wrong, but it doesn't really hurt?  Once I tripped on the steps and fell to my knees. It hurt right then, but seemed okay afterward.  I did my cardio workout later that day, and one of my knees blew up like a balloon.  I had damaged the blood vessels, but not actually broken them.  Then the increased blood pressure when I exercised caused considerable leakage.  It hurt then, sure enough, and I took  a few days rest.

I'm a doctor and should know better.  My right middle finger developed a little swelling on Tuesday, slightly resembling a pregnant guppy.  My physician says, "You've broken a blood vessel."  Maybe so, but I don't recall any trauma.

Since it wasn't hurting, I went ahead and did my weight workout on Thursday evening.  No direct pressure on the hand, as I used Flexsolate wrist straps.  Unfortunately, as with the knee, the exercise increased the pressure, and by Friday morning the pregnant guppy had turned into a sausage.

Believe it or not, it's a little better this evening (but not much).  There's enough pain now that I'm getting the message "Don't do that." I could use one of those medical-grade leeches right now.

This is the problem that I have with my patients.  I do want them to be pain-free when they have injured themselves.  The problem is that then I'm taking away some of Nature's little voice saying "Don't do that."  That's why it's important to confine those patients so that they don't overdo it as soon as their pain is relieved.  They just don't know any better.

I know better, and I did it anyway. They may be smarter than I am, but you can't count on it. When your pet has been injured, you'll have to be his conscience when you start those pain meds.

Are you still there?

A reader with a question about Anal Sac Problems asked “are you still there?”
Good question.  Yes, I am, but between working long hours, and keeping my daughter’s Peace Corps site up to date, and Scout stuff, I just haven’t been doing much blogging lately.

I had a great motorcycle ride today.  I thought it might be too hot, but it was just fine.  I needed to get out in the open and get some space.

The crops mostly look good, with corn varying from knee high to the proverbial “as high as an elephant’s eye” and already starting to tassel.  No rice on today’s ride up to Crowley’s ridge, though I saw a lot two weeks ago on a ride through Arkansas.  The cotton and soybeans look a little small and frail… and dry.  There were several irrigation rigs pumping.  Winter wheat is being harvested.

Finished the day with a sad duty.  A long-time patient had reached the end of the line, and his owners were in the parking lot as I pulled in from my ride.  We let him leave his broken body to go somewhere else and run and play and be a puppy again.