Tales from a Young Vet: Mad cows, crazy kittens, and all creatures big and small. Jo Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ litre or two of blood. We all sighed, cauterised the wound again and re-bandaged the ear, before wiping down the consulting room before the next client came in.

      After the third time this happened, Tina was getting worried. ‘Is it ever going to heal?’ she said. ‘We seem to be going round in circles.’

      We did, and although the ear wasn’t hurting Matilda too much, we needed it to stop bleeding. Once again, under Cheryl’s watchful eye, I bandaged it up, making Matilda look like a one-eared alien. ‘This time we’ll take our chances and leave it for an extra day or two,’ Cheryl said firmly. ‘The issue’s not that it isn’t healing. It’s healing pretty well, but every time we take off the bandage Matilda opens it up again. Next time she comes in, after the extra couple of days, it will hopefully have had time to heal a bit more and won’t reopen. But since there are risks to leaving a bandage on, if it starts to smell or you see anything soaking through, bring her back in straight away and we’ll have to come up with a plan B.’ We all gave a sigh of relief.

      At the end of each day I drove back to my family home near Tunbridge Wells. We had lived in the same house since I was one, and I always loved going back to a proper meal and my own bed. Ross was away at university, so it was just me, my mum Clare, my dad Giles and the dogs, Paddy and Tosca. I’m close to my parents – we’ve always enjoyed each other’s company – so it was nice to catch up with them and fill them in on how the rotations were going. Each evening, Mum cooked my favourite beef stew or shepherd’s pie, and it was a rare treat to relax in front of the television with the dogs.

      We’re all animal lovers and Mum was juggling her Open University degree in Humanities with Creative Writing with her other passion, working as a volunteer transporting rescue dogs to new homes. After we got Paddy, Mum realised that a dog being cared for by an animal charity is often miles away from the people willing to give it a home. A network of willing volunteers with transport is vital. Mum would get a call, often at short notice, asking her to collect a dog and deliver it to the new owners, or in cases where the dog needed to travel long distances, to be part of a team collecting the dog from the previous driver and taking it on to the next. The transport charity she helped out did much more than just delivering dogs from charities to new homes, though. It also picked up dogs from pounds when their time was up and they were about to be put to sleep, and took them to charities that would provide them with training, which would mean they could be put up for adoption. She was helping to save lives.

      After my two weeks with the team at Puddlefoot, I packed my bags and headed back to the Queen Mother Hospital for dermatology, known by the students as ‘dermaholiday’ because it involved cushy hours, no emergencies and straightforward consultations, generally along the lines of ‘How long has your dog/cat been scratching?’

      Dermatology is mostly about allergies, and a big part of the job is persuading the owners that they need to take the allergies seriously. A lot end up at the QMH with their dogs and cats because they’ve ignored the advice of their first-opinion vet and continued to feed Tibbles or Rover food that is making them itch and break out in rashes. Eventually either they demand a second opinion or their exasperated vet suggests they see a specialist.

      The only real way to find out what’s causing the allergy, once you’ve ruled out parasites like fleas and mites, is by a process of elimination. The animal has to change to a hypo-allergenic food for six weeks to see if the problem clears up. If it does, after that you can gently re-introduce other foods, watching to see if there’s any reaction. If the food elimination doesn’t work, you can assume it’s an environmental allergy and start the process of trying to desensitise the animal, although in many cases it’s down to food and eliminating the allergen should be all that’s needed.

      But for some owners it isn’t quite so straightforward. Take the very earnest lady, Mrs Hooper, who came in with her little pug dog, Muffin. A blood test had indicated that Muffin, who was scratching and rubbing his head on the floor, was definitely allergic but, as is often the case, the test hadn’t indicated what he was specifically allergic to. It only indicated he was allergic to a great number of things.

      ‘Start with his food,’ I explained to Mrs Hooper, under the watchful eye of the dermatology clinician, Annie. ‘Give him hypo-allergenic food and nothing else for six weeks, and see whether his condition improves.’

      ‘Oh, I’ve done that,’ Mrs H said. ‘It didn’t help.’

      ‘Are you certain that was all he had?’

      ‘Yes. Well, apart from his chews, but they’re chicken and chicken’s good for sick dogs, isn’t it?’

      ‘Well, it can be. Chicken is plain so it can be good for a dog with stomach problems. But in some cases it can actually be the problem. Plenty of dogs are allergic to chicken.’

      ‘No, it isn’t that because he was still scratching when he was eating beef chunks.’

      ‘I’m afraid that nearly all processed dog food, even beef chunks, has chicken in it. The company only has to have a certain percentage of beef in the food to be able to call it beef chunks, and the remainder is made up of other meat. So you really do need to give him the hypo-allergenic food on its own and nothing else. At all. No biscuits, chews or treats of any kind.’

      Mrs H looked put out. ‘Well, that seems a bit hard on him. He really does love his treats.’

      I tried to sound patient. ‘I know it’s hard, I really do appreciate that. And I’m sure he loves his treats. What dog doesn’t? But put yourself in Muffin’s shoes. Would you want to be itchy and uncomfortable all the time? You can always give him the hypo-allergenic food as treats, too. If the allergy isn’t cleared up it may lead to ear infections, bald patches and sore spots on his skin. So it’s really worth giving it a good go.’

      Silence.

      ‘Oh. Well. All right then. If you insist.’

      This conversation, or a version of it, happened a couple of times a day and was no doubt a re-run of the conversation the pet owner’s own vet had already had with them. Often it was only because a specialist repeated the advice that the owner eventually acted on it.

      Of course, not all pet allergies are due to food; pets can also be allergic to dust-mites, fleas and pollen, which can make life for their owners pretty difficult. But food is always the place to start, and with the majority of pets this is where the answer lies.

      One afternoon while I was in the dermatology unit a deafening alarm went off. ‘Crash,’ shouted Annie as she sprinted out of the room.

      I went to the door, to see an impressively athletic clinician race past me, hurdle a trolley that someone had left across the corridor and disappear in the direction of the Intensive Care Unit.

      ‘What on earth is going on? Where has Annie gone?’ I asked.

      ‘It’s the crash alarm. My housemates told me about this,’ Lucy replied, joining me in the doorway as we watched more clinicians sprinting down the corridor. Lucy had spent the previous year living with three girls in the year above us, so she was invaluable when it came to hints and tips about rotations. ‘The alarm goes when an animal suddenly needs resuscitating or serious emergency care. Usually the case is either in the ICU or in surgery, and all members of staff who are available to drop what they’re doing have to run to help.’

      ‘I wish we could help,’ I said.

      At that moment, an intern turned the corner into our corridor coming back from the direction in which clinicians had been sprinting minutes earlier.

      ‘What’s СКАЧАТЬ