Ever by My Side by Nick Trout

Author:Nick Trout [Trout, Dr. Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7679-3202-8
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

Part Two

STARS AND STRIPES

8.

C Is for Cat

I thought his name was Reggie, but apparently I was wrong.

“His full name is Reginald C. Cat.”

And with this, the floppy feline was deposited in my lap though he chose not to settle. Within seconds he hopped down and strolled out of the room in the manner of someone who knows his exit is being watched. I had to ask the obvious question.

“What does the C stand for?”

The little girl with the freckles, neatly trimmed bangs, and the gummy gaps in her smile considered me as though I might not be all there.

This was our first encounter, our memorable first conversation, and back then I had no idea that this girl and her peculiarly named cat were about to become an integral part of my life.

Three years earlier, I had been walking the dogs with my father in the English countryside, professing my indifference to a future in America. I returned to my final year of college and thanks to a series of unfortunate events, there was a chance that I might fail to qualify. In my soft-tissue surgery rotation, one of my mentors, Dr. White, requested my assistance on a thoracic surgery. For many students, scrubbing into surgery can be a nerve-racking endeavor, teeming with opportunities to contaminate the sterile field and ruin any chance of success. Masked, gloved, and gowned, about to make the opening incision, Dr. White asked me to pass him the foot pedal for the electrocautery unit, meaning to kick it his way underneath the operating table. Determined to be helpful, I reached down to the floor, picked up the pedal with my latex-gloved hand, reached over the prepped surgical site, and cheerily said, “Here you go!” All I heard was a communal gasp at my heinous breach of sterile technique before being ejected from the OR. And then, during a rotation in equine medicine, I was in charge of overnight treatments for the horses. In a daze, I stumbled into a stall with what I believed to be an appropriately prepared meal, walked away, and thought no more about it until the following morning when an irate clinician screamed at me for trying to kill his patient.

“Do you know what happens to horses that eat beet pulp that’s not been soaked properly?”

Clearly I did not, so he barely paused.

“They get something called ‘choke.’ Ever heard of it? Think it might be called choke for a reason? If it wads up and gets stuck up in their esophagus they can die. Fortunately for you this particular horse was smart enough not to touch it.”

In spite of another good reason not to become an equine veterinarian, I managed to get by, to pass the rotation and my final examinations, and graduate—a proud, newly minted member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I took a position as an intern at the University of Liverpool, what they called a “house officer,” and it was during this time that the addiction to surgery took hold and had me dreaming of opportunities in America.

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