Vet on the Loose by Gillian Hick
Author:Gillian Hick [Hick, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781847173485
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2012-02-29T23:00:00+00:00
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SIDNEY GOES HOME
As always when confronted with a problem in my first year as a vet, my mind flashed back to my student experiences and what I had learned in the lab. It seemed like only the other day that we had stood over the dissection tables in our white coats, gulping slightly as the faint odour of not-so-fresh flesh assailed our nostrils. Not that the smell was in any way unusual to us at this stage of our training but, combined with the after-effects of the previous night’s drinking session, it was all just a bit too much. Our task for this practical was to first remove a section of intestine and then to surgically re-appose the cut ends, in preparation for the day when a real live patient might present with an obstruction in such an advanced state that the gut itself might have become necrotic and need to be removed. Sitting in the surgical lab, such a real-life scenario seemed a long, long way away.
Gingerly, my colleague and I, both looking equally ashen-faced and hungover, incised the smooth lining of the section of intestine lying on the table in front of us. We watched as the muscle layers below bulged out to meet us, neither of us either remembering or caring for their official titles, as the dog to whom they had once belonged had long since departed on his journey to the great doggy heaven in the sky. Trying hard to summon up some enthusiasm for the task, I methodically placed a pair of stay sutures at either side of the diameter of the gut, hands shaking slightly as I fiddled with the tiny round-bodied needle that the professor had reliably informed us would be less traumatic. Slowly, I began to reunite the gut with a series of minute sutures, no more than two millimetres apart. The aim was to apply the correct degree of tension to ensure an adequate seal without occluding what, in a live dog, would be the healing supply of blood vessels. Normally I enjoyed these practical surgery sessions but today, as waves of nausea swept over me and my head pounded, I wearily handed over the needle to my colleague who had long since lost interest.
‘Here, you have a go.’
Reluctantly, she pulled herself up from where she lay slumped over the table beside me. Gradually, as she stitched, the sutures became further and further apart as her enthusiasm waned.
‘Do you think that would do?’ she enquired as she held out the completed section of intestine before me.
‘Emmm, well, I suppose it might – as long as he hadn’t chewed his food too well,’ I giggled as I poked a forceps between the sutures that were supposedly rejoining the gut.
But today was no laughing matter.
Today, I was a fully-qualified veterinary surgeon and the section of necrotic gut belonged to a very affable and very much alive Springer Spaniel with an unfortunate liking for rubbish bins. Today my shaking hands and the waves of nausea were a million miles from a hangover: they were purely stress-induced.
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