Parvo and a “Dying” Dog

So this should have been posted last night, but Grenadian internet is spotty. In other words, all of campus is without internet right now. To all of you who were jealous that we had no hurricane here, good news, it still affects us! (that’s because the head quarters is just outside of NYC)

Tonight was shift #2 at the small animal clinic. My shift was from 5p-12a and then I managed not to be the one to take the on call phone home for the night (but in all fairness, I will be working a bunch of overnights alone so I will have plenty of time with the phone soon enough).

I am currently eating the dinner I brought with me but never got around to eating. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and potato chips. Earlier when I made the food, I put it all in one storage container so as to not be wasteful. One of the sections in physiology we’re learning right now is passive and active transport (aka diffusion and stuff like that). Therefore I know that things move from high concentration to low concentration. How is this relevant to my food you ask? Well, I have a dry sandwich and soggy potato chips. Lesson learned and reinforced. And yes, I am still eating both because I am a poor and lazy student. If you mix them together you don’t notice as much…

So tonight when I came in, we had two suspect parvo puppies. Said parvo puppies came in the form of 2 11 week old Rottweiler siblings that were as cute and pathetic as sick puppies come. The single advantage to not having pets happens to be that at the end of the day I can’t bring home any terrible infectious diseases to them. One of the other girls with an older dog and I became the techs for these puppies at the shift change. Over the next two hours, we admitted them, took them to isolation, placed catheters, drew blood, set up fluids, gave meds, and got the puppies situated. Isolation here happens to be its own little building off the back of the hospital, so all work out there is done in pairs. As per isolation procedures, we wore disposable gowns, gloves, and booties at all times.

Parvo puppies belonged to me and the other tech for the rest of the evening. Isolation protocol also calls for those who treat the infectious cannot touch the unvaccinated. Usually it isn’t a problem, but we actually had unvaccinated dogs in the hospital so we had to limit our patient contact with them.

In addition to the parvo dogs, we also had an emergency call and come in. When I spoke with the individual on the phone, the patient in question was described as “laterally recumbent,” having an “increased respiratory effort,” having an “increased capillary refill time” (you can google if you really want to know), and being “extremely lethargic.” Those things strung together sound very much like a dying dog in respiratory distress. We urged the owner to bring the dog in, and over they came. The good news is the dog wasn’t dying, dead, or anywhere close to that. Instead of a dying animal, we diagnosed ehrlychiosis, a very common tick-borne disease on the island. Nothing a little doxycycline, some food, and some rest shouldn’t cure or at least improve significantly!

So that was my night. At the end of my shift. the doctor very kindly drove me up to campus (dilemma solved! And I SWEAR I wasn't going to walk up the road alone). Now it is time for bed! Up early for anatomy lab and a very long day of classes. Sounds like I just beat the rain, yay!