Day 6

May 29, 2010

Today was a particularly rough day for me. This morning, a lady brought her cockatiel in as an emergency appointment. The bird was suffering from a condition called egg-binding. The bird was trying to lay an egg which got lodged in her reproductive tract due to either the size and/or positioning of the egg, lack of proper motility and contractions, or a number of other reasons. The bird was sitting in a sternal position, but was having trouble breathing. We immediately placed the bird in an oxygen chamber.

Once its breathing slowed a little, we took radiographs to try to visualize the size and position of the egg inside her reproductive tract. It was much larger than a normal egg and was positioned perpendicular to the way it should be. The egg was not only immovable; it was impinging on the air sacs, causing the bird to be unable to fill her lungs with adequate amounts of air. Our only option was surgery to collapse the egg while it was still inside the bird, and then remove it in pieces. We explained the situation to the owner, who then became very concerned about the cost of surgery. She was facing at least $900 for surgery and anesthesia, and that’s only if everything goes according to our plan.

When we started anesthesia, the bird was severely distressed. I monitored anesthesia while Dr. Dan began his procedure. His plan was to make four scratches in the shell of the egg, collapse the egg to allow the bird to breath, and then remove the pieces tomorrow or the next day, once the bird has stabilized. Unfortunately, within the first few moments, the bird suddenly stopped breathing! As I told Dr. Dan, he realized what I was saying and stopped everything to try to resuscitate it.

He managed to get it to start breathing once more before it crashed again, but this time its heart stopped too. We tried for another few minutes, but ultimately decided it was over. The owner took it fairly well because the bird had been acquired recently, and wasn’t considered a family member yet. Still, I was pretty upset. Although I didn’t show it, I did not like the idea that I had been the one running anesthesia on someone’s pet when it died on the table. The bird dying wasn’t what bothered me so much as watching the owner cry over it, and having to be the one to console her. That part was definitely not something I liked doing. With more experience, I'm sure I'd be better at helping people handle these difficult decisions and times of loss, but my first time in this situation was pretty rough. I know it’s all part of the whole pet vet job, but it definitely took its toll on me emotionally.

After helping the client out the door with her little birdie box, we had another sad case to deal with. A client brought their rabbit in for weakness in the hind limbs. However, when they arrived, the rabbit’s back legs weren’t working at all, and its back end was soaked with urine and feces. They claimed that it had only gone on for a short amount of time, and that they had given it a bath the day before. However, when we took the rabbit back and began washing and shaving the matted hair from its back end, we realized its skin had been totally scalded from the urine-soaked hair, and was just sloughing off. It was incredibly difficult to get the hair off without taking the skin right along with it, and shaving the mats was also nearly impossible. I soaked the rabbit in warm water to try to loosen up the mats and dried feces, and after an hour of work, we finally made a little progress. We sutured the pieces of skin that were left and covered the raw places with SSD to prevent infection and promote healing. Dr. Dan informed the clients that the situation with their bunny was much more severe than they had thought, and that the rabbit needed to be cared for and cleaned at least twice daily. I’m still not convinced they fully understood what would be involved with their special needs pet, but they took it home promising to take better care of it.