I had such an awesome day today, I had to post about it.
For those of you that don't know, I work as a veterinary technician.
Today was
supposed to be pretty slow, couple surgeries and appointments here and there. Well at 11:00am the shit hit the fan. We had three emergencies walk in the door at the same time. (This is very unusual for our clinic) The first was a dog that fell down the stairs and now was not placing weight on her right front leg. The second was a dog that was attacked by a much bigger dog. The third was a dog that was struggling to give birth.
The dystocia (difficulty giving birth) we had actually seen on Monday, because she had been due to have pups on Halloween. The owners were concerned, as were we, that she might have an infection instead of a pregnancy. The owners brought her in and she looked great, not at all what a dog with an infected uterus would look like. We took an Xray to see if she was pregnant and she was, with one giant pup. We recommended a c-section to the owners, but also told them she
may be able to have it naturally, but the chances were slim. Well, they chose to wait to see if she could do it.
As you know, now, she was back today having trouble. At this time we have three other rooms, only one doctor, and one other tech. The doctor sends me in with the dystocia to assess the situation and "see what I could do" and she would be in in a minute. I go in and have the owners help me to lay her down. I put on some gloves, lube up, and go in to see what i could feel. The pup's head was stuck in the pelvic opening. I gently try to see if i can encourage the pup to come out further. Little by little the pup starts to come out, until finally I can get my fingers around his shoulders and pull him the rest of the way out. I was very worried that I was pulling out a dead pup, because mom had been in labor for so long, but the little bugger was still alive and fighting!
Pretty soon, after i cleared out the goop from the pups mouth and nose, my doctor comes in and is rather surprised to see the pup out and moving. She checks out mom, and besides her not having dropped the placenta yet, she was doing just fine. The baby checked out good too, besides a broken lower jaw, which the doctor suspects happened when the baby's head first went into the pelvic cannal, due to his large size. We promptly wired it together and hopefully it'll do fine.
It is these kind of days though, that really make me love my job.