8/17/05 Parvo, Parvo, Everywhere Parvo!

I now have three Parvo cases in the hospital! That wouldn't be too bad back home but on the weekends and at night, it's just me cleaning up everyone so I hate Parvo! The first little girl was brought in last Thursday, her brother was brought in on Saturday, and the third was brought in on Monday. On the right is a photo of the female but trust me, they all look the same. The owner of third puppy said that his dog is not related to the other two but come on! The owner of the first two Rotties said that another two puppies in the litter also have parvo! Now as I mentioned in a previous post, there is a good vaccine to prevent parvo but there is one caveat; it must be properly handled! The vaccine is a modified live vaccine and must be refrigerated or else the vaccine becomes useless. All three of these puppies had been given one or two shots by the same local "vet" several weeks prior to becoming sick. I say "vet" because they are not veterinarians but basically vet techs who are not very well informed. So because these vaccines got warm somewhere along the line I spent my weekend in Parvoland; happy, happy, joy, joy! But they all seem to be doing well.

Here is another case that I saw about 2 weeks ago. The owners wanted to put this dog to sleep because she kept itching and they "loved" her too much to see her suffer anymore. I've heard this excuse many times back in Baltimore too. So I was able to convince them to let me do a skin scrape and, surprise, surprise, I found Scabies (mange). So after just one injection with ivermectin (we don't have any amitraz) they reported much improvement in her coat, decreased itching and so they came back for a second injection. Believe it or not, the picture above is an improvement!! Hopefully I'll get another photo of more improvement.

The next two cases unfortunately didn't survive but I'm going to put them up here just to show some of the things I've seen and done. The first was a red-earred slider which a young man brought in last week with a history of not eating for 3 weeks and extending his head out and gasping for air. So armed with my extensive knowledge of turtle medicine, I threw my hands up in the air and said "Let's take a radiograph!" This is what we found on the right. Many of you might notice several opacities along the caudal midline that seem to be plugging up the plumbing! So I got online and searched VIN (the Veterinary Information Network) and decided on a course of action. We started by tubing him daily with 50:50 saline and Lactated Ringer's Solution to keep him hydrated, metoclopramide liquid to hopefully get the intestines to move the stones through and warm water baths. The risk was that the metoclopramide would cause the intestinal musculature to grind on the stones and perforate causing an infection in the coelomic cavity. The other option was surgery but that was not an option if I was going to be the surgeon! After several days I switched to injectable metoclopramide because of some more research on VIN but he died last Tuesday. I kept him on ice in my freezer next to my ice cream so the owner could bury him at home.

On Monday this guy had someone drop this puppy off at the clinic because he couldn't arrange transportation himself. So this little girl is dropped off in a towel inside a plastic shopping bag. I got her out on the table and she could barely move, her gums were dry and white as a sheet of paper, extremely thin, and maggots crawling around on her belly. I couldn't get a catheter in her front leg and I was afraid she was going to just die right on the spot so I put a regular catheter into her jugular. We then went into the kennel, got one of the bigger dogs and drew 30 mL of blood out of Bear into a heparinized syringe before he moved and wouldn't let me take any more. I then went directly to the puppy and injected the blood into her catheter over a few minutes. Directly after I finished giving her the transfusion she got up, walked around her cage, and then pooped! The pic on the right is after we cleaned up the poop. It was pretty amazing to see her perk up so quickly and her gums get pink. I dewormed her, kept her on IV fluids, and syringe fed her for a couple of days but unfortunately it wasn't enough. A quick note, back home I probably would not have taken blood from one dog and injected it directly into another. We would have had to cross-match and get the blood through a blood-bank but you can do one transfusion in a dog without crossmatching. If that transfusion was performed with the wrong bloodtype, then the reciever's body will create antibodies to that bloodtype. The next time that the wrong bloodtype is used in that same dog, it will have an anaphylaxtic (severe allergic) reaction. I was almost positive that this puppy had not had a prior blood transfusion!

Tuesday is now my "official" surgery day so in between cleaning up parvo diarrhea and vomit I tried to squeeze in a few spays and neuters. We try to schedule as many spays and neuters as we can get into the clinic. This is one of the females that Peggy was able to get in for the day. The other photo is of me hard at work with Jorge and another volunteer. You may have noticed the lack of a mask or cap. Yeah, I noticed that too but I just count myself lucky that they have sterile gloves!

During lunch we had to sterilize a few packs for the afternoon's surgeries. The GSPCA is blessed to have not one, but two autoclaves. Unfortunately, they are two gigantic pieces of shit! One is the most complicated piece of Italian machinery with the possible exception of a Ferrari, whose motherboard sparks and burns when turned on so we don't turn it on anymore. The other autoclave has a tendency to burn everything. There is an engineering technician from the hospital who we have convinced to help us fix one and after he came to fix the second autoclave, it burned right through a pack so that when I took it out all the instruments fell on the floor, which is not so sterile. So we're ordering a few parts for it which should be here by next year.

In the meantime, below is our new autoclave. It gets to 250 F which should sterilize a pack in 3o minutes but I cook packs for 45 minutes to be safe. Geeze, I'm a little sketched out by this!