11/6/05 Putting Mike to Work

Mike has been down here for several days now and we’ve been having a pretty good time. In the morning/early afternoon we’ve been seeing clients and during the afternoons I’m introducing him to different spots on the island.

Between the two of us we brought down almost 70 pounds of donated and some “donated” supplies for the clinic. The "donated" supplies came from my clinic in Baltimore, where I will be returing next summer, without the explicit knowledge of my bosses! In this pile of stuff was a 500 mL bottle of Ivermectin donated by a classmate of ours from UPenn, Cate Mcmanus. Thanks Cate; mange mites of Grenada now can only whisper your name in fear!!

Mike saw a dog that had been treated by me previously for Scabies and as you can see the skin has cleared up tremendously (her before picture is in a previous blog entry on August 17). This time, however, she was brought in for decreased appetite, lethargy, and shaking for the last few days. A standard follow-up question was asked: what are you feeding her? To which the standard reply: rice and meat with some milk. Oh, and by the way Doc, she is nursing a litter of puppies back home. Without the benefit of any bloodwork, Mike’s differential of hypocalcemia seemed quite plausible. While nursing, the mother’s body mobilizes calcium stored in her body for milk production and unless she is on a quality diet, her body’s calcium reserves can become easily depleted. Of course, we have no calcium gluconate here at the GSPCA but fortunately had two liters of Lactated Ringer’s solution which has some calcium in it. We placed an IV catheter and got the fluids started and offered her some dog food which she ate quite greedily. She ate, rested, and nursed throughout the night at the clinic and went home the next day. Will we ever see the puppies for their dewormings and vaccines? My inner cynic says: are you kidding me?!?

We also saw a cat with corneal opacities that neither of us had seen before. These are called Florida spots or Caribbean keratopathy. Nobody is sure what causes these spots in cats but they don’t seem to be painful and are usually non-progressive so benign neglect is the preferred approach. Now THAT is a treatment that I can do!

When we finally made it out of the clinic (it is all to easy to fall into the trap of “Well, they’re already here so why don’t you just see one more patient?) one of our stops was at Flamingo Bay for some snorkeling.

We’ve also gone fishing in a couple of different places. We tried to go to the other side of the island in L’anse aux Epines near Peggy’s house. That proved to be a difficult place to fish as we almost got washed away by the strong wind and huge waves! After our self-preservation kicked in, we headed to the safety of the University Club’s dock where I caught a fish to rival Mike’s red snapper. Man, I’m the worst fisherman on Grenada!!

The next day we went back to Quarantine Point where we didn’t have any luck but just enjoyed the location and the sunset!