Don't Turn Your Back in the Barn (Adventures of a Country Vet)

by Perrin, Dr. Dave

  He broke into a broad smile. Brian strutted over, his roller still dripping paint. The smile and the paint on his face told the whole story. He was every bit as mucky as John; it was hard to tell who had won the fight!

  Boots had been recovering remarkably well. His only permanent disability would be a bobbed tail. When it had become obvious that he was going to recover from his head trauma, I repaired his fractured femur. The surgery was uneventful and, by the time I discharged him four days later, he was hobbling on his injured leg.

  The boys were excited to take Boots home. I stood on the corner and watched as they disappeared from sight. Brian cradled the dog in his arms, and all I could see from my vantage was the constant wagging of his stubbed tail.

  At three o'clock the next morning, I was awakened by pounding on the kitchen door. Who in the world could that be? I pulled on my pants.

  "The police are after us!" Brian was hollering at me through the glass before I could even open the door. I ushered them into the living room, and they collapsed on the floor. Brian set Boots on the carpet.

  "What's this all about? Start from the beginning."

  "I pushed her!" Brian blurted. "She was going to hurt Boots and I tried to stop her."

  "You pushed who, your mom? Was she okay?"

  "We don't know. She was so drunk, she just kept screaming at us—how she was going to have us arrested for beating her up!"

  John stood wide-eyed and silent as Brian spoke. Always the protector, he interjected, "He didn't hit her—really he didn't. Mom just went crazy. I've never seen her that bad—she just kept screaming and screaming! The neighbours must have phoned the police...The cops pulled up with the lights flashing. We ran away and a cop chased us, but we lost him in the log piles at the mill yard. I think he went back to the apartment."

  "I didn't mean to hurt her! Really, I didn't."

  "Settle down guys—everything'll work out all right. The police won't arrest you. I know a fellow with Social Services. I've already talked to him about you guys. Let me call him. Settle down. Just settle down."

  I put the boys to bed in the spare room and got on the phone to Ken. Within a few minutes, I got a call back from the RCMP. They asked me to keep an eye on the boys. Mrs. Gallagher had been hospitalized but, aside from being drunk and incoherent, there was little wrong with her.

  The boys stayed with me for a week while arrangements were made for them to live in a foster home. They never saw their mother again.

  During her first few months, Doris had proved to be a great ambassador for the clinic. She knew almost everyone in town, was good at thinking on her feet, and could handle a lot of the clients that I found difficult.

  Right now though, the look on her face suggested she was floundering. She had answered the phone a few minutes earlier and, aside from saying hello and identifying us as Creston Veterinary Clinic, had yet to say a word.

  "I think you'd better handle this gentleman, Dr. Perrin." She flushed and held the phone at arm's length for me to grab. "He seems to have a problem with a pig."

  "Dr. Perrin speaking."

  "Hi Doc! How the f... are ya?" The voice was deep and booming.

  "Fine, thanks," I replied, unhinged by the introduction.

  Doris focused intently on my face. She was straining to follow the conversation.

  "Well, I'm glad you are, because I'm not too great right at the moment! I've got this little friggin' pig that ain't got no asshole."

  At that moment, I knew with a certainty that I was dealing with one of my classmates. There was no question about it! It was only a matter of figuring out which one. It sounded like something Carney would do, but I didn't think he could fake that voice; there was something about the quality that I just couldn't put my finger on. Wetstein? He'd try something like this, but there was no way he could do the voice either.

  "You there, Doc?"

  "Yes. Yes, I'm here."

  "Do you think there's something you can do? This poor little bugger's blown up like a balloon, and she's quit suckin' her mom. She's just layin' off by herself under the heat lamp and shiverin'."

  "So you've checked and you're sure that there's no rectum?" I was waffling now. This had to be a prank, but maybe I could play along for the moment.

  "Yeah, I'm sure! The little bugger's completely smooth back there, and there's no sign of shit around her tail at all."

  Doris was still staring at me, waiting for an answer to the mystery. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders.

  "So do you want to take a look at her, or should I just take her out and knock her on the head?"

  "Who's calling, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "This is Verna Levett. I've got a hog farm south of town."

  "And she's the only piglet in the litter that has the problem?" I was still half convinced that someone was pulling my leg.

  "Yeah, the others are all doin' good. They're lined up and suckin' on their mom. Just that one poor little bugger that can't shit!"

  "Well, why don't you bundle her up and bring her in. Stick a hot water bottle in with her before you leave—we don't want her getting chilled."

  "Who in the world was that?" Doris asked the moment I hung up the phone. "I've never in my life heard so many four-letter words in such a short period of time!"

  "She said her name was Verna Levett," I muttered, making a notation on the day page. "She's bringing in a piglet."

  "Verna, did you say? That couldn't possibly have been a woman's voice I heard!"

  "She had me going for a while too, but I'm convinced that she's the real thing!"

  Shuffling through the stack of records on the top of the filing cabinet, I began making notations. I had just finished musing to Doris that the pig should be arriving any time, when the door flew open and in strode Verna.

  I'd been trying to visualize the woman that went along with the voice on the telephone; although I had difficulty focusing on an image, the person who entered provided no major surprises. Her face was full, her hair cropped at medium length and pulled back from her face with a headband. She was of average size and height for a woman, but the clothing she wore made her appear far stockier than she really was. Although it was a cool day for summer, she was more appropriately dressed for the late fall or early winter.

  A heavy red flannel shirt hung loosely below her waist, partially covering a pair of grey woolen pants that appeared several sizes bigger than she required. Her feet were adorned in black rubber gumboots that had seen use in a mucky barn on more than a few occasions. Although her clothing was clean, the odour that wafted in with her suggested a recent pass through her hog barn.

  "Well, here she is!" Verna affirmed, passing a cardboard box to Doris. "Poor little bugger anyway; I just hate to see an animal suffer like this."

  Doris hesitated but stretched her arms out to receive the bundle. She carefully lifted the blanket that covered it to peer inside.

  "Aw, isn't he cute?" Doris crooned at the bloated little critter that lay shivering in the box. "How old is he?"

  "She's just a little over a day old," Verna responded.

  "Let's get her on the table, Doris. She sucked all right at the start then, did she Mrs. Levett?"

  "Oh hell, yes! She was right up there with the rest of them as soon as she was born. I never saw a thing wrong with her until she started blowin' up and layin' off by herself."

  I reached into the box and slid my fingers under the piglet's belly. She was indeed distended, and her general appearance suggested that she was in a great deal of discomfort. She oinked pathetically as I lifted her from the box. After making a few paddling motions, she closed her eyes and resisted no more.

  "She feels cool." I felt a shiver course through her body.

  Pressing gently on her abdomen, I checked in the region of the anal sphincter for signs of a bulge.

  "A lot of times, the distal colon and rectum are normal but the baby has a sealed anal sphincter. It's simple to correct those ones by just
making an incision where the rectum was supposed to be and allowing the faeces to escape through the new exit."

  "So how can you tell if that's what it is?"

  "With those cases, we can almost always see the rectum bulging out. Then all we have to do is stick a needle in to make sure she has poop; if she does, we make the incision."

  "And you don't see a bulge?"

  "No, I can't feel any indication that she has a formed rectum. Sometimes, there's nothing more than a little rope-like string of flesh that comes through where the rectum should be, and it's completely solid with no cavity in the centre of it."

  "So what does that mean for her? Should I just take the poor little bugger out and do away with her?"

  For all her gruff exterior and rugged language, here was a woman with a soft heart when it came to dealing with the animals in her charge. This pig was obviously more than a number in a ledger book. Verna's face softened as she looked down on the creature, and I could tell that she found the thought of killing it more than a little distasteful.

  "Well, to be honest with you, that's the most practical solution if you factor in the value of the pig and the cost of doing anything surgical to correct it. But...it just so happens we don't have anything else to do at the moment, and it might be fun to see if I could do a colostomy."

  "So what's that in white man's language?"

  "It's a type of surgery where we make the poop come out under her tummy instead of from her bum."

  "You can do that?"

  "Yes, realistically the surgery would cost far more than the pig's worth, but I haven't done one before, and I'd like to give it a try!"

  "Well, you do what you can then," Verna boomed with enthusiasm. "Let's give the poor little bugger a chance!"

  "Okay."

  "I'll leave her with you then." The door had almost closed when it swung open again, and Verna appeared once more.

  "You know, it seems like such a shame," she hooted, with a smile that nearly split her face in two, "that with all the assholes in the world, you have to go to so much trouble to create another one!"

  I knew from that moment on Verna was going to be a client I could relate to. As crude and loud as she could be at times, there was never any question that her animals were important to her and that she'd do her best for them.

  We had a part bag of saline with dextrose left over from a patient that had gone home earlier in the morning. I changed the administration set and hung it up ready to use.

  "Baby pigs have a devil of a time regulating both their glucose level and their body temperature until they're a little older," I advised Doris. "We'll get this drip started as soon as we have her anesthetized so we can stabilize her during surgery."

  "Just out of curiosity, what's a little pig like this worth?"

  "This pig healthy, with a functional rectum, would probably be worth twenty-five or thirty dollars."

  "Oh, so this is another one of your get-rich-quick schemes, is it?"

  "Yeah, something like that!"

  I slipped the anesthetic mask over the piglet's nose. She resisted for a few seconds, reluctant to breathe the sweet mixture of halothane and nitrous oxide. Finally, she took a breath and then another.

  Before long, her breathing was rhythmic and she was in a deep, relaxing sleep. Holding her in an upright position, Doris opened the piglet's mouth and pulled her tongue forward as far as possible. After several attempts, I was able to pass a tube through the constricted pharynx and down her trachea.

  We packed hot water bottles under and around her in the surgery cradle to help keep her from losing body heat. Perched there, her distended tummy appeared more prominent than ever.

  "Hold your fingers tight across here," I directed, crimping down hard at the base of the piglet's ear.

  With a gauze soaked in alcohol, I rubbed vigorously along the top and margins of the right ear until I raised a dark blue network of veins, the only access I was likely to have for the administration of fluids.

  "Hold tight. They always look bigger than they really are, and collapse completely if you happen to miss them."

  Doris maintained a steady compression as I slid the catheter through the skin and into the vein. I connected the intravenous tubing and started the drip.

  "Okay, you can let it go."

  Doris released her hold, and fluid began drip, drip, dripping through the chamber. We rolled the piglet over on her back and prepared her for surgery. I pulled her feet towards the four corners of the table and tied them in place while Doris scrubbed the tummy. I washed myself and pulled on a pair of surgery gloves.

  After clamping on the side drapes, I made an incision most of the length of the abdomen, through the piglet's skin and down to the underlying muscle. The pressure of the gas in her intestine was intense; I was cautious not to penetrate the abdominal wall and puncture the bowel itself. Moving to the lower end of the incision, I made a small stab wound and inserted the tip of my scissors. I pushed them forward towards the head and split through the muscle layer to allow gas-distended loops of gut to surge through the incision and out onto the surrounding drapes.

  Retracting the bowels to the side, I searched for the rectum. All I found was a pink cord of tissue about the size of a pencil lead. It ran forward to be lost in the gas-filled bowel that surrounded it. Following it patiently, I finally found an area at the level of the distal colon, where the bowel suddenly ballooned many times in size.

  "Look at that, Doris! See where the abnormal bowel starts? See it, right here?"

  "Well, isn't that something." Doris maneuvered for a closer look. "Is that where you'll cut it off?"

  "As close to here as possible." I applied traction and pulled the bowel gently towards the body wall. "But more likely here." I pointed to a location a bit further up, where the distal colon pulled easily over to the abdominal wall. I drove a pair of forceps through the piglet's body wall, incised through the skin, and stretched the hole by opening and expanding the jaws of the forceps.

  "Are you going to put it way down there?" Doris looked aghast as I worked at enlarging the hole and approximating the length of the distal colon.

  "Yes, we need it dumping far enough ahead so that the manure doesn't scald her back legs, and far enough down so that it doesn't run over her side."

  I worked away at the body wall and the colon until I was sure that I was amputating where I wouldn't impede the blood supply and where I had a minimal amount of functioning bowel to sever.

  I passed a pair of hemostats through the tunnel in her side and clamped across the colon. With another set of hemostats adjacent to the first, I severed between the two and pulled the free end through the tunnel. Carefully tying all the vessels, I amputated it through the solid portion of the dysfunctional rectum.

  Finally, I removed the forceps from the end of the bowel, spread it out, and sutured it to the surrounding skin. Gas gurgled out as I worked, and fecal material ran down her side and onto the table.

  I changed my gloves and began closing the piglet's abdomen. The going was slow as I pushed in the gas-filled gut and sutured behind it. It was after five by the time I unhooked the piglet from the machine.

  "What do you say to Chinese food, Doris? I'm starved and sure don't feel like trying to cook anything now!"

  "Sounds good to me. Don't feel like cooking myself!"

  Within a half hour, the piglet was up and moving. A constant expulsion of gas and straw-coloured feces was doing wonders to alleviate her bloated appearance, and I was pretty confident of her ability to recover.

  "I'll just give Verna a call and let her know that things went well. Then we can head out."

  "Hello." It was the voice of a young man on the phone.

  "Hello, can I speak to your mom, please?"

  "Maaaaa!" he bellowed. "Come get the phone!"

  "Hello!" It was the gruff voice that I remembered so well from this morning's conversation.

  "This is Dave Perrin. I'm calling to let you know that the su
rgery on the piglet went well, and she seems to be recovering quite nicely."

  "Oh great, Doc, it's you! So the poor little bugger's going to be all right then? Well, that's great news—sure glad I didn't have to do her in!"

  "She's not out of the woods yet, but the way she's looking right now, I think we should be able to get her back to Mom in the morning."

  "Well, isn't that something. It's amazing what you guys can do when you make up your mind to do it. Thanks for the good news. I'll be in to pick her up first thing in the morning."

  What an upbeat situation. I hung up the phone feeling like an ambassador for veterinary medicine! It had certainly been worth going the extra mile even though it was obviously not economically justifiable.

  "Come on, Doris! Let's eat." I followed her out the door. "You know, it's times like this that I know I made the right choice of profession. It probably cost me as much as the pig was worth to do that surgery, but it was the best money I could have spent as far as public relations go."

  "You're probably right. Mrs. Levett seems like the type of person you want to stay on the right side of!"

  We were halfway down the block when I started worrying about the piglet with just the hot water bottles and a few jugs of hot water next to her.

  I came to a halt in the middle of the street. "You know, Doris, I think we better go back and set something up for that piglet so she's going to be warm enough. Newborn pigs are really susceptible to hypothermia. We've just given her an anesthetic, so she's even more vulnerable!"

  Doris turned reluctantly in the direction of the office, and we bantered back and forth about what would be the best way to keep her warm.

  "How would they stay warm if they were out on the farm with their mother?" Doris asked.

  "There are a variety of different systems from warmed floors to heaters, but Mrs. Levett would probably just have a heat lamp hanging over them. They could come and go from under the light whenever they got too hot or too cold."

  "Well, why don't we just hang a lightbulb over the piglet? Won't that do the same thing?"