Operation Camouflage

by Amit Sidham

  Next, with the help of certain additives this fluid was made indigestible. The beauty of this fluid was that it did not have a blood group and rh factor and instead it would take up the blood group and rh factor of the recipient. A small quantity of the recipient’s blood would be added to the required quantity of artificial blood in a mixing machine. A computer program would analyse both the fluids and accordingly suggest type and quantity of additives to be added to achieve the recipient blood equivalent properties. It would also run simulations to check for any side effects to the recipient animal. A vet would check the results and approve the formulation after which the mixing machine would start the process. Within an hour’s time artificial blood would be ready for transfusion.

  Creating blood a vet started the transfusion.

  Aadi started focusing on the heart. The bullet had gone across one of the heart chambers thus making holes on two sides. The elephant was put on a heart lung bypass machine. Using tissue from the animal’s leg, Aadi was going to start sealing the heart holes when another challenge came in front of him. The sealing would generally be done from the outside. But with the elephant laying on one side, the external surface of the other side was not visible. Under normal circumstances the elephant could have been turned but now with multiple diagnostic systems, support systems, bypass machines connected to the body turning the animal multiple times was not a feasible option.

  Time was of essence. So Aadi decided to patch one surface from the inside. This was going to be easier said than done. As the tools had to be inserted from the open hole at one side and the hole at the other side had to be sealed from within. After removing the traces of gun powder, cleaning and disinfecting the heart from inside, Aadi started sealing the hole on the other side which took a pain staking three hours for completion.

  Meanwhile another vet with the help of a robot was performing the limb surgery. While fixing the bone was a comparatively easy task, the challenge was always with the blood vessels.

  For a completely exposed fracture, the vet would first drill a cavity across the fracture, fill it with calcium and then wrap the fractured area of the bone with a self-dissoluble calcium tape. It would take two weeks to set and till then the animal had to be tied in a manner that he would not cause a jerk or be able to put pressure on that limb. But once set it would give back the original strength to the bone.

  The bone had been fixed. Now the robot was fixing the hundreds of blood vessels one by one. This process called as anastomoses involved freeing the target blood vessel from the tissues for handling purpose, irrigating the inside of the vessel and then suturing it. Each blood vessel would take fifteen to twenty minutes. The vet decided whether the vessel had to be sewn back together or it could be closed off. Once decided to anastomose, next task was to match it with the respective vessel on the other part of the limb and sew them together.

  Aadi had now started focusing on the hole on the exposed side of the heart. This was a comparatively easier job and was completed in an hour’s time.

  Next he started focusing on the liver. Unlike the heart where the bullet had entered from one side and escaped from the other, the bullet in the liver had remained within till the vets removed it, leading to poisoning. Almost half of the liver had been infected. Aadi pressed a button on his robot and a vertical flap on the belly of the robot opened up. Behind it was a computer screen and the open flap served as the keyboard. Aadi ran several simulations and quickly concluded the next steps. He decided to first remove the half damaged and infected portion of the liver. Liver is an organ that can regenerate. From the simulations Aadi had checked whether to let the liver regrow in the body or remove a part of it and regrow it in an organ incubator. He finally decided on keeping thirty percent of the liver intact and removing the balance twenty percent for regeneration in an organ incubator.

  While the liver would have regrown to eighty percent of its size from the fifty percent, within two weeks, it would have taken another ten to twelve months under medication and observation for it to grow to its original size completely. Instead of that Aadi decided to remove twenty percent of the liver and regrow it to its original size in an incubator in eight hours, keeping the animal alive on thirty percent of the liver till then. Once incubated, the regrown liver would then be transplanted back.

  It was almost twenty hours from the start of surgery till now. The animal was stable but not out of danger. Aadi was about to start with the lungs when another obstacle came in front of him.

  There was another emergency case coming in. A tiger was severely wounded and required immediate help. Aadi had not slept for consecutive thirty seven hours including the seventeen hours before start of surgery and the last twenty hours had been extremely demanding mentally as well as physically. Though exhausted, Aadi had no choice but to go on. He took a deep breath, took some medicine to get rid of sleep and exhaustion and did a Yoga-nidra or yogic sleep, a deep relaxation technique and a form of meditation for few minutes, till the arrival of the tiger.

  Looking at the case, he had to prioritise the tiger in place of the elephant. Aadi had now been shuffling between treating the tiger and monitoring the elephant, in two adjacent OT’s. Treating the tiger took seven hours.

  Once done, Aadi came back to the elephant and encountered another problem. The pumping had slowed down. The animal was having difficulty in breathing. The temporary sealing of lungs had failed and the animal had developed a tension pneumothorax i.e a collapsed lung that has leaked lots of air between the chest wall and lungs. This situation creates pressure on the lungs from outside and leads to difficulty in expansion of lungs

  Aadi had to act quick and situation demanded taking certain chances. While he had come across such demanding situations earlier, this was first time he had to take tough decisions after continuous working of more than forty-four hours. One single mistake and the elephant could lose his life.

  Using a needle, Aadi ruptured the chest walls to allow the air leaked from the lungs and trapped in the chest cavity to escape. This created space for the lungs to expand. But they did not. Force pumping oxygen could be tried but with the artificial pressure there was a risk of further damaging the rupture and permanently destroying the lung.

  With no other option, Aadi decided to take the chance. He increased the oxygen pressure gradually, till he saw the lung expanding. As soon as he saw some expansion, he disconnected the pressure. He could not risk confirming complete expansion. Content with lung being able to expand he continued to heal the wound.

  After that the team proceeded to the last area that was intestines. The team first emptied the intestines, cleaned and disinfected them and started the surgery for sealing the intestines. The procedure was not very complicated but because of the multiple injuries due to the spear, it was time consuming. Another four hours and the team had successfully completed sealing the intestines.

  But the operation was not yet over. A vet was still working on fixing the blood vessels of the broken leg, the third bullet still had to be removed and the liver transplanted.

  One of the vets got on the job of removing the third bullet. By now, the liver had grown to normal size in the organ incubator. After fifty hours of being continuously awake, with last thirty three hours in surgery, Aadi was finding it extremely difficult to continue yet he had to transplant the liver meticulously. Taking the name of Gods, the names of Panch Maha Bhoot, Aadi pushed himself and continued with his task. In another two hours’ time he finally completed the liver transplant.

  All the vets now started stitching back the open wounds. And after an hour the operation including the leg surgery was finally over.

  It was a very challenging and exhausting thirty six hour surgery and Aadi and the vets had been awake for fifty three hours at a stretch. As soon as the job was finished, Aadi and the team of vets literally collapsed on the OT floor. It seemed as if the Gods had given them the necessary strength to push themselves much beyond their capacity to successfully accomplish t
his task.

  The robots carried Aadi and the other vets to the beds in the sick rooms. Another vet who had been working on a different case, came rushing by. They did not have doctors. It was a common practice for the vets to treat all species of animals including homo sapiens. She examined all of them and after confirming they were fine, put them on IV fluid for energy.

  Chapter 16

  VETERINARY INSTITUTE: THE PLAN

  12th February’ 2016

  Aadi woke up after twenty hours. The other vets were also asleep for a similar period of time. And why not? After all, the previous fifty-three hours had been gruelling for them. It was like doing consecutive four shifts, immediately after a double shift. Raj, the robotic assistant had already cancelled Aadi’s schedules for two days once the surgery had begun. And looking at Aadi’s condition he had cancelled the schedule for third day as well.

  Aadi freshened up, had a smoothie and felt relaxed. The much-needed sleep had done its job and Aadi was back to his energetic self.

  On receiving news of Aadi’s consciousness Jivika, Samir, Aakash, Avanish and many other colleagues had gathered to see Aadi and the other vets, who had accomplished an extra ordinary feat.

  Aadi too paid a visit to the other vets who had accompanied him in the surgery and was happy to know that they too were fine. Aadi and his team of vets then paid a visit to their recent patients, the elephant and the tiger and were happy to see them recovering well.

  The vets and all others got back to their duties. Aadi decided to catch up with his colleagues for an update on the last two days where he was completely disconnected with the organization.

  Once Jivika, Samir, Aakash, Avanish, Sunil and Aadi were comfortably settled in one of the lounges, Aadi began ‘So what’s the update during the last two days?’

  ‘We will come to that later Chief. Right now we have a bigger priority in front of us,’ said Jivika.

  ‘And what is that?’ was Aadi’s immediate question.

  ‘Chief, this is not sustainable. With the responsibilities that you are handling, you need to get out of your vet hat completely. We need a much larger team of vets. Today we are monitoring only a fraction of the jungles and this number will go on increasing till we have covered all of them across the globe. We are going to need people for surveillance, people in the animal rescue team and vets,’ replied Jivika.

  ‘That’s a known fact. That’s the situation, what’s the solution?’ asked Aadi. Aadi had ingrained this habit firmly in his team. Hence it was a common practice for the person to bring up a situation to be prepared with a solution for the same.

  Jivika was ready with her answer, ‘Now that we have stabilized on all open fronts that came in front of us due to untimely Operation Reveal, we will focus on scaling up the animal care side. The veterinary centre will have branches at multiple locations. We will also set up a veterinary institute that will admit qualified vets as well as fresh aspirants, train them with our methods of surgery and medicine and deploy them to manage these branches.’

  ‘Leave scaling up the surveillance and animal rescue team to me,’ said Sunil.

  Aakash said, ‘Jivika, veterinary profession today is not a preferred choice of most of the toppers. The most intelligent students opt for professions that not only pay well but hold a high esteem in the society. Even though more challenging, unfortunately veterinary profession does not receive the same respect as medicine.’

  Continuing further he said, ‘We deal with extremely challenging cases that demand taking spontaneous decisions and decisions which could mean life or death for the animal. For that we need vets who are not just passionate but extremely intelligent and capable of taking the right decisions in a high pressure situation. What’s the plan to attract such passionate and intelligent people?’

  Jivika replied immediately ‘I agree Aakash. There’s a reason behind best brains not opting for veterinary science. And that is… ASPIRATION. A vet does not receive respect and remuneration at par with a doctor. And this is what we will change. We will start two different courses. One where we admit qualified vets for a one year reskill course and pay them a stipend of Two lakhs per month during the course and a salary of Five lakhs per month working at our veterinary centres thereafter. Second course will be a five year graduation course for students who have just cleared their Twelfth grade. We will pay them a stipend of One Lakh per month during the course and a salary of Five lakhs per month thereafter. Needless to say the education and hostel expenses in the world’s best institute will also be borne by us.’

  ‘We will be flooded with applications and in fact will have a difficult time in selecting the candidates. In addition to stuff that students normally learn in a veterinary institute, they will learn about our medicine and surgery from our existing team of vets, Chief and Swamiji. Their learning will be aided by video recordings of the very unique surgeries and treatments, like the recent one done by Chief. In parallel with the help of social media and PR we will build a social status for our vets and students. With the kind of travel to untouched places and adrenaline pumping adventures these guys will have, making them look COOL in front of the millennials will be a cakewalk.’

  ‘Brilliant’ exclaimed Aakash. Jivika had nailed it right. She made the process of making a profession that was lost somewhere, as the most aspirational one sound so simple and that too in a matter of minutes.

  The idea was liked by all and Jivika took the responsibility of establishing the veterinary institute by the start of next academic session which was just four months away. And thus lay the foundation for the world’s best institute, which would teach only and only veterinary science.

  Chapter 17

  VETERINARY INSTITUTE: THE EXECUTION

  Jivika had a very distinctive strength. She could not only make things sound simple, but actually make them simple. When she had to create the world’s best institute, not just the course but everything had to be world class. And the first impression of a best institute began with a great campus. Coming up with a new world class campus within four months was not practical. Construction alone would take more than a year. Next option was to take over an existing campus. But none suited the requirement. Old and renowned institutes that had good educational infrastructure set up had average hostels. The modern ones that had good hostels integrated in the campus itself had a smaller than required educational block.

  But Jivika was not a kind of person to get perturbed by such a situation. One of the solutions would have been to get started now by sharing infrastructure with an existing veterinary institute till the new campus came up. But for Jivika creating a grand first impression of the veterinary institute was extremely important. Not satisfied with any of these standard options, she started thinking out of the box and Eureka… She got her answer.

  Banging her fist she said ‘Yes. This is it. This is the way to go. Nothing can beat this first impression. No other option can add this kind of aspirational value to the institute.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Aakash

  ‘We will take over a resort and convert it into an institute,’ replied Jivika.

  ‘Brilliant’ exclaimed Aakash ‘This is something that has never been done before but very aptly addresses our requirement. Resorts being at tourist destinations, location will be fascinating and close to Mother Nature. None of the existing educational institutes can match the ambience and grandiose of a resort.’

  ‘Exactly. The guest rooms will serve as the hostel and faculty quarters. The smaller banquet halls can be converted to classrooms and the biggest one into an auditorium. One of the restaurants will serve as the dining mess and the others can be converted to labs. Recreational facilities can continue as is. Any further infrastructure required like operation theatre and animal housing facilities can come up in the open spaces which are available in plenty at a good resort.’

  20th June’ 2016

  With her meticulous planning and execution, Jivika accomplished the herculean ta
sk in the time of four months. Acquiring and converting a resort at Munnar, a beautiful hill station in the state of Kerala, into an educational institute; marketing the course and attracting the best brains; screening and selecting the most suitable candidates. A grand inauguration of the institute was held followed by induction of the first batch of thirty students each for the two different courses, a five year graduation course for Pre University qualified students and a one year reskill course for qualified vets.

  Anand one of the students of the graduation course while speaking during the inauguration proudly spoke, ‘I come from a poor family in a small town of Maharashtra. My father is a daily wage labourer and my mother works as a domestic maid. Their earnings are just sufficient to meet our family’s basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Like any other parents, my parents also wanted to educate me properly but providing any kind of support was a luxury they could not afford. I studied in a municipal school where they did not have to pay any fee. But they could still not afford the expenses towards books, uniform and other study material. I have studied most of the time on borrowed books. The leftover pages stitched together of the books of children in whose house my mother worked, became my notebooks. But I was not that fortunate to get textbooks as those children were younger to me. I would have to borrow books from my classmates. During exam time, if tomorrow was Science and Maths dayafter, I had to bring my friends Maths textbook and study from it today as tomorrow my friend would need it. That’s how I have completed my studies and still managed to secure 97 percent marks in tenth grade and 99 percent in twelfth grade.’

  ‘My friend’s father worked at the government veterinary hospital in our town. Once I had gone there and my heart wept at the scene in front of my eyes. Animals were crying and howling in different states of injury, suffering from different diseases, lying around in an extremely dirty and unhygienic place. I felt I need to do something for them. I started going to the hospital twice daily and spent time in cleaning the hospital. Later on I started helping the vets in holding the animals when they were treating them. Slowly I also learned cleaning their wounds and applying medicine and dressing.’