Coated With Fur: A Vet's Life

by Kristen Nelson

  “The good news is, I found a home for him on the other side of Minneapolis. Soon Oscar will have a real girlfriend.”

  “Not soon enough,” Allie muttered as she walked past me. “Not soon enough.”

  Chapter 14

  Moe the Ferret

  With the holidays complete, Minnesotans settle in for the long winter. The change in mood, like the change in sunlight, is discernable and bleak. In January, the sun sets around 5 p.m. each day and does not reappear until 7:30 the next morning. A thick layer of ice blankets the snow, crunching under your feet with each step. At night, temperatures often plunge below zero. Most days, the air warms to the teens. It’s often too cold to snow!

  To deal with the extreme cold, most people winterize their cars, replacing the summer oil with a lighter variety. Minnesotans store blankets, shovels and kitty litter in the trunk, just in case the car gets stuck. In the glove compartment, most drivers stash an emergency food supply. The frozen candy bars rattle around until spring. On the floor rests an ice scraper. The complimentary version has a company logo painted on the plastic face. The fancy variety sold at every gas station has a brush attached to the other end.

  Some cars are equipped with an engine-block heater. You can tell by the short black cord sticking out from the grill of the car. Upscale parking lots provide outlets for each space. Truly upscale garages are enclosed, heated and have valets.

  Steve and I slept under two blankets and a thick quilt. Although both of us grew up in Minnesota, we despised the cold, never acclimating to it like our friends. While they went ice fishing, skiing and snowmobiling, we stayed inside, drank hot chocolate by the fire and dreamed of Hawai’i – our honeymoon destination years before. Shoveling snow was more outdoor activity than we wanted in the bitter months.

  Despite the exhaustion common among new business owners, we sometimes found it hard to sleep. The clinic was progressing, but money was tight ... very tight. Year-end and the obligatory Christmas expenses caused a good deal of anxiety. We hoped the practice would continue to grow and do so rapidly enough to keep us afloat.

  “Beep, beep, beep,” the pager sounded from the nightstand one bitterly cold night. I struggled to turn off the device in the dark. “Beep, beep, beep.” It continued to pierce the silence. I pulled the cord on the lamp on the nightstand, almost knocking over the clock in the process. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I switched off the pager and studied the number. I did not recognize it.

  “Hello,” a masculine voice answered.

  “Hello, this is Dr. Nelson calling. Did you call for a veterinarian?”

  “Kris, I’m sorry to bother you, but Moe is really sick.” Moe, I thought to myself. I couldn’t place the name or the voice. I thought for a minute before the caller continued as if reading my mind. “Moe, the sable ferret that you always confuse with my albino ferrets, Curly and Larry.” The cobwebs lifted and an image of the ferrets appeared in my consciousness.

  “Sorry, Scott, I’m not awake yet. What’s going on with Moe?”

  Scott told me that the ferret was salivating and pawing at his mouth. He stopped eating two days ago after chewing up a rubber dinosaur. He started vomiting this morning.

  “Scott, why did you wait so long to call? You know better than that.”

  “I know, but I’m short on cash. I was hoping it would pass on its own.” He paused for a minute. “Do you think he can wait until the morning?”

  “Well, that depends,” I answered. “Pull up the skin on his back and let it go. Does it snap right back into place?” I waited for Scott’s response.

  “Its’ staying pulled up,” he finally replied.

  Bummer, I thought.

  I then had him check Moe’s mouth and gums. He reported that Moe’s gums were light pink in color. When he pressed on the gum, it took about two seconds for the light pink color to return. Finally I inquired about his demeanor. I wanted to know if he was his normal busy self or was just lying there. Scott reluctantly reported that Moe was depressed. This mischievous little ferret let him open his mouth without even trying to get away. Scott agreed to meet me at the clinic as quickly as possible.

  I hung up the phone and rubbed my eyes. The digital clock read1:30 a.m. When I worked at the emergency clinic, we always got a flurry of activity after the bars closed. I wished the legislature would establish an earlier last call law. The animals wouldn’t have to suffer as long, and the veterinarians would get more sleep.

  “Steve.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to get up. We need to go to the clinic.” I looked at him and waited a minute for a response. He continued to sleep as only he could. I pulled the covers from his shoulders. He finally opened his eyes. “I think a ferret needs surgery. It sounds pretty bad.”

  “OK, I’ll be there in a minute,” he mumbled, pulling the quilt over his shoulders again. “You can have the bathroom first.”

  “Nice try, Sweets.” I walked around the bed to his side, shivering against the cold. I pulled back the covers for a second time. Five minutes later, Steve and I hurried out the front door of our townhouse to the unattached garage. A two-foot-long icicle fell from the roof when I closed the door. The snow sparkled under the cold moonlit night.

  Inside the garage, ice crystals coated everything, transforming the austere space into an ice palace. We got in the car and waited for it to warm up. Both of us sat hunched with our coats buttoned tight. Our legs tingled as we sat on the frozen leather seats of my little car.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to shift the farm truck before it was ready?” I asked Steve.

  “No,” Steve’s teeth rattled as he responded. He took off his gloves and blew into his hands in a desperate attempt to get warm.

  In high school, I was an all-around on the gymnastics team. One especially cold night, I was in a hurry to get home after practice. I let the truck warm up just a few minutes and then shifted into drive. I heard a loud crack, and disaster struck. The handle snapped off in my hand, about an inch above where it connected to the column. Obviously, I did not warm up the truck long enough.

  My Dad always left an assortment of tools in each vehicle. He said it was just in case something happened, but I often wondered if he just forgot them. I rummaged through the glove compartment and found a vice grip covered in rust. I placed the jaws around what was left of the shift handle and tightened down the flange on the top. It coated my fingers with brown dust. When the truck warmed up, I gingerly grabbed the handle and tried to shift. Much to my relief, the vice grip held. I drove home, proud of my creativity. Unfortunately, Dad did not share my enthusiasm. He made me pay for the repair.

  On this equally frigid night, we warmed up the car and headed for the clinic. As we entered the parking lot, Steve spotted a Jeep parked in front. Salt and dirt covered the sides, and large accumulations of frozen slush hung behind each wheel. The vehicle’s red color barely showed beneath all the grime. A 20-something man in a purple nylon jacket hopped out of the driver’s side, ran to the passenger’s side and removed a cat-sized carrier wrapped in a blanket.

  Inside, Steve headed to the treatment room with a can of Mountain Dew in his hand. He knew the drill by heart. I led Scott to the cat exam room and flipped on the lights. It startled the fish resting at the bottom of the tank. The poor guys were enjoying the fish equivalent of sleep when I flooded the room in light. They swam in erratic circles. “Sorry, guys,” I said apologetically. I flipped off the lights and escorted Scott to the dog room.

  Genny meowed from her room. When she was 5 months old, we moved her sleeping area from the bottom cage in the treatment room to a spare storage room. The 12- by 8-foot space gave her plenty of room to run and play. A covered litter box sat in the far corner while the opposite one held her food and water bowl. In between, toys littered the floor. Three different beds lined the walls. Yes, Genny was spoiled. She preferred life that way.

  Moe lay coiled in a tight ball amid his blankets and toys. He hid his dark brow
n face, feet and tail in the champagne-colored fur of his body. I talked to him in a soothing voice and gently jiggled his blanket. Like Steve, ferrets are sound sleepers. They take awhile to wake up from a deep sleep. I learned that lesson the hard way when I picked up a sleeping ferret – I still have the bite marks on my thumb to prove it.

  “Moe, Moe,” I cooed. “It’s time to wake up.” I reached into the carrier and rubbed his back with my hand. The little ferret lifted his head and yawned. He had a full set of sharp teeth. I stroked him a few more times before picking him up.

  Ferrets are pliable animals. Their ability to compress their bodies to fit through tight spaces in search of prey comes in handy for physical exams. If the ferret holds still, I can feel most of its abdominal organs right through the skin. I held Moe’s front end with one hand and palpated his body with the other. When my fingers reached the small intestines, he squirmed. I placed him on the blanket and tried again with a lighter touch. This time I felt a small, firm, irregular-shaped foreign body next to the bladder.

  “I’m afraid he swallowed a piece of the toy, Scott.” I settled Moe back on his blanket. “I can feel it right in the middle of his abdomen.” A piece this size was too large to pass through Moe’s intestines. Surgery was the only option. Scott blew his long curly bangs out of his face and rubbed his hands together. His ears were still red from the cold.

  “There’s no other cheaper way to remove it?”

  I shook my head. Scott thought for a moment. He loved his ferret but spent most of his paycheck going out every evening. I knew he customarily maxed out both of his credit cards just to cover the rent.

  “Can I make payments? I don’t have that kind of money on me right now.”

  I studied his face carefully before responding. I knew he loved the ferrets, but something about him made me question his integrity. He seemed a little slick, and besides, I was in no financial condition to get into the credit business. “Yes, as long as you put 30 percent down and pay the rest off within three months,” I replied. Looking at the poor animal, I responded as vets too often do, from the heart, not the brain.

  “No problem, I’ll get a second job if I have to,” he said.

  Steve helped me take an X-ray of the ferret. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, especially in his chest. Sometimes, animals with something stuck in their esophagus will salivate excessively. Moe’s chest looked good, but his intestines were distended with gas, which looked like big commas on the X-ray. Right in the middle of his abdomen, I spotted a gray-white mass.

  I placed Moe’s head in a clear plastic cone and turned on the anesthetic gas. Within minutes, he slept peacefully in my hands. With Steve’s help, I passed an endotracheal tube down his windpipe. I tied the tube in place behind his ears and hooked it up to the anesthesia machine. Before I clipped the fur from the abdomen, I laid Moe on his side and clipped the hair from his front leg. Scott stood by my side, surprised by what he saw.

  “What are you doing?” he asked quizzically. “The foreign body is in his abdomen.”

  “See that faint blue line?” I pointed at the cephalic vein on his forearm. “I’m going to try and place a catheter in that vein for fluids. He’s really dehydrated.” I scrubbed the leg and rinsed it with rubbing alcohol. Steve clamped his fingers around Moe’s elbow. I could barely see the vein. I pumped his paw a few times. The blue line looked a little bigger, but this was going to be a challenge. I popped the tip of our smallest catheter through the skin and with a quick jab, pushed it into the vein. Bright red blood appeared in the hub of the needle. I slowly advanced it and slid off the catheter.

  Steve handed me small pieces of white medical tape to hold the catheter in place. I attached a fluid line to it and opened the valve. Steve gave him a bolus of fluids to rehydrate him while I finished the abdominal clip.

  We transferred Moe to the operating room and prepared him for surgery. Steve scrubbed the surgical site while I scrubbed my hands. Scott sat on a stool next to the operating table. He wore a bouffant cap over his hair and a mask over his nose and mouth. I backed into the room holding my hands in front of me. Water ran down my arms and dripped onto the floor from my elbows.

  “Now Scott, if you feel at all queasy during this, tell us immediately. I do not want you to faint. OK?” I picked up a towel from the sterile pack. Scott had seen surgery before and assured me he wouldn’t faint. “But that surgery wasn’t on your own pet,” I said. “Promise me you’ll say something if you feel faint?” He nodded but seemed annoyed at my insistence.

  I finished drying my hands on the blue surgical towel. Constant scrubbing for the O.R. dried out the skin on my hands. The low winter humidity didn’t help, either. One deep crack on my thumb hurt every time I scrubbed. I picked up a sterile gown, held it by the ties and slid my hands down the sleeves, but not through them. Steve tied the straps on the back of the gown at my neck and waist. When we scrubbed with Lance, I found this romantic. Tonight, I was too tired to feel the spark. I put on a pair of gloves as I walked to the table.

  In the background, the EKG beeped in regular rhythm. Steve placed the large general pack on a Mayo stand. He pulled open the wrapper one side at a time and folded it down around the stand. Then, like the good O.R. nurse Lance had trained, he dropped a series of drapes, sponges, suction tubing and flush onto the stand. I placed the sterile drapes over Moe’s body until only a small portion of his shaved abdomen was visible.

  I nodded at Steve. He opened a shiny metal package over the instruments. A 15 scalpel blade fell out and lodged in the handle of a needle holder. I removed it, attached it to a scalpel handle and made a three-inch incision down the center of Moe’s abdomen. Gas-distended loops of intestine bulged out of the incision. They reminded me of the long balloons clowns use to make birthday favors. I pushed them from side to side as I explored Moe’s abdomen. Everything felt great until I reached the intestines. About halfway through the small bowel, I felt a firm object. The intestine behind the object looked normal.

  I pulled the area with the foreign body out of Moe’s abdominal cavity and packed it off with wet lap sponges. Leakage of intestinal contents back into the cavity is one of the great threats encountered in GI work. With everything in place, I incised just behind the toy in the part of the intestine that looked normal. A small green piece of plastic popped into my hand. I dropped it in a towel that Steve placed on the counter.

  Scott studied the object. “That’s the leg and foot from one of his toy dinosaurs. It’s his favorite toy.”

  “Was his favorite,” Steve corrected, now energized by Mountain Dew.

  I closed the incision in the intestine and rinsed Moe’s abdomen with copious amounts of sterile flush. Steve laid out a new pair of sterile gloves. I struggled to change into those while he removed the contaminated instruments from the table. During surgery, my hands sweat in the gloves. The new ones stuck when I tried to pull them on. Smile creases appeared on Steve’s face under his mask. “Do you need some help, Doctor?” he asked, emphasizing the word Doctor.

  “No, but you can drop the suture.” I pulled the slack out of my gloves by pulling them tight over my fingertips. He pulled a pack of suture from his pocket. With both hands, he pulled the protective wrapper apart and dropped it to the stand. I grasped the needle with a Mayo-Hegar and began threading the suture through Moe’s thin skin. For 10 minutes my hands moved back and forth over the incision. Using the plastic surgeon’s technique, I buried the final layer under the skin to hide it from Moe’s teeth. Ferrets are notorious for removing their sutures prematurely and without veterinary supervision.

  Steve turned the big dial on the anesthesia vaporizer until it clicked at zero. I reached behind my back, untied the gown and pulled it off along with the gloves. Moe moved his lower jaw a little. His body started to shiver. A few seconds later, he swallowed. Steve pulled the tube from his throat. Moe coughed and sputtered.

  “It’s OK, little buddy,” Scott said in a soothing voice. I unclipped th
e electrodes from the ferret’s arms and legs, wrapped him in a towel and handed him to Scott. Moe blinked several times under the bright O.R. lights and yawned. He seemed better already. Scott ran his fingers over Moe’s head. Back and forth, he stroked his pet. Moe closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  “Thanks for doing surgery on him, Kris, especially in the middle of the night. I really appreciate it,” he said. I nodded and escorted him to the incubator in the treatment room. For Christmas, Steve bought me a used one from a human hospital. The temperature on the incubator read 88 degrees Fahrenheit. I pulled off my mask and cap and opened a portal into the chamber. “He’s going to spend the day in here recovering.”

  Scott kissed his pet on the head and placed him in my powder-covered hands. I bunched the towels into a nest and laid Moe in the center. He looked around for five seconds, yawned again and then curled up into a tight ball. He soon closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. “Good night, little buddy,” Scott whispered through the acrylic top. “Sweet dreams.”

  Chapter 15

  Genevieve’s Spay

  After three hours of sleep, I returned to the clinic with a pounding headache. My head ached with each step, feeling like it would explode. I walked around the counter without a word. The only thing on my mind was sleep. I scanned the appointment book in hope of finding time for a nap. Names scribbled in pencil filled most of the morning slots. A big X with the word “surgery” crossed out all the appointments from noon until 2.

  “What have we got for surgery?”

  “Two spays, Genny and Chiffon Cummings,” Allie answered.