William's Gift

by Helen Douglas

  One weekend after Christmas, Anne needed a change of scenery and drove down to see me for a few days. There had been a lot of snow that winter, and the country roads were in perfect condition for sleighing. This crisp night, the moon was full, making it as bright as daylight, and we decided to go for a spin around a country block in the cutter. I overloaded the contraption by asking along two good friends from school. It was extremely cold, so the four of us bundled up well. The three of them sat crowded together in the seat swaddled in heavy blankets, while I knelt in front of them in my old raccoon coat, driving the horse, my fingers quickly numbing from the cold. It was almost surreal, the bright moonlight creating distinct jet-black shadows from each tree branch across the silvery road and highlighting every graceful sweep of snow. The cutter slipped easily along on the crunchy surface, and the sleigh bells jingled to the rhythm of the fast trot.

  The final downhill stretch ended at a “T” intersection, where we turned left to go the half-mile to the farm laneway. I eased myself out of kneeling position, almost paralyzed with cold, and prepared to pass the reins to one of the others. Not being part of the bundle behind me I had suffered the most from the biting wind and simply had to move. As I jumped out of the cutter to jog a few steps, I scared the now walking horse. Or perhaps he simply pretended to be scared, as he was never one to bypass an opportunity for a lark. Before Anne could organize the reins, he bolted down the hill, leaving me behind on the road. It was funny even then. The three humans swaying in the rickety little seat were so well wrapped up that they couldn’t extricate themselves. Even if they had, there wasn’t much they could have done but jump. The reins were now flapping in the breeze. It looked like a caricature of a Currier and Ives print. Clunker gaily took the corner at full gallop, putting the left runner up on a large snow bank. The cutter deftly deposited its occupants in the centre of the intersection, with their rugs and wineskins. By the time we reached the farm lane, Clunker had taken a short cut across a field and left the sleigh behind him on a log pile. Neither it, nor any of us, suffered damage, and Clunker looked too proud of himself to be chastised when we found him standing in the barnyard waiting for us.

  From then until the end of February, I tried to apply myself to preparing for my final exams. There were three oral exams as well as the written ones. The prospect of oral exams had all of us worried, since we had never been required to confront our examiners in this manner before. Certainly it would be the first time that we would have to be so honest about what we didn’t know. I found it almost impossible to sit still and concentrate, evening after evening. My two roommates and I would alternatively take delirium breaks, stopping to play one side of a record at full volume or just rampaging around the house trying to engage one another and create distractions. As a last resort, there was always housework, and our humble students’ quarters shone as never before. There were incredible volumes of material to be memorized, as each species varied in its makeup and consequently its diseases and treatments. All three of us passed our exams, as did the other members in my rotation group. So I sailed into my last few weeks of elective rotations feeling relaxed and on top of the world.

  We had a young elephant to examine when I was on a last week of radiology. The circus man who owned him had arrived at the school with three of the creatures on his truck. He had been forced to make a detour from the show because one young male, a yearling, was lame. The other two beasts were a mother and her calf, which was covered with long spiky bristles of hair. With its long ears and trunk out of proportion to its body, the calf was a delight. The event caused pandemonium inside and out. While the trainer supervised the young male inside and tried to get him into position for an x-ray of his foot, the other two were tethered by iron ankle chains to the pavement. The elephant inside was confused and excited by all the strange equipment and the break in his routine. He forgot the meanings of all his normal commands and first bowed, then sat up and begged instead of lying down. He was trying every trick he knew to accommodate his trainer, but it was all too much. Thousands of dollars worth of radiographic machinery were at risk.

  Meanwhile, outside, hundreds of students had gathered. One girl couldn’t resist touching the baby and was soon swept off her feet and suspended ten feet in the air wrapped in the angry mother’s trunk. She was put down seconds after, unharmed but considerably shaken. Unfortunately, all the commotion was for nothing, as the cause of the lameness could not be found. The trainer was obviously relieved to get his charges reloaded and gone without any more serious problems.

  In early February, I travelled to Ottawa for a job interview. The position advertised would involve mostly small animals, but I could do whatever horse work came in. The interview went well, and I had an affirmative answer the next day. Once I knew I had a job secured after graduation, I started looking at new cars. The Rusty Duster had served me well, but it was to be turned over to Anne. Three weeks before the end of classes, I signed a bank loan for a full-size Chevrolet station wagon. It was a huge gas-guzzler loaded with options and adorned with wood panelling, and I was absolutely thrilled with it. I was certain it was exactly what I needed and would pull the horse trailer to shows that summer. It hadn’t occurred to me that as a junior vet I wouldn’t get many weekends off to go to shows. Then, to break it in, I decided to drive to Kentucky.

  There was a group of girls in our year who were full of life and always game for a lark. Many of them had been on the hockey team together for several years. I had only recently gotten to know them better when I joined them for a few games. There was a tremendous corps d’esprit among them, and they were usually at the forefront of class affairs and pranks. One night after a hockey game, the subject of my ostentatious new vehicle came up, and before I knew it, four of us were planning a trip to visit horse veterinarians in Lexington. Somehow, we convinced our professors on the merit of this idea, although I suspect they had already given up trying to hold us.

  We hit the road on a Thursday afternoon in early April, spring fever running high. We got to the American border at dusk. The atmosphere in the car must have been infectious. We even had the officer at the border laughing when one of us politely asked him to “tell us the way to Kentucky.” As the car carried us along through the Ohio night, the air became warmer and the music changed to country and western. We saw the sun come up as we were crossing the river in Cincinnati. During the night, we had entertained ourselves composing eight verses of words for an Ode to O.V.C. to the lilting tune of Farewell to Nova Scotia. The weekend lived up to all our expectations as we sampled grits and gravy, admired the splendid thoroughbred breeding farms, and enjoyed the spring sunshine. And the song was an equal success when it was presented to our class the following week.

  Since it was known that I had a vehicle capable of transporting multitudes, I was asked to be a driver to our final graduation party. The class officers had booked a posh resort north of Toronto for a weekend. With many of the spouses along, it was a sizeable group, and we were well able to fill their dining room, swimming pool, and tennis court. There was still ice on the lake below as we were running back and forth in our bathing suits from the steaming pool to the sauna. The last night started with a perfectly cooked five-course meal to be followed by a nightclub gala. We were to be entertained by Bobby Curtola, a fifties crooner who hadn’t been heard of in years. The few senior townspeople who had paid for admission were annoyed with our overly enthusiastic partymaking, and at one point the manager bluntly invited us to stop disturbing the show. But it was impossible to contain us. We all knew it was the last time we’d be together before our lives changed. By the end of the night, even Bobby Curtola had given in. He was last seen on the dance floor doing the bump with the group of ladies from the hockey team. I haven’t seen some of them since I let them out of my car the next day.

  Within a few more days, I had all my belongings packed. I pulled out of the laneway of the farmhouse where I had spent three yea
rs and tried not to look back. I was off to a new life as a doctor of veterinary medicine in the Ottawa Valley.

  THREE

  Pigeons, Budgies,

  and Other Life Lessons

  I STARTED WORK FILLED with confidence and enthusiasm. I didn’t know that in the next six months, my innocent optimism would steadily deteriorate until finally I would begin to wonder if I were in the right profession at all. I knew I would have to endure a steep learning curve, but little did I know that I would lose confidence before regaining it, or how humbling it would be. But gradually, clients started to ask for me, difficult cases worked out, and I began to develop a new, more realistic sense of confidence as I gained experience. I wish I had been warned that most newly graduated veterinarians suffer from this same feeling of inadequacy when they begin to practise.

  The well-equipped suburban hospital was run by an ambitious young veterinarian. I was one of a string of new graduates he had hired, and some hadn’t worked out too well. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was being watched very closely. The fact that Dr. McKay was the kind of man who almost never forgot anything and scarcely made a mistake only made my inexperience more obvious and embarrassing. My plaster casts fell off because they were too loose. My surgeries took twice as long as his. During office hours, there were clients to see every ten minutes, and I found it difficult to write up the details of each animal’s history as I examined them. So I lagged further and further behind. By the end of the first month, I began to feel so inept that I began having difficulty with even the more simple procedures such as finding a vein for an intravenous injection.

  Dr. Warren McKay, who had turned the practice into a successful business, was a perfectionist. He simply couldn’t stand the thought of any of my cases going out the door without his stamp of approval — a position not hard to understand, as he was responsible for it all. He was exacting and a good teacher, but all that constructive criticism was sometimes hard to accept. He maintained some personal distance from his staff, and we all called him “Dr. McKay.” He obviously kept himself coolly aloof from most people in his outside life as well. Once I heard him comment on a good friend’s leaving to live in another city by saying, “Guess I’ll have to get myself another friend.” Although he was intimidating to me, I respected him greatly for his veterinary skills, and so did the clients.

  One of Dr. McKay’s clients was an older lady who travelled a considerable distance to see him and had done so for years. She had an aged mixed-breed dog that had a history of kidney disease and could be fed only an expensive therapeutic diet. The woman was very aware that at any time her pet’s kidneys might cease to function altogether. Unfortunately, Dr. McKay was away on holiday for a week when Fluffy was presented with an emergency of a different kind.

  Pyometra is a serious condition resulting from the introduction of infection into the uterus. In some cases of pyometra, the volume of nasty-smelling purulent material accumulating in the uterus is so great that it drains through the cervix and out the external genital opening. In other cases, called closed pyometra, the cervix remains closed and the infection “hides” in the animal, creating a life-threatening emergency because the developing blood poisoning can lead to shock. Any dog with pyometra is an anaesthetic risk, but an older one with ill-functioning kidneys presents a grave problem. Surgery is the only solution.

  Mrs. Evans was not at all happy to see me enter the examining room instead of Dr. McKay. It was quickly evident that Fluffy had a nasty pyometra and there was no possibility of waiting until Dr. McKay’s return to make a decision. At the moment, she was still fairly bright and had not gone into shock, but her colour and blood counts showed she had early toxemia. I explained to Mrs. Evans that her only chance was to give her vigorous intravenous fluid and antibiotic therapy followed by an emergency hysterectomy. As I spoke, the owner’s face reflected her complete lack of confidence in me and her terrible concern for her pet. She reluctantly handed her over to my care and went home to wait by the telephone.

  One of my favourite older veterinarians, a horse doctor, always said: “Emphasize the worst that can happen and then people will be happy if things turn out well.” Unfortunately, because I was so anxious to give the lady some faith in me, I didn’t paint a dismal enough picture. The surgery went well and I was pleased to be able to telephone Mrs. Evans to report that her dog had woken up and all looked well. But the next day, Fluffy was obviously becoming more depressed rather than brighter, and I quickly saw that she was not maintaining her hydration. Before I had even had a chance to check her blood urea level, she had vomited, and I knew with a sinking feeling that she was starting to go into kidney failure. Despite large volumes of intravenous fluids, her condition deteriorated, and within forty-eight hours of surgery she was dead.

  The distraught client blamed me entirely for her pet’s death, not believing that she might well have died even under Dr. McKay’s care. On his return, he was confronted with a lengthy letter of complaint, including a refusal to pay even a portion of the costs. He looked rather grim about it but didn’t make any comment. My confidence sank even lower, and I became reluctant to take on any serious or complicated cases. I was convinced that I was taking one step back for every two steps forward. Thankfully, it was only a short time later that I had a chance to prove my abilities — mostly to myself.

  The first major surgical emergency that I was forced to undertake on my own after Fluffy was a gastric torsion. Bloat, or gastric dilatation, is a condition manifest in large, deep-chested breeds of dogs that comes on with horrifying suddenness. The dog may just jump or play with a full stomach, and the pendulous organ can swing. Within minutes of the stomach rotating, gas begins to dilate it, causing strangulation of the circulation to the organ. In less than an hour, the animal can be in shock or dead. Immediate decompression by stomach tube or by large-bore needle is crucial. The male Rhodesian Ridgeback that was presented to me was in a fairly early stage of bloat and was able to walk into the clinic. I was hopeful that I could pass a stomach tube to let off some of the gas before I entered his abdomen.

  But once he was anaesthetized, I found that, secondary to the torsion, the esophageal entry to his stomach was too tightly constricted to allow passage of a tube. Reluctantly, I thrust a needle into the most dilated area of his now drum-like side. With the release of some of the pressure, I felt I could begin the surgery to correct the torsion. The stomach and spleen were both involved, and it was a formidable task sorting out the direction and degree of the rotation. It took an hour to get everything back into its normal position and suture the stomach to the abdominal wall. By the time I closed the incision, it had been almost three hours since I started the intensive work on Tag. I was ecstatic to see his colour returning to a normal bright pink, but afraid to be hopeful too soon. The next twenty-four hours would be crucial, as the stomach wall can become devitalized and necrotic if the circulation has been impaired for too long. Some dogs never recover from the endotoxic shock that develops after a bloat, and still others need more surgery to repair a damaged stomach. I felt optimistic, as he had not been in distress for long before we got him into surgery. I was so anxious for him to recover well that I was on pins and needles for two days. When he walked out the door five days later, no one was happier than I. The owner’s sincere appreciation was important to me, but more so was the step I had taken towards regaining my self-confidence.

  On one of my first nights on call for my new job, proud and excited to have an emergency pager on my belt, I got one of the most disturbing calls I ever had to deal with. I was riding my horse when the pager went off, and hurried back to the tack room to return the call, wondering what was ahead of me. Some teenagers were soaping tack and ended up eavesdropping. I returned the page and contacted a youngish woman with a very thick French accent, who sounded surprised to reach me. She started the conversation by saying she had just acquired a new dog, a year-old black Labrador male t
hat she was experiencing behaviour problems with.

  “I don’t know what to do, he keeps jumping on me,” she complained.

  “Well,” I offered sympathetically, “that’s fairly normal for a dog his age. You’ll have to start by taking him to obedience school. Is he neutered?”

  “What is neutered?” she asked.

  Frustrated by the language barrier, I struggled to explain this professionally in front of the now intrigued adolescents.

  “He’ll have to have his testes removed,” I said; adding helpfully, “this will curb some of the unwanted masculine behaviour.”

  “But what if I like it?” she answered slyly; then into my stunned silence she injected in lower tones, “I turn down the lights, he comes to me …”

  I slammed down the receiver, shaking a bit. Was it a joke? What was really going on? Perhaps she had anticipated getting a male vet on the line. I recovered my composure quickly enough, laughing at my own naivety. The teenagers were in gales of laughter, guessing the direction the conversation had taken from my startled, beet-red face.

  “Be prepared for everything and anything,” said my employer the next day, with a wry smile. “You’re not in Nova Scotia anymore!”

  Despite being more prepared, I never had to handle a repeat performance.

  Dr. McKay had a special interest in exotic pets, and there was a constant parade of wild and wonderful animals into our clinic. We saw snakes with moulting problems, usually brought in “on ice” so that they were moving slowly enough to be handled. We did hysterectomies on raccoons and castrations of rabbits. On one occasion, I even sutured a tear in a bat’s wing. Wild birds were frequently brought in with fractured legs or wings and treated “on the house,” then released. Our reputation for looking after wild fowl led to one of the more humorous night calls I had that fall.