It was surreal to think that just two weeks before I had been going about my usual, daily work in the rolling Cotswold hills, and now here I was among a multitude of people who could no more understand the world that I came from than I could theirs.
We turned off to negotiate a narrow street, which, even at 7.30 in the morning was bustling. Every shop was some form of eatery, with the kitchen spilling out into the street. Old rusty bath tubs full of tilapia fish, cages of chickens or rabbits, huge woks of vegetables and cauldrons of bubbling soup all cluttered the pavement. The driver parked and ushered me into one of these shops for a breakfast of spicy noodle soup. This dish would have felt so alien to me even a week before, but now it was part of my daily routine. After an animated exchange between the establishment’s owner and my driver, we each took our seats in an all-in-one plastic table and chair set that reminded me of my primary school dining-hall furniture. No sooner were we seated than the familiar bowl was thrust in front of us. We slurped on our noodles, exchanging appreciative grins and thumbs up as he didn’t speak any English and I only had a handful of Mandarin words that I was using to exhaustion. Yet despite this complete language barrier we had struck up a novel friendship where facial expressions and monosyllabic words covered the varied breadth of an entire dictionary. It’s only when communication is inhibited that you truly realize the power of body language.
Back in the car we continued our journey to Chongqing Zoo. It was my fifth and final day there. The primary reason for my visit to China and Chongqing was to meet Professor Zhibiao Wang and his team at Haifu Medical Technology. Professor Wang and his team are one of the few companies in the world developing a novel medical technology called ‘focused ultrasound’. At high intensity, an ultrasound beam emitted from a transducer outside the body can be focused on tissue within the body. At the focal point of the beam, temperatures in excess of 80 degrees centigrade can be achieved, meaning that the tissue in the focal area is destroyed. This technology already had global recognition as a successful treatment option for some uterine fibroids and prostate cancers. Now many of the best medical facilities in the world, including my father’s department in Oxford, were researching its use for treating other cancers and conditions.
While I had done my final year’s research project at vet school exploring the potential applications of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) in the veterinary profession, my interest now lay with the low intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) machine that Haifu had developed. With osteoarthritis being one of the commonest causes of chronic pain and discomfort in geriatric animals, there is a real need for more treatment options. I’ve seen far too many heartbroken owners say goodbye to their beloved family pet because of crippling arthritis; although the animal’s mental faculties remain as acute as ever, they become unable to stand, with a downward spiral of joint pain leading to decreased exercise which in turn leads to muscle wastage and weakness. Medications and complementary therapy can slow the progression quite dramatically, but when quality of life is brought into question, euthanasia often becomes the kindest option.
Evidence of the clinical benefit of therapeutic ultrasound in a variety of musculoskeletal conditions dates back to the late 1940s, and I was keen to see if the new machine Haifu had developed could help treat geriatric animals. The ultrasound waves cause an increased blood flow to the area, which can decrease pain by reducing swelling and gently massaging muscles. To me the technology offered a wide range of potential benefits for dogs, horses and other animals and I was keen to learn more about it.
Professor Wang had generously invited me to accompany my father on a trip to Chongqing to discuss the role of LIFU in veterinary medicine. China had always been somewhere I had longed to visit, unashamedly with the sole desire to learn about, work with and maybe even treat giant pandas. So when the invitation came I brazenly asked if it would be possible to link up with the team at the Chendu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding during my stay. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible, but after a few further phone calls, they came up trumps with an alternative. I was offered the opportunity to spend five days at Chongqing Zoo with Dr Wu, the zoo’s senior vet, and Dr Tang, its giant panda specialist. With fifteen giant pandas, Chongqing Zoo has the fourth largest collection in the world and the largest outside the research centres in Sichuan province.
So here I was, by luck and good fortune, yet again achieving a dream. As I made my way through the main entrance, heading for the zoo’s main attraction, I passed the communities of senior citizens in their silk pyjamas engaged in their morning t’ai chi or badminton practice. It seemed they had permission to use the zoo for these purposes before the gates opened each day. It was relaxing, calming and serene, a complete juxtaposition from the morning melee I had come from on the other side of the gates. It was incredible to find a place of such peace and tranquillity in a sprawling city of 10 million inhabitants, but it would take more than that to keep me sane in a metropolis such as Chongqing. I am not a city person; far from it. After a few days in a city I feel like a caged animal; I need space and I need nature, which is why I had loved Africa so much.
Before heading up the steps and into the main panda enclosure where I had arranged to meet Dr Tang, I took a few moments to greet and observe Xi-Xi enjoying her breakfast of bamboo shoots in her pen, away from the others. At thirty-one years old, she was the oldest giant panda at the zoo and one of the oldest in the world. Although a bamboo’s rich shoots are a giant panda’s preferred part of that plant, they are also the most expensive, so in most cases their consumption was restricted to treats as opposed to the stalks and leaves, which made up the bulk of their diet. However, like many aged animals, dental deterioration makes chewing difficult, and so at her grand age, Xi-Xi was afforded the luxury of shoots three times daily. It was captivating to watch her place a handful of shoots onto her belly, then proceed to pick one up in each hand, systematically devour three-quarters of each shoot, discard the rest and move on to the next. All she needed was a white vest, baseball cap and open beer can and she could have been Onslow from Keeping Up Appearances. And that strange resemblance was exactly the point. Giant pandas are arguably the most iconic and best loved animals in the world. Their rapid decline, to the brink of extinction, in the second half of the twentieth century touched the world in a way that many other endangered species have not. And why? Probably because the cubs are particularly cute, and because the adults are so eerily human in their mannerisms that they resemble the slob in all of us. Whenever we watch them, it’s as if we’re waiting for the person wearing the costume to remove the head and mop their sweaty brow before walking off for a coffee and cigarette.
Over the last four days, as I had sat in Dr Tang’s office overlooking the main enclosures where You-You, Mi-Mi, Ling-Ling and Curiosity sat completely engrossed in systematically devouring their bamboo, I had found myself utterly captivated. It was effortless to idle away endless hours transfixed by their mundane daily routine of eat, sleep, sleep, eat, eat a bit more, sleep a bit more … and then maybe find a new location for a bit more eating and sleeping.
I entered the door to the private quarters which housed the feeding kitchen, the staff area and Dr Tang’s office. Dr Tang and Dr Wu were having an animated conversation as they peered at a monitor. The monitor in question was relaying footage of a mother with her six-week-old cub from a CCTV camera located in a hidden enclosure a few hundred metres away. Panda cubs are born weighing a mere 150 grams, pink and hairless, resembling a tiny piglet more than a giant panda. But now at six weeks old, the cub had a full, distinctive black-and-white coat and weighed about 1.5 kg.
I had arrived at the zoo excited by the prospect of encountering and working with giant pandas at close quarters. To then discover that they had a month-old panda cub, the first panda to be born at the zoo in five years, was thrilling beyond words. The mother was very attentive and caring, spending most of the day with the cub nestled tightly in her chest. An adult female panda will w
eigh about 90 kg, and such was the discrepancy in size, the cub was often obscured from view, hidden under the mother’s arms. As I gazed at the screen I would find myself ignorantly panicking, wondering if I should alert Dr Tang that the cub seemed to be missing or not moving. Then suddenly a tiny face would wriggle to the surface and try to squirm free from Mum to explore their straw bed. She would oblige for a few seconds, and then effortlessly lean forward and scoop her tiny charge back into her arms. It was wonderful to see the natural instinct of motherhood playing out. The only time when Mum would leave her cub was when one of her three daily meals of bamboo was brought into her enclosure. During this time she would crawl out of her nest and then gently place her cub face down on the straw bed before turning her attention to the 40 kg of her daily bamboo requirements. During these periods it was possible to get a good view of the little cub aimlessly writhing around on his bed, exploring what was, at that point, the limits of his universe. Just like a baby on a play mat, it was an image that would resonate with any parent.
Since the day the cub was born, Dr Tang and his team had been on a night-shift rota, each taking it in turns to sleep in the office, waking every two hours throughout the night to document mother and cub’s behaviour and to keep a close eye on the latter’s progress and health. The previous night had been Dr Tang’s shift. Since the early hours of the morning he had been concerned that the cub had been sporadically coughing through the night and was worried that this could be the start of a chest infection or even pneumonia. The subject of the discussion between Dr Wu and Dr Tang that I had walked in on was whether the cough was serious enough at this stage to warrant the stress to mother and cub of removing the cub to examine him. As this was explained to me, I joined them, studying the monitor intently. The cough was there, no doubt – a distinctive soft dry puff of a cough. Instinctively my veterinary training kicked in. I had heard thousands of coughs from many different animals. At this stage the cub seemed to have a dry ‘non-productive’ cough, making pneumonia unlikely, but that was not to say it wouldn’t progress. He was also very bright and behaving as normally as you would expect of any helpless crawling baby. So the dilemma continued: should we investigate at this stage while the cub was well, or would that cause unnecessary stress? Alternatively, should we just wait and see, and then risk the situation progressing and the cub becoming quite ill? I found myself in a slightly different dilemma: I obviously wanted the best for the cub, but who wouldn’t want the opportunity to hold, examine and treat a six-week-old panda cub?
Having been briefed on the situation through my translator, I was now included as a colleague and an equal in the discussion between Dr Tang and Dr Wu, who asked my opinion, based on my experience with other animals I had treated with pneumonia and chest infections. Trying not to let my personal wishes cloud my judgement, I thought it through. What would I do if it were a calf or a lamb? The answer was, of course, that I would examine it. Until we had taken its temperature and listened to its chest, we would only really be speculating. I asked how stressful the separation between mother and cub would be, and whether feeding time might give us our best window. We concluded the stress could be managed and minimized. The same keeper had been feeding the mother every day since the cub was born. If he fed her in the outer part of the enclosure, she might leave the cub for a few minutes in favour of breakfast, allowing the door between the two areas to be closed and the cub to then be moved around the corner and out of sight to where we would be waiting. It was important for us to be invisible to the mother, since too many strange people would make her realize that something was up, making her, and therefore her cub, more nervous and stressed out. Out of sight of the mother, we would be free to carry out our examination before returning him to his enclosure. So it was settled: we were going to examine the six-week-old cub. I maintained an air of complete professionalism, but inside I was jumping up and down like a gleeful child waiting to enter a sweet shop.
With the decision made, the office turned into a hive of activity. Dr Wu radioed the keeper who was responsible for mother and cub. For the last six weeks they had been his only responsibility, to reduce the risk of inadvertently spreading disease from one of the other giant pandas to the cub, whose immune system was still quite ‘naïve’, reliant as he was on ingesting antibodies through his mother’s milk. Dr Wu then turned to me to enquire, for reasons of biosecurity, whether my clothes were clean that morning or whether I had worn them on other days that I had been working with the pandas. Fortunately, they were indeed clean on that day and as yet I hadn’t come into contact with any animals. The question briefly conjured up the memory of my grandmother demanding that I strip down to my boxers before I was allowed through the front door every night when I stayed with her for my lambing placement as a first-year veterinary student. Presumably the zoo would have had a disposable suit for me to wear on this occasion rather than having me perform the examination in my underwear!
Twenty minutes later we made our way across the public area of the panda enclosures, towards an old brick building which the unknowing public would doubtless assume was derelict and uninhabited. Dr Wu unlocked the outer gate. As we approached, a keeper opened the door and started fervently addressing Dr Tang in a whisper. It was only when he stopped to take a breath that Dr Tang was able to introduce my translator Yersina and myself as the additional members of the party. He paused briefly to greet us before continuing, as Dr Wu, who had been relocking the outer gate, now joined us in the building and an animated three-way conversation ensued. The energy that they were putting into the conversation made it seem as though some catastrophe had unfolded in the five minutes since we had left the office and its monitor, but as Yersina explained, they were simply debating where best to put the bamboo shoots for Mum in the outer enclosure. It was yet another cultural difference: I could not discern any correlation between the intensity of a conversation and its relative importance.
The building consisted of three rectangular enclosures, each about 3 metres wide by 6 metres long, separated by a 2-metre-wide passage that allowed access to each individual enclosure through a large, lockable sliding door. There was also access to the outer enclosure from the passage. Each enclosure and door was constructed of 2-inch, floor-to-ceiling wrought-iron bars, which were a rusty brown in colour, with a polished smooth finish from years of repeated cleaning. In truth the building was damp and dingy, resembling a medieval dungeon – not my idea of luxury accommodation – but with a large bed of straw it must have felt like the perfect cave and den for the panda.
With the protocol decided we then hung back out of sight in the corridor while Xang, the keeper, chose four lush green bamboo branches, each about 10 feet long, from a pile of twenty or so that lay in the corridor, and then proceeded through the passage and into the outside enclosure. We heard the heavy clanking sound of the outer passage door being closed and locked, and then the sound of the door from the mother’s cage being opened, allowing her access to the outside where her breakfast awaited her. She was clearly hungry for a feed because it wasn’t long before we could hear the door sliding shut again and the lock snapping to. The mother was now secured outside and Xang then opened the door into the enclosure and moments later appeared holding a little black-and-white ball of fur squirming in his hands.
Xang laid the cub on its back on the electronic scales so as to document his weight: 1.25 kg, an 800 per cent increase on his birth weight of 157 grams. With the data recorded, Dr Tang then asked me to perform my clinical examination while he took the cub’s temperature, placing the thermometer under the panda’s armpit. It beeped at 36.9 °C: normal. I crouched over the cub, who raised his tiny head as I came into view. Struggling to focus on me through his bleary eyes, he had obviously just been woken from a postprandial siesta, but even when fully awake, at six weeks old his eyesight was still developing and I would have just been a blurry shadow to him. It was magical. Every mannerism and movement resembled that of a helpless human baby. He would wrigg
le on his back for a moment, his tiny paws reaching out to grab thin air, and then, after a great yawn and a couple of lip smackings, his eyes would close and he would be momentarily stilled, before the whole sequence was repeated. I gently placed my stethoscope on his chest and the cold of the instrument induced a sudden jolting movement followed by a small shrill bark. It was cuteness personified.
His chest was clear; all lung fields sounded completely normal, he had a little bit of mucous nasal discharge, but not the green snotty kind that might indicate an infection. He seemed very healthy. So what was the origin of the cough? I discussed my findings with both Dr Tang and Dr Wu who confirmed my observations. We concluded that, although the cough may have been insignificant, the dampness of the inside building was certainly a contributing factor. It also enhanced the risk of fungal spores in the environment. The agreed solution was an air-conditioning unit, which would help control the temperature and dry the atmosphere to reduce these problems.
While Dr Wu radioed through to the maintenance department, I soaked up my last few moments with the cub before Xang gathered it in his arms as delicately as a mother would her child and returned it to the straw bed in its enclosure. We heard the clunk of the enclosure door being shut and locked and then the sliding open of the outside door; mother and cub could now be reunited. As we exited the building we could see that the mother was still relishing her breakfast, oblivious to the intensely attentive assessment that had just been levelled at her baby.
The Travelling Vet Page 20
