He can't lose much more.

This morning before I left for work, both kids were in Anna's room, watching Vino the hamster run on his wheel and getting dressed.

Suddenly, there was a ruckus between Vino (in the cage) and Claudio (nose to cage). Then Vino was rolling around spastically; I thought maybe he was having a seizure. I pulled him out, and noticed tiny drops of blood on my hand. I rolled him over and realized, in horror: His left hind foot was gone.

He had been writhing in pain.

In case you didn't read the earlier post, Vino lost his entire right forearm in a freak car accident. He compensates extremely well. Now my miniature panther had bitten his contralateral foot off. I hung my head and sobbed for this tiny creature.

I took him to work. By the time I got there, he had mutilated the stump some - I'm sure the bleeding inticed him to licking, then chewing.... ugh. His little tibia was sticking out midway. I gassed him down, cut the leg off at the knee, sewed the skin closed, and gave him antibiotic and pain injections.

When Enricka came to work, I told her what had happenned, and she cried a lot. She loves that little bugger! But, she felt better after seeing how well he gets around. He is such an amazing little survivor - its hard to tell anythings wrong with him.

Anna was upset but not inconsolable. Enricka had an aquarium and we moved him from his cage into that. He seems to be doing quite well.

**********

After fixing Vino, I started on my first dental case, a 6 year old Shih Tzu with crowded teeth that needed extraction. As soon as I sedated her, I noticed a large swelling on her lower jaw. Long story short - she had an unerupted premolar that was causing big problems. On the left side of her jaw there was a huge cyst (Dentigerous Cyst) that had removed large amounts of bone and involved 4 teeth. On the other side there was just a small cyst, not much bone loss, but 2 teeth needed to be removed. If I didn't remove the teeth, and scrape the cyst out of the bone, the cyst would continue growing until so much bone was lost that a pathological fracture occurred.

The new, complicated procedure took me almost 3 hours, so my boss offered to do one of my spay surgeries. I hesitated, knowing it would only take me about 20 minutes to get it done. But I accepted his offer, since I was already so behind. Just after he opened the dog's abdomen, the dog started crashing. He found out the dog had a diaphragmatic hernia - a hole in her diaphragm that let intestinal contents go into her chest - like nearly ALL of her liver. This usually happens from trauma, like being hit by a car. This sweet dog was a recently adopted stray, and had probably been living with this problem for months. She had compensated extremely well. One nurse breathed for the dog (without an intact diaphragm there is not enough negative pressure to draw breath) and Enricka assisted my boss with the surgery, while I finished the dentigerous cyst. A long surgery and chest tube later, the dog was recovering.

I was so relieved my boss took that surgery. After Vino and the huge cyst, if I'd opened that dog and found the hernia, I probably would've passed out. My boss bought us all food since we all worked through lunch. I ate half of my Schlotzsky's sandwich, then left it on my desk to go see an appointment scheduled for my boss (he was busy finishing my surgery). Montana helped herself and finished my sandwich! Ahhhh, what a day.