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Where to start…I was pretty sure this week was going to be pretty much straight forward. I was writing my notes up during a lull in chores on my Wednesday and thought to myself there wasn’t much to write about this week: there was Muffler and Diesel’s move into the big pool with Gasket, Spark Plug graduated from seal in tote to big girl in ODL 1, and the arrival of Chassis the Spectacled Eider. There was this tiny voice in the back of my mind saying, “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Chassis came to us on July 11th from Nome, Alaska. Nome is famous for being the finish line of the Iditarod, the annual dog sled race that stretches over 1000 miles of harsh Alaskan wilderness. She had an open wound on her on her neck that exposed her wind pipe and esophagus. Chassis had been suffering from this wound for some time because the some of the tissue had dried out and was contaminated with sand. She was placed in a quarantine area inside of rehab and unlike Nozzle, we were the primary caretakers of this bird.
Since Chassis was contained in quarantine within quarantine we were required to shower out of rehab twice a day in order to care for her. We shower in to care for her and when we are finished we need to shower out in order to re-enter rehab. Her care is pretty basic. The new and old food needs to be weighed out. The deck needs to be sprayed down and her water drinker washed and re-filled. The hard part is netting her in order to force feed her fish that contains her medication. I am surprised I can catch her because there are many forces working against me: she’s a smart bird and she learns from every mistake I make, the net is damn heavy and cumbersome, and I have to straddle the deck of a 10 ft deep pool full of frigid water in the process. Chassis and I both work up a sweat, well that is if ducks could sweat. When I finally have her restrained I give us both a minute to catch our breath before I force feed her. That is the easy part. I ensure her wings and feet are firmly tucked close to her body and I use one hand to tip her head back until her bill opens. My finger slides down closer to the back of the mouth and with the other hand I insert the fish until her swallowing reflex kicks in and she swallows the fish down on her own. I let her go and that’s the end of her ordeal for the evening.
Friday was the first time I was to go in and do Chassis’s routine on my own. I was making good time. I was hoping to care for her and shower in and out in an hour. My roommate was coming by for a tour at 8:30 pm and I was right on schedule. I just happened to look in the rehab hallway and there was Piston on the floor being manually stimulated to breathe by Michelle…
I will not repeat the words I chose to utter to myself as I closed the door to the boot barn to put my boots on. There was a lot of, “Why? #$%@ Why?” He had been lethargic and had thrown up bile a few times that day, but he had never been considered that sick. His temperature had been normal that afternoon and his latest white blood cell count was normal as well. There was no indication that this was going to happen.
I finished with my choice words to myself and walked on to the scene and asked, “What can I do?” Michelle put me to task. It wasn’t long before Dr. Carrie and Elizabeth arrived. Piston’s temp was dropping and he wasn’t breathing. Both women snapped into action and we had Piston on heating pads on the crash cart in Tim’s office getting the oxygen hooked up. Fluid bags were being warmed in the sink to be placed in and around Piston to keep him warm. My role became apparent right away and I was set to keep a record of Piston’s vitals and the drugs being administered. There was that initial shock that Piston was crashing, but there was no time to dwell on it. We were trying to save his life and that was all that mattered in that room.
Some of the drugs being used were familiar like dopram and atropine. There were others that I was not. They were used in the same sequence and for the same reasons as with Buckle. We were assisting Piston’s breathing, but that didn’t seem like enough. So Dr. Carrie decided to intubate Piston. I was responsible for keeping a light on the back of the throat while the tube was being inserted. This is the opposite of tubing, here the tube is supposed to go down the trachea. Once the tube was fixed in place the machine was turned back on and he was getting a direct line of oxygen instead of oxygen just being pumped into a nose cone for him to breathe in. Dr. Carrie also decided to insert a catheter into Piston to aid in administering drugs intravenously. The first attempt failed, something just didn’t set right and the catheter tube was removed. She stopped to monitor vitals and observed the heart beat was weak but somewhat steady. She then set to inserting another catheter and this one was a success. I can’t recall if Dr. Carrie ever did inject anything into the catheter before checking Piston’s vitals once more. She checked his pupil dilation before she called his time of death. She explained that his dilated pupils indicated that he was already gone.
I immediately went into business mode and started cleaning up. I thought to myself, “No time to grieve. Things need to get done.” I tried to put on this crusty, bitchy exterior to keep people away and I set to checking on our other animals. I let the other intern cry and be comforted by others. I didn’t want to be comforted because if someone did I was going to crack. I finished my observations of the other animals and went back into the office to write in the records. I must have been really focused because I didn’t notice Elizabeth come in behind me. She placed her hand on my shoulder and asked how I was doing and that was it…
I turned to Elizabeth and blurted out, “He wasn’t supposed to get sick.” And I began to cry. It was true; he wasn’t supposed to get sick. Piston had been under our care for more than a month. All we had to worry about him was if we could get him eating fish and off of formula. This was a low blow. I felt like I was falling apart. This was not a thing I did. I wasn’t supposed to show emotion, that’s how it’s always been. I’m the middle child. I’m the one that had to keep it together. My sister was the baby and the sensitive one, my brother, the oldest dealt with things with his anger. I was the one to hold it together and I usually kept my emotions to myself.
I expressed this to Elizabeth and she pretty much threw my own words back into my face. Reminding me what I had said at the end of my post about Buckle’s death. [“Everyone grieves in their own fashion in this line of work ... That is how we can come back in the next day and the day after that and so on.”] It hurt. Was I not smart enough to learn from my own words? I had an unspoken bond with this animal, so why wasn’t I allowing myself to mourn his loss? The answer was I was conflicted. If I was serious about rehabilitation as a career choice I couldn’t have an attachment to the animals I treat or I would go through this each time an animal died. But I can’t be totally insensitive towards the animals I treat or why do this job at all?
I’m still fighting within myself about this issue. I’m not sure what the right answer is. I do know it will probably be a balance I will have to discover on my own. For now I have a new buddy I cuddle with at night… he’s a stuffed harbor seal named Piston.
Chassis came to us on July 11th from Nome, Alaska. Nome is famous for being the finish line of the Iditarod, the annual dog sled race that stretches over 1000 miles of harsh Alaskan wilderness. She had an open wound on her on her neck that exposed her wind pipe and esophagus. Chassis had been suffering from this wound for some time because the some of the tissue had dried out and was contaminated with sand. She was placed in a quarantine area inside of rehab and unlike Nozzle, we were the primary caretakers of this bird.
Since Chassis was contained in quarantine within quarantine we were required to shower out of rehab twice a day in order to care for her. We shower in to care for her and when we are finished we need to shower out in order to re-enter rehab. Her care is pretty basic. The new and old food needs to be weighed out. The deck needs to be sprayed down and her water drinker washed and re-filled. The hard part is netting her in order to force feed her fish that contains her medication. I am surprised I can catch her because there are many forces working against me: she’s a smart bird and she learns from every mistake I make, the net is damn heavy and cumbersome, and I have to straddle the deck of a 10 ft deep pool full of frigid water in the process. Chassis and I both work up a sweat, well that is if ducks could sweat. When I finally have her restrained I give us both a minute to catch our breath before I force feed her. That is the easy part. I ensure her wings and feet are firmly tucked close to her body and I use one hand to tip her head back until her bill opens. My finger slides down closer to the back of the mouth and with the other hand I insert the fish until her swallowing reflex kicks in and she swallows the fish down on her own. I let her go and that’s the end of her ordeal for the evening.
Friday was the first time I was to go in and do Chassis’s routine on my own. I was making good time. I was hoping to care for her and shower in and out in an hour. My roommate was coming by for a tour at 8:30 pm and I was right on schedule. I just happened to look in the rehab hallway and there was Piston on the floor being manually stimulated to breathe by Michelle…
I will not repeat the words I chose to utter to myself as I closed the door to the boot barn to put my boots on. There was a lot of, “Why? #$%@ Why?” He had been lethargic and had thrown up bile a few times that day, but he had never been considered that sick. His temperature had been normal that afternoon and his latest white blood cell count was normal as well. There was no indication that this was going to happen.
I finished with my choice words to myself and walked on to the scene and asked, “What can I do?” Michelle put me to task. It wasn’t long before Dr. Carrie and Elizabeth arrived. Piston’s temp was dropping and he wasn’t breathing. Both women snapped into action and we had Piston on heating pads on the crash cart in Tim’s office getting the oxygen hooked up. Fluid bags were being warmed in the sink to be placed in and around Piston to keep him warm. My role became apparent right away and I was set to keep a record of Piston’s vitals and the drugs being administered. There was that initial shock that Piston was crashing, but there was no time to dwell on it. We were trying to save his life and that was all that mattered in that room.
Some of the drugs being used were familiar like dopram and atropine. There were others that I was not. They were used in the same sequence and for the same reasons as with Buckle. We were assisting Piston’s breathing, but that didn’t seem like enough. So Dr. Carrie decided to intubate Piston. I was responsible for keeping a light on the back of the throat while the tube was being inserted. This is the opposite of tubing, here the tube is supposed to go down the trachea. Once the tube was fixed in place the machine was turned back on and he was getting a direct line of oxygen instead of oxygen just being pumped into a nose cone for him to breathe in. Dr. Carrie also decided to insert a catheter into Piston to aid in administering drugs intravenously. The first attempt failed, something just didn’t set right and the catheter tube was removed. She stopped to monitor vitals and observed the heart beat was weak but somewhat steady. She then set to inserting another catheter and this one was a success. I can’t recall if Dr. Carrie ever did inject anything into the catheter before checking Piston’s vitals once more. She checked his pupil dilation before she called his time of death. She explained that his dilated pupils indicated that he was already gone.
I immediately went into business mode and started cleaning up. I thought to myself, “No time to grieve. Things need to get done.” I tried to put on this crusty, bitchy exterior to keep people away and I set to checking on our other animals. I let the other intern cry and be comforted by others. I didn’t want to be comforted because if someone did I was going to crack. I finished my observations of the other animals and went back into the office to write in the records. I must have been really focused because I didn’t notice Elizabeth come in behind me. She placed her hand on my shoulder and asked how I was doing and that was it…
I turned to Elizabeth and blurted out, “He wasn’t supposed to get sick.” And I began to cry. It was true; he wasn’t supposed to get sick. Piston had been under our care for more than a month. All we had to worry about him was if we could get him eating fish and off of formula. This was a low blow. I felt like I was falling apart. This was not a thing I did. I wasn’t supposed to show emotion, that’s how it’s always been. I’m the middle child. I’m the one that had to keep it together. My sister was the baby and the sensitive one, my brother, the oldest dealt with things with his anger. I was the one to hold it together and I usually kept my emotions to myself.
I expressed this to Elizabeth and she pretty much threw my own words back into my face. Reminding me what I had said at the end of my post about Buckle’s death. [“Everyone grieves in their own fashion in this line of work ... That is how we can come back in the next day and the day after that and so on.”] It hurt. Was I not smart enough to learn from my own words? I had an unspoken bond with this animal, so why wasn’t I allowing myself to mourn his loss? The answer was I was conflicted. If I was serious about rehabilitation as a career choice I couldn’t have an attachment to the animals I treat or I would go through this each time an animal died. But I can’t be totally insensitive towards the animals I treat or why do this job at all?
I’m still fighting within myself about this issue. I’m not sure what the right answer is. I do know it will probably be a balance I will have to discover on my own. For now I have a new buddy I cuddle with at night… he’s a stuffed harbor seal named Piston.
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