Every Life is Precious

So I need to blog about a very important little patient that I saw on Tuesday. This was an hours old little chihuahua puppy. The mom got a little aggressive with chewing the umbilical cord and there were abdominal contents hanging out. Upon a brief examination of the puppy, I saw intestine outside the body. I quickly took him back to our surgery "suite" and placed him under anesthesia. It is very important in a patient that small to keep them warm, so we created a bed for him out of hot water gloves. This was a difficult patient to monitor anesthesia on as the drape covered his entire body and he was so small it was hard to monitor the bag for breathing as he barely moved it. Well once I got into surgery I realized that the intestine that was out was cut in two. After removing the dead tissue and having to resect more intestine as the first 2 attempts at putting them back together failed, I finally got the two ends of the intestines sewed back together and they seemed to be holding. I then opened the defect in the body wall a bit wider, put everything back into its place, and then closed the body wall. We held the puppy and kept him warm until he woke up (we had to listen for him to make sounds and to move as his eyes are ears weren't even open yet). Once he woke up we gave him some corn syrup for energy and sent him home to be with his mom so that he could stay warm and start nursing. He was started on antibiotics. The owner was informed that, although the "problem" was corrected, there is still less than 50% chance that his little body can withstand that much insult in his short lifespan. Unfortunately, the puppy died at home overnight. The owner still commends us for trying all that we could to save him, but it is still a loss that I am heartsick over. It just reminds me that every life is precious. Every life deserves a fighting chance.

Yesterday my boss gave me a card and in it she writes, "I know the puppy didn't survive and in some regards that is not the point. You did a great job and gave that little being a chance he would not have otherwise had. It took courage to do that surgery and you did it. It's not always the outcome that matters, sometimes it's the process of working through the problem that is the real lesson. You did good!"

I didn't think that I was courageous for doing what needed to be done. It was either euthanize the puppy (because he would of died from his injury) or do what I did and the owner wanted to do everything we could. However, the words that Dr. N wrote mean a lot to me because I don't always have the confidence that I need and I just had an issue with a client that shook my confidence (it was a high-profile client that I knew I would screw something up on and I did, mainly with my records, but I still screwed up and got a letter of reprimand from my boss at that time). So thanks Dr. N, I appreciate all your kind words.