Blood Transfusion

On Monday a goat friend called me to talk about her goatling who was not doing well. She had had coccidia (which they were treating) and also had a huge worm load and (as she found out the next day after the vet came out) a PCV of 8 (normal is close to 30). What all this means is that the doeling (Nibbles) was extremely, critically anemic and needed a blood transfusion. On Wednesday she called and asked if Pippin would be the donor. So Friday afternoon I met our vet (Dr. Erin Purvis) and did the transfusion. The procedure was roughly as follows.

1. Shave and scrub (with surgical scrub and alcohol) Pippin's neck. Then put in his catheter, superglue it in a spot to his neck so he doesn't pull it out and put a layer of soft wrap and vet wrap around it (also so it doesn't fall out)
2. Go down to Nibbles and do the same to her (although it took longer to shave because she was fuzzier). Leave her under supervision so she doesn't pull her out.
3. Go back up to Pippin and prepare to draw blood. This includes removing all the lactated ringers solution from a 250 ml bag, put some heprin in the bag to prevent the blood clotting, then get the blood.
4. The getting the blood gets it's own section because it went v-e-r-y slowly at first. When you are drawing with a catheter (especially in these quantities) it takes some fiddling to find the right syringe to put the right amount of pressure to get out the blood without collapsing the plastic that the catheter is made of. Eventually however we found the magic formula and got all 250 mls of blood. Throughout all this Pippin was wonderfully cooperative, stood still, was sweet etc. As soon as we were done Erin pulled out the catheter and bandaged him up and he was done! Mum and Dad and John took him home and gave him some hay.
5. Meanwhile Erin and I took the blood down to Nibbles hooked her up with a slow drip and so continued for well over an hour. Nibbles was also well behaved (only tried to bite through the line once!) but the same can not be said for her brother... he tried very determinedly to make trouble the entire time. Anyway at last we got it all in her and left her sitting under her heat lamp.

I got some footage that I will be putting on Youtube soon if anyone is interested. Anyway that is my contribution to the blogosphere for the day!
Hope you enjoyed it!
M.

Random Musings

This is mainly a filler until I'm able to post about the blood transfusion I did with Pippin on Friday. I've been thinking about various things like what I'm going to do next summer... The current plan is to travel to California (hopefully via goat farms...if you are willing to have me send me an e-mail please!) and also to participate in the program "Summer Ventures in Science and Mathematics".

I've also been thinking about the morality of the amount of money our society spends on "Healthcare"... especially in animals. It seems that many of the important things in life are a conflict between the rational and the emotional. As I'm planning on becoming a vet one thing that seems to me might be hard to deal with, would be people who want to do chemotherapy for their dog with cancer. It seems so wrong, when there are children starving in the world, our country, my town, people with cancer who can't pay for treatment, and all the other inhumanities, that anyone be allowed to pay for that sort of treatment for an animal. And yet in some cases, for some people, their pets are their children. How can you tell them that there is no hope, that it is time to help them die. In some ways human doctors have it easier. There is never any question of "putting their patient to sleep" whether the condition is untreatable or the patient/owner can't afford to pay. And yet maybe the animals are the luckier. A human with a terminal disease who is in pain can't choose to end their lives (at least not without great inconvenience.) An old dog who is in the same position can have its life ended. 

I don't know what is the right thing. One half of my brain is being rational as my emotions try to shout it down... I'd be interested to hear what you thought.

M.