One of my least favorite parts of my job, is helping to end an animal's life. Everyone I know that becomes a Veterinarian does so because they love animals, and want to help them, they want to save lives.
Not every animal can be saved though, and sometimes the kindest course of action is to help alleviate an animal's suffering via a quick and painless death.
Determining if an animal is dead though isn't always as easy as it sounds. You listen for a heartbeat, but sometimes the silence and the absence of sounds plays tricks on your mind. Sometimes you may hear your own heartbeat, via blood coursing through your ears. I'm always fearful, that I'm going to pronounce an animal dead, and that it's then later going to get back up, causing the owners of the animal to have to go through the grieving process of watching it die a second time. I think that would be horrible.
Perhaps the reason for this fear is a story they told me in Vet school. They had euthanized a horse, the Doctor on call had pronounced it dead, they had then moved it into the cooler to store it over night, then the next morning when they had more time, they would perform a necropsy on the animal. Well, when the first technician arrives the next morning, they hear a horse neighing in the cooler. When the cooler is opened, the animal that had been euthanized the previous day is standing there presumably wondering why it's now so cold outside, and wanting to know when it's breakfast time. I figure if it can happen to the experts at the Vet school, it can happen to me too.
Halloween day a few years ago, I was called out to euthanize a long time patient of mine. It was a horse of over 30 years of age. It had been suffering with arthritis for the last several, and the owners had decided that it was time to say goodbye. The process of euthanizing an animal is fairly simple. I hit a vein with a needle, or a catheter, then inject a large volume of a drug that will stop the heart. This time turned out to be even simpler. I had a technician with me, holding the horse while I inserted the needle into the jugular vein. I was in the process of connecting my syringe to the needle, but wasn't there yet. Then something truly strange happened. The horse fell over dead. My tech and I looked at each other and mouthed "What just happened?!" The people behind me were also astonished, "Wow, that stuff works really fast." I went ahead and injected the euthanasia solution, out of fear of the horse getting back up, and these poor people having to watch their horse die twice. But I really don't think it was needed. That horse was dead. I think that what must have happened was that the horse had a heart attack, just before I euthanized it. Well, it was Halloween so maybe my tech's scary costume actually scared the horse to death, of course he wasn't wearing a costume. I still recommended that he go home shave, and really clean up I'd hate for him to scare his family to death as well.
As of this writing I am just returning from a pheasant hunting trip in Kansas with another veterinarian. We had gotten up early and were walking a ditch bank, a flutter of wings from directly underfoot woke us both up quickly. A quick shot with my trusty Mossberg .20 gauge shotgun, put our first pheasant on the ground. It was motionless as I retrieved it, but I wrung it's neck just to make sure that it was dead. Hunters never want their game to suffer. I then put the bird in the large pocket in the back of my vest, and we continued hunting. After about another hour of walking each of us now had one bird, we also had frozen fingers, and decided to return to the house to warm up, and take a break. After sitting in the truck for a few minutes, I feel the bird behind me start to move. "Randy, this bird is still alive!" I yell. "Shut up Mike, I watched you ring it's neck." "I'm serious, this bird is moving." I pull off my vest, which turns out to be a mistake. The bird now has more room to move, finds it's way out of the pocket, and is now flopping all over the cab of the pickup. Beating each of us with it's wings, while feathers are flying everywhere. With the distraction of the bird, Randy narrowly avoids putting us in the ditch. "Kill that bird!" He yells. I try to ring the birds neck again, but it's clearly already broken. The bird continues to flop. Suddenly the birds head pops off in my hand. The bird continues to flop around the cab of the pickup. "Kill that bird!" Randy yells again. "What do you want me to do?" I ask, while showing him the head of the pheasant.
Clearly I need to continue to worry if animal's are truly dead after euthanizing them. There were two Veterinarians in the pickup that day. Neither one of us able to tell if our pheasant was dead yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment