Doggie Surgery

I haven’t sewn up a serious laceration since medical school and I’ve never done any veterinary medicine, well, until now.

Chiquita suffered a bad injury yesterday morning. She was out in the “campo” (farmland) with Angel and playing up ahead with Scrappy, when Angel heard her let out a squeal of pain. She came running down to him and he saw a large, gaping wound right across her back bleeding profusely.

Apparently, someone had taken a machete to her back…who knows why. Angel tried to find the person (and he mentioned later it was probably better for them that he couldn’t). He only found another man who told him it was a child who had done it. Unfortunately, they were a 40 minute walk from home. By the time Chiquita got back, she had lost a lot of blood and collapsed on the floor.

Angel came and got me from breakfast and asked if I could sew her up since there wasn’t a vet in town. The wound looked quite deep, even broke into a rib, but I figured I could do better than nothing so hurried up to the clinic to get supplies. It was a frantic (and dusty) hunt through the bodega and ER but I got most of what I needed.

By the time I got back, thankfully they’d actually found a young man who had some experience in caring for animals (I guess you could call him a lay vet). He didn’t have the supplies he needed but had more experience than I did so we made a good team and sewed her up. I think he was laughing inside at my attempt to maintain some semblance of sterile technique. He used his bare hands and the gauze I brought to pick out hair from the wound and didn’t mind when the needle and suture dropped on the dirty floor. But, he was also faster than I would have been given that I wanted to irrigate the wound and close some of the bleeding vessels. He talked me into just leaving those and closing the skin.

He gave her a penicillin shot and I brought her some expired TMP-SMX from the bodega (it wasn’t hard to find expired antibiotics or a no-longer sterile surgery set). Chiquita did great (most likely thanks to her blood loss that made her sleep through most of it). We started her on oral rehydration solution (cooked with chicken heads to her liking) and she was actually able to stand up later in the afternoon and this morning. The young man will bring her iron to take to help her recover from her anemia. Now I’m just hoping that we can keep the wound from getting infected. She is such a sweet pup and definitely a member of the family. I really hope she makes it through.

Update: Chiquita is doing great. She developed a big hematoma and some bleeding a week later from the wound, probably because she was totally non-compliant with bedrest orders. I was worried that the bleeding wouldn't stop since we didn't close any of the internal vessels but it did and the hematoma is starting to go down.