Could I Be More Of A Mixture?

I am so happy yet so sad. All at the same time.

So my interesting work story for the week happened this afternoon. A 7 week old chocolate lab puppy was brought into us. The chief complaint: bloody diarrhea and vomiting. The first thing we think: Parvo.

For those of you that don't know (which is virtually everyone), Parvo is a virus that attacks rapidly dividing cells, i.e. the intestinal wall. When the dog vomits or makes a bowel movement, the virus moves in and further irritates the intestines, only making the dog sicker. Parvo can be cured if caught in time. If not, it can kill the dog. Now that you've been briefed, back to the story.

We drew some blood and tested the puppy for Parvo. The test came up negative. Even though this test is 95% accurate, there have been a few rare cases where the test came up negative and the dog was infected with Parvo. We did a fecal on the pup (examined her stool under a microscope) to look for things like Giardia that could have meant a different disease with similar symptoms. The fecal came back negative - we didn't find anything. We were still leaning towards Parvo as the source of ailment for this poor puppy.

When Dr. Hunsberger was in the room with the patient, talking to the owner, she noticed that the puppy was jerking around. They decided it was a dream rather than tremors because she woke herself out of it and was fine. If the shaking was tremors, then Distemper would have been the leading suspect.

I'm not exactly sure what the Distemper virus does, but I do know the symptoms. It's basically just like Parvo, the bloody diarrhea and vomiting being prominent. Distemper can also affect the nervous system, causing permanent damage to the dog, assuming it lives. Distemper can be cured, but most often it results in death.

So now we're not exactly sure what's ailing the puppy, either Parvo or Distemper. Either way, it's not good. We're going to treat her on Monday for Parvo, but she can't stay the night with us because she needs observation and there won't be people here this weekend. We referred her to an emergency clinic in Carrollton, that's where she is now. I don't know what'll happen to her, but I certainly hope she lives.

It was interesting. We couldn't handle any other puppies or dogs that hadn't been current on their vaccinations because if the puppy did have either of those very contagious diseases, they could get transmitted to the other animals. That meant that everything we (Debra, my OPN-Out Patient Nurse, the doctor, and i) touched had to be disinfected to kill the virus so it didn't spread to other animals. Our clothes needed to be disinfected, the hospital had to be disinfected...everything. I have my clothes and Dr. Hunsberger's clothes here to get decontaminated. You have no idea how freeing the shower was when I got home. I could finally touch something without having to make a mental note to spray it down with Lysol, I could sit down without having to worry about disinfecting it later. It was great! That was my adventure for today.

I'm so excited...Josh is coming into town this weekend for Father's Day. We're going out Saturday night. We're going to go see Cinderella Man. It's going to be great fun for everyone.

I'm exhausted, so I'm going to go to bed. Should have been in bed by now, but eh. I'll talk to you all later! Comment, please. I really do like hearing from you.

Tschüss!