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Forethought...
Mar. 30th, 2007 04:50 pmis apparently sadly lacking in some people.
Was presented with a large dog with a large ear laceration to be treated. The initial injury was a horizontal cut about an inch long, and about an inch and a half from the end of the ear. This, of course, created a flap of ear that was hanging sideways. Had the owner brought me the dog at that point, or just flipped the ears up and bandaged them to the head, and brought me the dog the next day, I could have made the ear look damn near like new again.
The owner, as you've probably already guessed, did not do that.
Instead, he decided it would be quicker/cheaper/easier/whatever to cut the flap off, creating a right angled chunk of missing ear. This, as anyone who was thinking ahead would have predicted, led to a considerable amount of bleeding. Owner addressed the bleeding by attempting to hot-cauterize the cut edges of the ear. I have no idea how he got the dog to hold still for this--I understand what cauterizing is, but you'd need 4 large men to hold me down for it. Anyway, dog stopped bleeding for the night, but banged the ear around and started bleeding again the next day, at which point the wife prevailed upon the hubby to bring the dog to the doctor.
Since seared tissue doesn't hold suture worth a dry spit in a windstorm, I had to cut a larger chunk yet out of the ear (this time in a rather gentle arc instead of a right angle!) and suture the edge of the whole slice. I used drugs, obviously, not large men, to hold the dog still. So it doesn't look half as bad as it could have, I think, but it is obviously shorter than the other ear, and a real pity since I could have made it much prettier if the guy hadn't fuckered it up before bringing it to me to clean up his mess.
He made a comment about how he thought that's how soldiers and the like used to stop bleeding when they were injured. I pointed out that they only did that when a surgeon wasn't around, and MOST OF THEM DIED. He said he hadn't thought of that...
Was presented with a large dog with a large ear laceration to be treated. The initial injury was a horizontal cut about an inch long, and about an inch and a half from the end of the ear. This, of course, created a flap of ear that was hanging sideways. Had the owner brought me the dog at that point, or just flipped the ears up and bandaged them to the head, and brought me the dog the next day, I could have made the ear look damn near like new again.
The owner, as you've probably already guessed, did not do that.
Instead, he decided it would be quicker/cheaper/easier/whatever to cut the flap off, creating a right angled chunk of missing ear. This, as anyone who was thinking ahead would have predicted, led to a considerable amount of bleeding. Owner addressed the bleeding by attempting to hot-cauterize the cut edges of the ear. I have no idea how he got the dog to hold still for this--I understand what cauterizing is, but you'd need 4 large men to hold me down for it. Anyway, dog stopped bleeding for the night, but banged the ear around and started bleeding again the next day, at which point the wife prevailed upon the hubby to bring the dog to the doctor.
Since seared tissue doesn't hold suture worth a dry spit in a windstorm, I had to cut a larger chunk yet out of the ear (this time in a rather gentle arc instead of a right angle!) and suture the edge of the whole slice. I used drugs, obviously, not large men, to hold the dog still. So it doesn't look half as bad as it could have, I think, but it is obviously shorter than the other ear, and a real pity since I could have made it much prettier if the guy hadn't fuckered it up before bringing it to me to clean up his mess.
He made a comment about how he thought that's how soldiers and the like used to stop bleeding when they were injured. I pointed out that they only did that when a surgeon wasn't around, and MOST OF THEM DIED. He said he hadn't thought of that...
