Animals still live!
on Melissa Hipkins (Rwanda), 28/May/2010 04:41, 34 days ago
My sheep prosper, albeit I have to constantly remind the staff at the clinic to provide water for those tethered sheep felt to be likely to stray. We have not enough local anaesthetic or sufficient sheep to continue with operations, but with the help of Dr Olivier my oppo in things practical we have organised another session with the cows in the "couloir de contention" or a passageway where the cattle are held for examination.I had given a 2 hour lecture on dehorning that morning and had to try and explain in French what a yoke is. A yoke for those not in the know is a device for trapping a cow's head so it can neither move forward or back and essential for restraining a cow before dehorning. After doing all the internal examinations, there remained one cow with wall eyes and enormous horns.What exactly did I mean by a yoke? came the question, and like a mug I rigged one up at the end of this passageway and showed that it did what it was supposed to do in a rather Heath Robinson way.So you could dehorn this cow could you? I answered cautiously that yes I supposed it was possible with some strictures, bearing in mind I had emphasised that dehorning an adult was not a task undertaken lightly; you should have a good reason.I am used to using a saw for dehorning adults and the only saw available was a hacksaw. They are notorious for having extremely brittle blades that are too narrow to really hold a good direction when sawing. They did however have miles of dehorning wire that I detest. I have not used wire to dehorn an adult for the best part of 30 years. There was only 30 ml of local anaesthetic to be had and I usually would use at least that for an adult with horns as big as these.I decided in the end that to not demonstrate what I had been lecturing would be a bad move. With some trepidation I agreed to dehorn her that afternoon. Many is the time that cows have vented extreme displeasure during dehorning, they don't like being restrained and occasionally the local anaesthetic is not 100%. It could be noisy and bloody.The yoke composed of a thickish branch and a plank of wood wedged across the end of the passage way needed a lot more co-operation on the part of the patient than the average British cow would have given. Once in and secured with a halter, the anaesthetic went in easily. It was fortunate that I had been thumbing through an anatomy book and found a good diagram of the innervation of the horn and decided I had been going in too deep all these years and my technique depended on flooding the area!To use a wire to dehorn, you need to make an initial cut around the horn with a scalpel to guide the wire and keep it at the right depth. I thought this would give me good warning if the local was not adequate but she didn't move. Confidence rising, the horn came off with the wire without a problem and the students were impressed by the bleeding confined to the one large artery which was easily clipped and twisted. The other horn I tried with the saw. Half way through it jammed and shattered. I had planned for this eventuality and the only spare in the college was close by.There are always large holes left in the skull connecting to the frontal sinuses and I resisted the demand to fill these with gauze to prevent infection, feeling that gauze would cause more trouble than it would solve. She went into a shed for a few days to enable us to monitor progress and check for trouble with flies. I did another one the next day and so far the two of them have progressed well with no obvious infection or fly irritation.Home again at the week end with none of the traumas of the previous week. I now hang a small purse round my neck with a bootlace to make it more difficult to steal and the cheque sits in my rucksack and not to worry about any creases in it.It is really pleasant to get back; we seem to get on so well for those 36 hours we should make a habit of it. However it is a strain for Melissa to do the daily stuff when she doesn't get back until late and I also have the problem of which restaurant to eat in each night. Jacky has been left on her own with just written messages for the market, Melissa only seeing her if she gets back for lunch. She has been taking the initiative as to the tasks she should busy herself with. I came back this week to find she had disposed of the compost heap lovingly constructed by me over the months to nourish the rather poor soil. It's next door in the corner of a field collecting someone else's weeds. We have negotiated with Aphrodise to use some of his cow manure but it still means we have to collect and shift it all without a barrow.To really bring home the appalling lack of planning at the college I'm being asked to only come for 2 days next week as there is still no material with which to do operations. I can use the time to try and prepare some exam questions. I have just found out that our planned sheep caesars have been vetoed because there are no pregnant sheep. It is suggested some one goes out and buys some, but that could take weeks. It is hand to mouth as what we do in the way of practicals each day. Today I had the pleasure of allowing the students to remove the skin sutures from the 6 sheep done about 10 days ago and they all look very well, hardly a lump and no signs of infection or discharge. I have had to veto the suggestion of performing an ovariectomy on sheep as we can't get anaesthetic for dogs. There is no justification for such a procedure on a sheep and there are certainly no parallels with the operation on a bitch. I have suggested we demonstrate it on a dead dog but that seems also to be a problem; there is no humane method of euthanasia available for dogs.I voiced my frustration at the general state of things this morning in the company of Dr Shyaka, (Anselme) and Dr Juvenal, the dean of Vet. Med. The planned (when is anything planned here) visit to the hospital has been postponed because the hospital is too busy. The visit that had been planned for me to see the ultrasound machine has equally foundered. That set me off as to the failure of anticipation all round in respect of the practical sessions, the mysterious method of ordering, and my exclusion in the consultation process. They promise changes but not yet.