Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – After-Hour Adventures!
Dr Liza’s Vet Tales Excerpt – After-Hour Adventures!
I continued attending to the horses each day for three weeks as part of our initial trial work, learning about the process of IHT in horses and their response. It took me about 90 minutes each way to get to the horses’ residence and back home again and Pete’s company organised me a rental car to use. The horse trainers believed that the horses were showing improvements in their performance and we were delighted with some positive preliminary results. We also made it onto national television news telling our story!
During this time I began the occasional shift at the after-hours clinic, absolutely loving “being back in the saddle” handling veterinary emergencies again. One morning after completing a shift I went downstairs to finally leave after a long night with many animals needing my attention. Feeling somewhat exhausted, I stood next to my fancy white rental car and pushed the remote to open the door’s lock but the door just wasn’t opening. I figured that the battery must be flat and so decided to open the door with the key but the damn key didn’t fit either! It then dawned on me that I was trying to get into the wrong car! Needless to say, I slept very well that night!
On after-hours shifts you can always depend on an oddball phone call at some late hour to keep you on your toes. Some of the calls that I received on duty left me feeling like there may well be a hidden camera collecting footage for a show like “Candid Camera” or “Funniest Home Videos”.
One night I got a call from an elderly lady who was very concerned as she had some anti-biotics for her cat from her usual vet but she had four left and she thought there should have been five left so she was worried that she may have given the tablet to her cat twice that day and should she rather not give the cat a tablet tomorrow because when she took her two blood pressure tablets at night her nurse said that she shouldn’t take any the following morning… I had a good chuckle!
I also had a phone call asking if I could treat a lady’s two-year-old frog that she’d had since it was a tadpole – she didn’t end up bringing it in though. I hope it lived to croak another day and didn’t croak if you know what I mean!
On another occasion, a guy was convinced that his dog had Alzheimer’s disease because he kept shaking his head. He told me over the phone that he had taken him to his vet and had started putting eardrops in that his vet had prescribed to treat the ear infection that had been diagnosed but he was most concerned that the dog’s Alzheimer’s wasn’t any better because he was still shaking his head! After a most frustrating few minutes trying to explain that the headshaking was due to ear disease he finally understood that his dog didn’t have Alzheimer’s disease, although I did wonder about him.
To read more about my adventures, read Vet Tales available as a book or e-book from https://www.drliza.co.nz/shop/