The little dog was clearly unwell, struggling to breathe in, flat, unhappy. The owners told me that it had been hit by a car; but from the outside, I couldn\’t find anything wrong at all. Not even a graze to be seen! I could see that the owners were really worried about their little friend, and there I was without a clue…
\”I really don\’t know what\’s going on with this little fellow!\” I told them. \”we will have to keep him in and do some X-rays, see if he might have a collapsed lung, or maybe something else going on- but then again, the symptoms he\’s showing don\’t match up for anything like that, either.\” I saw them back out into the cold grey Northern England day – windy, with rain spitting out of the sky. They wrapped up themselves in scarves and long coats, and I went back in, worrying away in my mind over what could be wrong with this dog. It was like nothing I\’d seen before.
I grabbed a nurse, and we took some pictures of his chest. I popped him back in the cage, and watched him for a bit while the nurse went into the dark chemical drenched cocoon of the X-Ray developing room. He was miserable, clearly struggling to breathe, and otherwise seemed absolutely normal. The pictures came out, still dripping wet from the developing tank. I looked and looked, but couldn\’t pick up anything. The other vets looked and looked too, and no, we couldn\’t find anything we could see. So we gave him overnight in the cage, and no change, if anything a little worse. I went through all the textbooks, and came out the other end none the wiser.
I sent the pictures off to my good friend, a fellow who was on a specialist surgeon track, and he thought he could see something wrong with the dogs windpipe. I knew the owners didn\’t have a lot of cash, but I rang them, and said that the next step would be to send the little fellow off to a bigger hospital. They rang back after a bit, and agreed to go ahead. A second set of X-rays, with their much better machine, showed that there was indeed something wrong with his trachea!
\”This is something I\’ve never seen before.\” My friends voice came over the phone, explaining. \”He has a separated trachea – so the shock of the impact stretched the trachea out, and it has snapped in half crossways, and now the soft tissue around it gets sucked in every time he tries to breathe in. It\’s a hell of a case, I can only find a handful even in the literature. I\’ve spoken to the owners, and we are going to have a crack at saving him.\”
I waited and waited for the call, then the phone rang. A tired sounding voice gave me the bad news. \”I\’m afraid he didn\’t make it, Ed. We came so close, but the only ET tubes we had weren\’t long enough to get down past the injury, and by the time I had gotten in to be able to intubate him from the outside, through the chest wall, he\’d just run out of puff. I\’m gutted, gutted! I\’ll probably never see another one, but if I do, I\’ll damn well save that one. Sorry to have to tell you this, but we gave it the best shot we could.\”
I was sad too, sad for the grand little dog, sad for the people… Not all vet stories turn out as well as we would like.