not always a happy ending

3/15/11

Vocab:
Myasthenia Gravis- skeletal muscle weakness due to a decrease of acetylcholine receptors at neruomuscular junctions

In my second day interning at the Emergency Room a husky had come in that was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, which just means that the dog is not able to contract its voluntary muscles properly (does not chew, walk, breathe, ect. properly). He was put in an oxygen tank at ICU (intensive care unit) for close monitoring. It was very heartbreaking for me to see this poor dog struggling to barely even keep his mouth closed and breathe (f). The next patient was a dog who had multiple problems and had new symptoms. This dog had cushings disease and they had also found kidney stones from the x-rays they had taken earlier. There are four types of kidney stones, 2 can be seen in x-rays and the other 2 are seen with ultrasound. In order to make sure he did not have more than the two that were present in x-rays we took him to ultrasound. Lucky for us he only had those two, unfortunately while they were looking through his abdomen they did see a lot of free floating liquid. They decided to get cytology samples of the liquid from two different areas. I accompanied the resident in telling his owners what was found. Once the resident told them this might be cancer and he probably did not have much time left, the owners were very depressed. When we went back to see the cytology (something I had to look at for my summer research) I was amazed and horrifiedto see all of the white blood cells in each slide because this meant the dog did have Cancer. Although this is not my dog it was very hard for me to keep my cool, seeing how his owners were crying at the news (f). They decided to take him home and think about whether to put him done or give him chemotherapy. As for the husky with the muscular problem, he got worse and was no longer able to take a breath on his own, so they kept him alive until his owners came and they decided to put him down (d). It is more difficult than I thought to know there is nothing that can be done to save animals, but I realize that although it is hard it is better to put them down than keep them suffering (A).