Today was one of those insane days at work that don’t come too often: emergency day.
When I came in to open the clinic (early, as I had to run an upgrade on our system) I saw the two emergency cases from the weekend that were still admitted and were both “CAUTION” patients. Lovely: a bitey cat (slipped disc) and a big bitey dog (rat poison ingestion).
Oh ho! You want me to give 10cc of vitamin K injectable to doggie-who-is-happy-until-one-actually-tries-to-do-something-to-her?
Heh.
The morning saw us frantically tending to two seizuring cats. Their owners had applied an over the counter flea control for dogs that is highly toxic to cats. The poor cats took a long time to get under control, and then we had to bathe them to try to remove any of the stuff that hadn’t been absorbed through the skin.
In an ironic twist, while the cats were seizuring, the fleas were still crawling on them, quite happy and alive.
When I called the company to get the information about the active ingredients, I was told that they don’t cause neurological signs. Really? Hm. Not what any of us (assistants, techs, or doctors) had been taught. It also kind of goes against what we were witnessing and have witnessed in the past.
Then we had a small dog hit by car. Shock treatment, iv fluids, and radiographs were ordered. The dog’s going to be okay, but has broken ribs and lung contusions.
We also hospitalized four sick animals. Bloodwork, xrays, medications; the works.
Wednesday looks to be insane too because we have a surgical specialist coming to do two Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy (TPLO) surgeries and a luxating patella repair.
Whee?
(Note: there are many documented cases of OTC flea control products such as Hartz, Sergeant’s, Zodiac, etc. causing toxicity in cats and sometimes in dogs too. Please, please don’t use them! Advantage, Program, and Revolution are more expensive, but they are safe. Take this from someone who has seen it first hand and has filled out the Adverse Drug Reaction forms.)
