Friday was my last day on Sports Medicine and it started out pretty chill. I learned about various physical therapy modalities and then the kennel workers brought Bob the greyhound in so we could do his therapy. After we took the splint off on Tuesday, Bob's leg was looking really good. We did therapy on his leg every day and were hoping to increase the range of motion in his joints and get him using that leg again. Then, on Thursday the entire medial side of his leg was swollen and had a huge hematoma (big bruise looking thing-when blood collects under the skin outside of the blood vessels) covering the inside of his thigh down past the joint that had been surgically repaired. He also had a fever, his temp was 104.8 and normal is about 101-102. So we continued giving Bob an antibiotic and also gave him an anti-inflammatory/pain med then rebandaged his leg to prevent any further injury.
Ok, now back to Friday. Bob comes in and the vet asks me to remove the splint/bandage and call him when I get it off. The vet also made a comment about how he wouldn't be surprised if the wound broke open and started draining while we were doing therapy today. Great. So I'm cutting the bandage off and Bob is just chilling, letting me do what I need to do. I pull the splint off and pick up my phone to call the vet. Before I could call him, blood starts POURING out of Bob's leg, it was like a fire hose people! At first, I thought it was just draining and the flow of blood would stop, or at least slow down, soon. Nope. Nope, that did NOT happen. So, I grabbed two huge handfuls of gauze (the closest absorbent material I could find) and put some pressure on the crazy shooting ridiculous blood pouring forth. While doing that, I called the vet and was like "Hi, I got the bandage off of Bob and--" he cuts me off before I can say "and he's bleeding profusely". He says he'll be right down and hangs up. Wonderful. Bob bleeds through the gauze in about 10-15 seconds so I grab a towel to put on there until the vet comes down. Fortunately, it wasn't long.
When he saw the bleeding and that it was shooting out like it does from an artery like you see in a crazy chainsaw massacre movie, he decided we needed to sedate Bob and figure out what was happening. He called in the other vet and we sedated Bob. They initially thought that the area was draining and that they could quickly go in, remove any blood clots and such and close up the wound that had been created by the shooting blood. After removing a few golf ball sized gelatinous blood clots, it became clear that there was a severed artery. Blood continued to pulse out of the wound and they tried to get some some hemostats clamped down on it to stop the bleeding, but they couldn't find it because it was too far up the leg to be able to access. At one point, Bob stopped breathing and we all just kind of stopped for a second and stared at his side just waiting...waiting...waiting. Then he breathed! Thank goodness. Then the craziness continued. At some point, it was decided that we needed to intubate Bob and get him on gas anesthesia. Let me just say that they don't often do surgery that requires gas anesthesia down in Sports Med-land. So we didn't really have any monitoring equipment and only the bare minimum of surgical instruments. I'm "monitoring" anesthesia by checking Bob's femoral pulse, looking at the reservoir bag for respirations and checking his mucous membrane color. At first, Bob's pulse was strong and regular but his mucous membranes were really pale due to the blood loss. As things proceeded, his mucous membranes turned grey (really bad!), his mouth was literally cold and his pulse became weak and "thready". All very bad things. We were giving Bob fluids, a full liter pretty much wide open. We were doing everything we could for Bob but things were a little scary. The vets were able to slow the blood flow but still couldn't find the artery. They decided there wasn't anything else they could do so they sutured up the wound and left part of it open to drain.
Bob's pulse and color started to come back to normal as he recovered but he was still pretty cold when I took his temperature. We bundled him up and got him snuggled into a crate. I checked on him periodically, his temp came up to normal and his color was looking really good by the end of the day.
I've never seen so much blood come out of one animal in such a short period of time and it was definitely scary at times. I maintained my composure throughout and felt like I had some sense of what I was doing, which is good considering internship is almost over and I have to get a real job in this field soon. Hopefully, Bob does ok this weekend. I'll definitely be checking in on him next week.
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