Some of you reading this will already know that I spent a long 5 years practicing in metro Atlanta before coming to my senses and moving back to Alabama. This case is one that happened early on during that time- I was just out of grad school. With the benefit of the experience that I have now, I’m not sure I’d have handled things the same way if I saw it again, but here’s how it happened back in 2001:
At the time, I was an associate at a practice on the North side of Atlanta. It was mid-afternoon; I was talking to one of the techs in the back of the clinic when a pale-faced receptionist rushed in and told me that there was a dog in the lobby that had been shot. I ran up to the lobby, but instead of the horrific scene I expected, all I saw was a medium-sized fuzzy brown dog standing there. It was wheezing slightly and wagging its tail, with two distraught people looking at it. I couldn’t really see a problem with the dog until it turned its head… and that’s when I saw a snapped-off aluminum arrow shaft sticking out of the left side of its neck.
After I got over my disbelief- the dog was showing no signs of distress at all- I checked things over.
There was hardly any blood from the wound. Under the fur on the right side of the dog’s neck, I could feel the point of the arrow- it had almost gone completely through. By feeling the bulge under the skin I could tell that it was a practice tip, smooth and dome-shaped, and not one of the bladed ones used for hunting. That would explain a little of why the dog wasn’t in worse condition…
But now, I had to come up with a plan. The owners didn’t have a lot of spare money, so we had to keep it simple. The idea was to knock him out as fast as possible, get the arrow out, and hope that nothing bad happened when we did it. The relief vet that I was working with at the practice had finished what she had been doing, and came to see what I was up to. Here’s how that conversation went:
Other vet: “So… what are you going to do?”
Me: “I don’t know what to do except pull it out and hope for the best. I want to get him back up as fast as we can.”
Other vet: “What about putting a catheter in so we can run fluids?”
Me: “They’re good folks, but there’s not a lot of money. Besides, if the carotid is lacerated, he’s probably going to bleed out so fast I won’t be able to do much about it. I talked to them about the possibility.”
Other vet: “You may be right. Better you than me!”
This veterinarian, being wiser and more experienced than me, had the good sense to recognize a potential train wreck before it happened. And, just like a train wreck, it was impossible to look away while the tech and I got ready. I did note, however, that she was standing a respectful distance away when the event began. This was, I realized later, a self-preservation instinct on her part. It’s good policy to put some distance between yourself and a bad situation when you can.
We braced ourselves and injected a reversible anesthetic agent. When the dog went limp and the wheezing slowed, I grabbed the broken arrow shaft (while the tech held the head and neck still) and started slowly pulling. The arrow stuck a little at first, but then started sliding slowly out. As I reached the halfway point of the neck, I felt the trachea slide back into place as I pulled the arrow past it. The wheezing stopped. It occurred to me that this was because the trachea had been compressed when the arrow passed by it, flexing it upward toward the spine. I pulled the arrow out the rest of the way with no problem. There wasn’t a drop of blood- just a single hole in the neck about the size of a dime.
We woke him up with the reversal injection, and sent him home with the owners the same afternoon. I saw him again a year later while I was still in Atlanta and he was doing just fine.
Other vet: “So… what are you going to do?”
Me: “I don’t know what to do except pull it out and hope for the best. I want to get him back up as fast as we can.”
Other vet: “What about putting a catheter in so we can run fluids?”
Me: “They’re good folks, but there’s not a lot of money. Besides, if the carotid is lacerated, he’s probably going to bleed out so fast I won’t be able to do much about it. I talked to them about the possibility.”
Other vet: “You may be right. Better you than me!”
This veterinarian, being wiser and more experienced than me, had the good sense to recognize a potential train wreck before it happened. And, just like a train wreck, it was impossible to look away while the tech and I got ready. I did note, however, that she was standing a respectful distance away when the event began. This was, I realized later, a self-preservation instinct on her part. It’s good policy to put some distance between yourself and a bad situation when you can.
We braced ourselves and injected a reversible anesthetic agent. When the dog went limp and the wheezing slowed, I grabbed the broken arrow shaft (while the tech held the head and neck still) and started slowly pulling. The arrow stuck a little at first, but then started sliding slowly out. As I reached the halfway point of the neck, I felt the trachea slide back into place as I pulled the arrow past it. The wheezing stopped. It occurred to me that this was because the trachea had been compressed when the arrow passed by it, flexing it upward toward the spine. I pulled the arrow out the rest of the way with no problem. There wasn’t a drop of blood- just a single hole in the neck about the size of a dime.
We woke him up with the reversal injection, and sent him home with the owners the same afternoon. I saw him again a year later while I was still in Atlanta and he was doing just fine.
This one ranks as one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. The arrow went diagonally from one side of the neck to the other, missing both jugular veins, both carotid arteries, the trachea, the spine, the esophagus, and everything else important in the area. The only thing that had happened was a little bit of labored breathing. Incredible.
That must be an awesome feeling to help animals like that.
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