Don't you hate it when it's slow all day at work and you finally get to leave and just as you start walking out the door the police drive up? Because at my practice, that only means one thing - they have a stray that they need me to examine. And for some reason the police don't feel the need to call ahead to schedule an appointment.
So, I was supposed to pick up the girls from daycare but now I got to stay late, and for little money to boot. You see, we give the city of Brooklyn Park a hefty 50% discount to evaluate and treat the stray animals they bring by (although the city hasn't found it in its heart to give me a discount on my taxes and fees). This newby police officer was struggling to get what appeared to be a dog out of the back of the squad car. Must be vicious, I thought, as I approached the car, only to find a little 12 week old pitbull puppy. With the biggest rectal prolapse I have ever seen.
What is a rectal prolapse? Well, it's when the rectum inverts on itself and pokes out of the anus. We see it more often in cats than in dogs, and it is definitely more prevalent in younger animals. It is commonly due to chronic straining, say from diarrhea due to parasites or a viral infection. Certain genetic defects, such as a the messed up back end you get in the tail-less Manx cat, can also lead to this problem. The treatment consists of placing the rectum back inside where it belongs and then suturing the anus partially closed for a few weeks so that it can't come back out. In severe cases, the rectum could be damaged and may need to be trimmed. And if none of that works, you may need to go into the abdomen and tack the rectum to the inside body wall so that it will stay in place.
Anyway, in most cases maybe an inch of rectum comes out. In this pup, however, it was at least 6, if not 8 inches. It looked like a long red balloon. I admit I felt a little like a large animal vet as I tried to replace it (don't they often have to do this when a cow prolapes her uterus?). Anyway, I couldn't shove it all back in (for one thing, the pup was straining against my efforts to push it in), so I told the police officer that the next step would be to sedate the dog and suture the anus. With the City Discount, the estimate was $100-150. For a dog that will be going to the pound to wait its five days for an owner that won't show up and then may be euthanized because pitbulls are not so easy to place. I didn't think they would go for it, but the officer called his supervisor and got the ok! Good for the puppy, bad for me because now I wouldn't be able to pick up my daughters as planned.
The procedure actually went really well (be slow, be gentle, and use lots of lube - a mantra that was repeated to our class by many a professor in vet school, as it pertains to all sorts of situations) and within 20 minutes the puppy was awake and no longer had a red balloon thing hanging out of his butt. Because of the severity of the prolapse, I give him a 60:40 chance of his body parts still being where they belong tomorrow when I come into the clinic.
So, anyone want a pitbull puppy?
Back when I got my first apartment, I decided to get a hamster. I named him Dustbunny, but really I should have named him Houdini. He had a habit of squeezing between the bars of his wire cage and escaping in the middle of the night. One night, he tried a little too hard, and this minuscule hamster got a prolapsed rectum. Problem was, he and his rectum were so tiny, I didn't notice anything was wrong for a few days. He kept running on his wheel and being all hamster-like, so I thought all was well. But he stopped eating. I finally saw that he had a little something attached to his rear, and when a warm bath in the sink didn't fix it, I took him to a vet. The exposed tissue had been out too long for her to stick back where it belonged. Dustbunny was only about the size of a half-dollar coin, and this vet performed abdominal surgery on him. He even woke up after the procedure was over. Sadly, he passed away the next day, but that vet was so amazing that when I eventually got my cat, I knew exactly who I could trust to take care of her.
ReplyDeleteI just had one of those last week. People with pups with rectal prolapses never have any $ so I end up discounting it (after presenting a full bill, I know, I know, we're not supposed to do that) so I don't have to euthanize the pup. I douse them with sugar for 15 minutes to draw some of the edema out of them.
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