What Goes On Behind the Brown Door…

We got a call a couple Sunday evenings ago asking if Bettina could come and donate some blood.  The Emergency Vet sounded a little desperate for someone to bleed into a bag for them so I figured why not.  I fed the kids dinner, settled Blue into his crate, turned on the webcam and headed out with Bettina in tow.

We got to the emergency vets and the parking lot was full up.  That is a bad sign with respect to getting in and out in a timely manner.  I squeezed into the last parking space available and we went in.  All of their exam rooms were full up and there were a couple people waiting out in the lobby on the hard wooden bench for their turn to be seen.  While we were there 3 more people came in. 

So stoned she forgot she had a biscuit
in her mouth.

We took our place on the bench from hell.  It was about 45 minutes before they took Bettina in.  The vet tech told me they were going to type and cross match her.  They typically do this just before they take her blood so I handed her over and considered myself lucky that we only had to wait 45 minutes considering the queue of injured pets to be seen.

After I had sat out in the lobby for about an hour I started hearing a moaning howl followed by some indignant whining.  I would know Bettina’s voice anywhere.  I asked the front desk lady if that were Bettina making all that noise and she told me it wasn’t.  As I sat there, the noise continued and got louder.  The howls got more strident and more frequent.  I looked at the lady at the front desk and she went out back to check.  She came back out with a sheepish look on her face and said she had been mistaken, that it was indeed Bettina. 

Bettina doesn’t love getting sedated but I had never heard her complain so much about a blood donation.  As I sat there and listened to her heart breaking howls I began to imagine all sorts of terrible things going wrong with this donation.  I started to feel like a terrible mumma handing over my sweet baby to undergo what sounded like 8^th circle of hell type torture.  I kept looking at the lady at the front desk.  She was smiling weakly at me.

I began weighing the pros and cons of blood donation and considering whether the good deed was worth the pain that Bettina seemed to be going through.  Why would I voluntarily force my poor dog to do this.  She didn’t really have a choice.  I was mentally preparing what I would say to the blood donation coordinator on Monday when I called her to let her know I just couldn’t put my dog through that again.

In the meantime, Bettina was howling and whining louder and louder.  I reached a point where I was considering just going in there, putting a stop to whatever they were doing and taking her out of there immediately.  Each howl was stabbing at my heart.  I felt terrible.  My eyes started to tear up until finally I looked at the lady at the front desk and said, “I think it would help if I went back there and sat with her.” 

Stoned or not, Bettina never met a biscuit she didn't like

I was determined to get her through this and we would never go back again.  The lady at the front desk went out back and she was gone for a bit.  This made me even more nervous.  I was debating just busting through the door to the back room and liberating my hound super-hero style.  Just as I was preparing to get up from the bench, out came the lady.  “Oh they’re going to start the blood donation now, she should be done in 30 minutes.”

Miss Thing had not been crying because she was in pain, or had discomfort during her donation.  She was not being tortured under sedation.  She was raising a god awful ruckus because they had needed to put her in one of the kennels in the very back while they handled the rush.  She was very indignant at having been left by herself in a crate.  And she was telling us ALL about it.  A few minutes after the front desk lady told me her donation was about to begin, her highness shut her pie hole and was silent for the rest of the donation.

In about 30 minutes they brought her out to me, a little woozy and sporting a lovely pressure bandage around her neck.  The vet told me that they actually had a patient in house who was getting a Bettina transfusion at that moment.  That was the first time we’d actually been there on site when her blood was needed.  I sheepishly took her leash in hand, wished the transfused pup a speedy recovery and told them we’d see them next time.

Clean Up On Seven

Tonight Blue became a hero. He gave his first donation of blood at our local animal emergency clinic. In honor of Girly Girl, I took both Blue and Bettina to the clinic and had them tested. As most greyhounds are, both were universal donors. Since they are both healthy, above the minimum weight and their mumma promised to come when called, they were accepted into the blood donor program.

I got the call a couple days ago. The clinic’s current supply of blood was due to expire and Blue was next up on the donor list. So after dinner on Thursday, I bundled Blue up and we made our way to the clinic.

Luckily for us, it wasn’t busy at all which meant he got right in. I must confess to having a small fantasy that we would arrive at the clinic in the nick of time to save the day for some poor dog at death’s door. Blue would gallantly lie down next to the unfortunate canine and give a patient to patient transfusion thus saving the dog from certain extinction. Yeah right.

Instead, they took Blue out back and I read the newspaper while they drained my big guy. After awhile, Blue came out staggering slightly, looking a bit woozy. The clinician explained that they had actually had to tap both sides since the first attempt caught him by surprise and he jerked his head, collapsing the vein. He was prepared when they got to the other side though and she said he was the very model of a perfect canine blood donor.

For those of you who don’t already know, they take the blood from the large veins in the neck. Ouch. They had given Blue subcutaneous fluids on his back to help mitigate the effects of his recent blood loss. He looked like a four legged Quasimodo with his watery hump back. They had used cold fluids so the hump was not only squashy; it was cool to the touch. Blue is typically a furnace so it was strange to pet him and feel his warmth only to suddenly come upon a spot that was cold by comparison.

One of my big concerns about letting the kids be blood donors was that it may traumatize one or both of them. Any concerns I had about Blue were allayed when the clinician made a big deal of him for a bit and then turned to go back to the treatment area. Blue started in after her, clearly not traumatized at all by the woman who had just pierced his neck with a fire hose. That’s my boy. He doesn’t care what you are doing to him, as long as you are touching him. He had two staff members’ undivided attention for 40 minutes. For Blue, that seemed well worth the vampiric experience.

I put his coat on as they warned me that, as a white dog, he would bleed some more. I am familiar with Blue’s penchant to bleed more than normal and bruise terribly at the slightest hint of a breeze wafting by and inadvertently brushing his skin.

When we reached home, Blue seemed a bit woozier than when we had left the clinic. I figured it must have hit him on the ride home. He tottered inside and waited for me to remove his outdoor gear. I took his coat off and it turns out white dogs do indeed bleed. A lot.

There was fresh blood smeared all over his neck, chest and jaw. Small rivulets of blood were still trickling down each side of his neck from the newly minted puncture holes. The skin underneath all that gore was nearly black and he had a puffy, squishy dewlap of pooled blood just under the surface.

Two rolls of paper towels later and fifteen minutes of direct pressure managed to bring the flow to a level small enough to allow me run to the trusty medical stash and grab him some Yunnan Baiyao capsules. This is a Traditional Chinese Medicine remedy that we used on Girly Girl when her lungs were filling with blood. It is nearly miraculous in its ability to stop bleeding anywhere on or in the body. Within a couple minutes, the bleeding stopped completely.

I then turned my attention to clean up. Another roll of paper towels later, I had managed to clean up much of what could only be described as a scene from a slasher movie. There was blood on Blue, blood on me, blood on Bettina, blood on the floor…you get the idea. I even wrung another pint or so of blood out of Blue’s coat. I certainly hope no one investigates my garbage too closely. If they do, I’ll surely have law enforcement on my doorstep.

I spent the rest of the evening stuffing Blue full of his favorite treats and telling him what a hero he was. He was still pretty glassy eyed, but nothing stands in the way of Blue and a treat so he soldiered on until the treats stopped coming. I covered the dog bed in the living room with a blanket in case we got another gusher. Blue promptly plopped himself down and shut his eyes. He was so zoned out that he was completely oblivious to Bettina’s attempts to bully him off the bed. Even her death stare was ineffective this night. She was incensed enough by this utter lack of respect for her status as house bully, she began to whine and prance with frustration. Getting no quarter from mumma, she finally gave a very pronounced sigh and did the heretofore unthinkable. She joined Blue on the bed. It was truly a night of unusual events.

After a short siesta and some more treats deftly extracted from mumma, Blue rallied. His eyes were bright again and he spent some quality time with his favorite bone. I was relieved to see that all was well. Poor Blue had given twice the normal donation amount. We’ll have to come up with a better solution next time because my budget can’t afford another clean up on seven. And they’ve already informed me that Bettina is up next month.