Dinner With Roy, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

We moved to Sweet Home in June of 1976. Or at least Sandy and the kids moved in June, I still had some contract obligations in Enumclaw Washington so I sort of came and went for a few weeks.  The clinic was scheduled to be finished in August but there was one delay after the other and it was obvious that it was going to be months after August before it was completed.

When I finally moved to Sweet Home it was obvious that we were going to have to have a plan B while we waited for the clinic to be completed. Clinic equipment was arriving daily and the small apartment we had rented was bursting at the seams. We had finally put earnest money down on a house, so there was light at the end of the tunnel.

I had enough equipment to start a house call practice. The phone had been ringing with the growing community awareness that we had moved to town. I was not swamped, but I was generating some income so we were not going to starve just yet.

In late July I took the time to visit all the other veterinarians in the county. Most were surprised that I chose to start a practice in Sweet Home. They were cordial but not extremely excited.  There is an old saying in the profession, “The difference between a colleague and a competitor is 50 miles.” That was probably reflected in their responses.

Dr. Craig was completely different.  He had started a practice on Golden Valley Road out of Lebanon just the year before.  He had moved from Nebraska. He was a large man, very friendly and with a firm handshake.  Roy was a generation older than I, both in age and in education.  The profession was beginning to change and Roy and I reflected the fulcrum in that change. Roy was a WWII veteran and had been older when he graduated from vet school. My age and military experience gave us some common ground outside of the profession.

We discussed my situation and Roy expressed concern. He was going on vacation for 2 weeks and would not be around to lend a hand if I needed help.

“You are going to need a clinic to fall back on sooner or later,” he said with genuine concern. 

“House calls are okay for routine stuff but sooner or later you are going to need a clinic. Here, you take a key to this place. Use it like it is yours if you need it and we will see you when we get back.”

Roy hands me a key to his clinic after a half an hour of conversation. He really didn’t know me from Adam. Try to find a man today who would do something like that for a colleague. I don’t think Roy had heard the old saying or at least it didn’t mean anything to him.  I tried to decline but he would have none of it. This was the way it was and there was no further discussion.

Roy, of course, was right. There did come a time in those weeks when I needed to use his clinic. A small dog with a ruptured bladder after being hit by a car  needed abdominal surgery. Most people can relate to cooking in someone else’s kitchen where you don’t know where anything is at.  You ought to try doing surgery in someone else’s surgery suite sometime.  But I got through it, and I was forever in Roy’s debt in my view of the world.

After they got home Sandy and I took Roy and Jenny to dinner at the Hereford Steer in Albany.  In those years, the Hereford Steer was about as up scale as one could get in Albany. It was a small payment for their generosity and allowed us to build on a new friendship.

Sandy and Jenny got along well. Roy was much more of a talker that I but dinner was just beginning when the story telling started. I had not been in the profession nearly as long as Roy, but I was in a busy dairy practice in Enumclaw so I had my share of stories also. People often complain about how veterinarians can talk shop and tell stories over dinner but for us it is just the way it is. Veterinary medicine in the 1970’s was a life style as much as it was a career. Solo practice was the normal. That meant many long hours of work in professional isolation with few speciality people to send difficult cases.  If it was going to get done, it would be done by my hands. Family plans were often dashed due to a last minute phone call, and the phone often started the day as early as 3:00 AM.

Roy’s voice was loud in normal conversation, and after a couple of drinks I would guess it probably got really loud. With dinner over we continued the story telling and relaxed over a little Kahlua on the rocks. The evening wore on. We told stories of difficult deliveries, gaping wounds, abdominal surgeries, maggots and pus.

It was in the middle of one of Roy’s stories, he was describing how he was laying in the mud with his arm buried in the vagina of this heifer, trying to get some traction with his toes so he could reach just a little deeper, when I looked around and realized that we were alone in the middle of the large restaurant. The other folks and their tables had been moved as far away from us as possible. Some of the people were trying to ignore our discussion, and some where watching with horrified expressions.

It had been a great evening in our view. New friends and a colleague who I knew I could always depend on.  My only concern was how was I going to be able to repay this man.  The waitress, on the other hand, was very prompt when I raised a finger for the check.

Image by Devon Breen from Pixabay.

I Presume?

I Presume?

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The auditorium class quieted down as the professor took the stage. This was an entirely new experience for me. This class filled the auditorium, maybe 500 students.

The professor was a large man, and he looked like he could have been a linebacker in his college days. Not fat, just tall and well built, and very muscular.

He picked up a piece of chalk and, in a giant cursive script, he wrote ‘I presume?’ on the board. Then he returned to the podium.

“For those who don’t know me and have not figured it out yet, my name is Doctor Livingstone.”

The Fall of 1964 found me searching for some spark of inspiration to get my education back on track. I had been admitted to Colorado State University, and I was determined to pursue admission to veterinary school. 

Just how I ended up in Doctor Livingstone’s botany class was a bit of a mystery to me, even at the time. It was a science course and could have been in the pre-veterinary requirements at the time. Or possibly, an astute advisor recognized that Doctor Livingstone could be helpful for this farm boy.

Doctor Livingstone’s lectures were as intriguing as was his initial introduction. I always preferred to sit in the back of the class, and I initially picked a seat near the back and closest to the exit, and I had a full view of the auditorium. When Doctor Livingstone was speaking, he held the full attention of the entire class.

This class of hundreds was broken down into smaller groups of about thirty students for the laboratory portions of the course. Graduate students conducted the lab classes, but seeing Doctor Livingstone dropping into the lab was not unusual.

This system had pluses and minuses. For one thing, it allowed for a personal relationship with the graduate student. But with that relationship, I would learn that the lab class had an assigned row of seats to use and that attendance would be taken. That wasn’t too bad, but I lost my perch in the back of the auditorium.

In one of our Thursday afternoon lab classes, Doctor Livingstone stood behind our small group as we were discussing the microscope slide we were working on that day. As was typical for me, I stumbled over a few scientific words.

Doctor Livingstone corrected my attempts at pronunciation and helped the four of us complete the exercise. Then I noticed he went and talked with the graduate student and checked the grade book.

As the class was cleaning up and I put my books into my pack, Doctor Livingstone came over and sat beside me.

“Mr. Larsen, you’re a pretty good student, at least in this class,” Doctor Livingstone said. “Do you always have trouble with these long words?”

“I just have to hear the word a few times before I can get all the syllables to come out right,” I said.

“I will give you a couple of tips that helped me a lot when I was your age,” Doctor Livingstone said. “I had a lot of problems also. Maybe I am a bit dyslexic, I don’t know, but I just had problems with the big words. It doesn’t matter what you call it in your mind. You just need to learn to spell it correctly. And then, when you do have to pronounce it, you should do so with utter self-confidence. You will find, if you do that confidently, after a short time, everyone around you will be using your pronunciation.”

It was sometime later before I wondered what it was that prompted the doctor to spend those few minutes with me. But it was advice that I follow to this day, and there are still words that I stumble over.

My stay at Colorado State in 1964 was brief. My classroom performance was less than stellar. This was primarily due to the lack of maturity to apply myself to necessary classes that did not interest me. The fact that Colorado sold three-point-two beer to eighteen-year-olds could have had some influence on my school work.

I experienced the best in professors in Doctor Livingstone. And I watched the worst professor in my educational experience in my History of Western Civilization class, but that is a different story. Friday night dinner with my roommates was always five hamburgers, purchased for a dollar, something new to me. My PE class was swimming, and it took several weeks for me to adjust to the altitude. I spent way too much money that term, but it was fun. And then there was a brief encounter with a wild preacher’s daughter. All life lessons, some better than others.

It took me seven years before I returned to Colorado State University. I was admitted to the College of Veterinary Medicine in the Fall of 1971.

There are lessons to be learned here, and they don’t involve the preacher’s daughter. I have always been concerned about all the advanced placement available for students coming out of high school today. It is hard to argue against because of the high cost of higher education today. But suppose you are placed above some classes. In that case, you may lose the opportunity for a great professor, like Doctor Livingstone, to influence the rest of your life. And perseverance pays off. Not everyone is made to fit the mold educators plan out for kids, some of us have to find our own way.

One Large Wart 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doc, I have a heifer that is going to fair at the end of the summer,” Bruce said as he leaned on the front counter. “They tell me that they won’t let her into the fair with a wart.”

“That’s right, Bruce,” I said. “Warts are caused by a virus, and it is considered a contagious disease. They will send her home.”

“Is there anything that we can do to get rid of it?” Bruce asked.

“There is a vaccine,” I said. “It works, but I always try to crush a few off at the same time I give the vaccine. I guess I probably have more confidence in the crush than in the vaccine. But that is just my impression. I don’t have any data, one way or the other.”

“What do you mean by crushing a few off?” Bruce asked.

“If there are a few small ones, I just crush them off with a needle nose pliers,” I said. “Not very surgical, but it works. You see, the virus that causes warts is intercellular. So it never gets exposed to the blood supply to allow the animal to develop an immunity. By crushing the base of the wart, you expose that virus to the blood supply.”

“What if the wart is too big for doing that crush thing?” Bruce asked.

“Just what size of a wart are we talking about?” I asked. “Maybe I should be getting a look at this wart if you want to take this heifer to the fair.”

“It is about the size of a large orange,” Bruce said. “Well, it might be the size of a large grapefruit. It just hangs on her neck, just below her jaw.”

“Are there any smaller ones around it?” I asked.

“I haven’t really looked at it close, Doc,” Bruce said. “The daughter came home in tears from the last 4-H meeting, and I had never heard about it before.”

“I would suggest I look at this wart. The sooner, the better,” I said. “I would also suggest your daughter come up with another animal to be on standby, just in case we don’t get rid of this wart before fair time.”

“We have her tied outside the barn now,” Bruce said. “Sara is teaching her to lead, and they tell us that keeping her tied for a few days helps in the process. You could come by anytime.”

“When is your daughter home?” I asked. “I like to have the kids around when I work on their 4-H animals, and they need to learn as much about the health care of their animals as they can.”

“She is home any afternoon,” Bruce said. “Are you thinking about coming today?”

“Yes, I have some time, and it will take some time to get rid of a large wart,” I said.

“So, what happens to the wart?” Bruce asked. “I mean, does it just fall off?”

“Pretty much, it just falls off,” I said. “When the animal develops some immunity, the normal tissue under the wart sort of cuts the blood supply to the wart, and it just falls off. Sometimes after a few weeks, you can just pull them off. There is no bleeding at the point, and the spot heals pretty fast. Sometimes, it might be more of a process on large warts. And it might take more time.”

“How large do they get?” Bruce asked.

“I have seen some pretty large warts,” I said. “One Holstein cow had a wart, or a mass of warts, that was on and around her udder. There was more wart than there was udder. I have seen some animals with masses of warts on their necks. So they can get pretty large.”

“Okay, I will tell Sara to watch for you,” Bruce said.

***

Sara was out with her heifer by the side of the barn with I pulled into the driveway. Sara looked like she was twelve or thirteen, and she was a petite girl with long dark hair that hung over her shoulders.

“This is Bessie,” Sara said. “She is a Shorthorn

I petted Bessie and stepped back to look at this wart hanging from the ventral midline of her upper neck. Bruce was pretty accurate when he said it was the size of a grapefruit. The good thing, it was hanging from a relatively narrow stalk of tissue. The first thing that came to mind was that it could be cut off without too much trouble.

“That’s a pretty large wart,” I said. “How long has it been there?”

“It has been there several months,” Sara said. “It has been growing slowly, but there are some smaller ones now, sort of around it.”

I felt the wart and tugged on it a bit. Sometimes an animal will already have developed some natural immunity, and these warts will just pop off. No such luck with this one. I ran my hand over the skin around the wart. There were a half dozen small warts present. They were about the size of a pea and would be just the right size to crush.

“I think we can get this thing to fall off before fair,” I said. “But one thing you should think about, Sara, is if it does fall off in time, you should have another heifer ready to go in Bessie’s place.”

“That’s what dad said,” Sara said. “I don’t want to do that. If Bessie can’t go, I won’t go.”

“Okay, I can understand that. But you are putting a lot of pressure on me to make sure I get the job done,” I said. “So let me explain what I am going to do. First, I am going to give her a vaccine. And we will give her a booster to that vaccine in three weeks. I am also going to crush these small warts off of her neck. That won’t hurt too much, but it will make them bleed. I don’t want you to clean up that blood until tomorrow. Tomorrow you can shampoo the blood out of her hair coat and comb it if necessary. If it bleeds when you do that tomorrow, just let that happen, and don’t clean up the new blood until the next day. It is important that the blood supply is exposed to where I crush those small warts.”

With the explanation out of the way, I gave Bessie a subcutaneous injection of wart vaccine behind her elbow where any lump would be unnoticed. Then, I crushed each of the small warts surrounding the large wart with my needle-nose pliers. Bessie shook her head a little when I crushed the warts, but that was her only reaction. She was dripping blood from the area when I was finished.

“I will be back in three weeks,” I said. “If we are lucky, this big wart might be ready to fall off by then. If not, I will give Bessie another dose of vaccine, and we will wait another few weeks.”

“What is it going to look like when it falls off?” Sara asked. “I mean, is she going to have a big scar?”

“I think it will heal up and have hair covering any scar by fair,” I said.

***

Three weeks passed in no time. Bruce was out with Sara this time when I arrived.

“Doc, I think this thing is just about ready to fall off,” Bruce said.

“That’s a good thing,” I said. “Let me get a look at it.”

All the small warts were gone. This large wart was half detached, and it would probably be ready to fall off by next week. Pulling it off now would cause some bleeding, and we had plenty of time to resolve things before the fair.

“I am confident that this big wart will fall off in the next week or so,” I said. “All the little ones are gone. I am going to give Bessie another dose of vaccine, and I will stop by next week sometime and check her.”

“That crack around the side of that thing looks a little nasty,” Bruce said. “What if the flies start bothering it?”

“You can use some fly spray around it, and you can put some ointment on it,” I said.

“I have some gentian violet. Will that work?” Bruce asked.

“It will work, and it will make one hell of a mess out of her,” I said. “That stuff is terrible to work with, and she will still have a purple neck when fair rolls around. Let me give you a little bit of ointment to use. You won’t need much.”

***

Nobody was around when I stopped by the next week, but Bessie was still tied at the corner of the barn. The wart was gone, and the spot looked like it was healing well. Bessie would be ready for the fair. 

Photo by Julissa Helmuth from Pexels.