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.

Dystocia is a Sow

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

The sun was rapidly sinking behind the hills on the western side of the valley when I finally pulled into George’s barnyard. It had been a long trip to Lacomb. I didn’t like to travel this far for a call because it took more time than I could get an adequate fee to cover my time behind the wheel.

But George had a good client, and I had been up here on several scheduled trips. Tonight George had a sow in labor. I am sure that George would be less confident in my abilities if he knew that I had never seen a sow in labor before.

Swine medicine was almost a specialty in veterinary medicine anymore. If you wanted to be a swine veterinarian, you had to go to school in Kanas or Missouri. At Colorado State, I had argued to get a pig cadaver in freshman anatomy class. In clinics, I could count the number of pigs we treated on the fingers of one hand.

“George, what’s up with your sow?” I asked as I got out of the truck.

George was younger than me, but he must have been married longer. He had a whole gaggle of kids with him, all girls. The youngest one was probably the age of our oldest.

“She has been in labor for a couple of hours,” George said. “She has been straining hard, and nothing has happened. I think she is starting to get worn out.”

“She looks like a big sow,” I said. “I assume that she has delivered a litter or two before.”

“Doc, this is my best sow,” George said. “I get two litters a year out of her, and she has never had a problem in the past.”

“I guess I better get a look at her,” I said.

Sows generally have large litters. If there was a problem, delivery of the entire litter could take several hours. The uterus of the sow was long, stretching well into the abdomen. There was no way that a piglet at the far end of the uterus could be reached without surgery.

I scrubbed the sow’s rear end. She was lying on her left side and didn’t move with the prep. I pulled on an OB sleeve and lubed it up well.

I ran my left hand into her vagina. The vagina was also long, and there was little room for my hand to maneuver. Finally, I bumped into a piglet at the pelvic brim. This was a large piglet, and he seemed to be hung up. His nose was down, like a foal in a poll position.

They make a special forceps for retrieving piglets. Of course, with only a few pigs in my practice, I didn’t have such a forceps. I did have a head snare that I used on lambs. Hopefully, that would work.

I grabbed the snare from my truck and went to work, trying to get hold of the piglet.

“I think this is an abnormal piglet,” I said as I struggled. “It is large and seems to be hung up with his nose.”

“Are you going to be able to get him out?” George asked.

I never answered the question. I was working hard to slip the snare over the piglet’s head. Finally, I had it on the head, and I could feel it move as I pulled on the snare with my right hand.

I carried a handful of lube into the birth canal to provide lubrication. Then with slow, steady traction on the snare, the piglet flopped out on the ground.

What a sight! This guy was not alive. That was probably due to being the plug that was pushed on for two hours. This piglet was twice the size of a normal piglet, and his snout looked like an elephant’s trunk.

“Wow! No wonder she was having problems,” George said as he looked at the abnormal piglet.

George and I were engrossed with this piglet when one of the older girls tapped me on the shoulder. When I looked up, she just pointed at the sow. 

This old sow had been waiting to get the plug out of the way. In the couple of minutes since I had pulled this large piglet, she had three babies pushed out on the ground and another one coming.

By the time we got those four cleaned up, she had three more out behind her. She was spitting out a piglet every three or four minutes.

“I think my job here is done after I give her an injection of antibiotics,” I said. “So unless you want me to stay and watch, I will get on my way home. I am late for dinner already.”

“She is an old pro at this stuff,” George said. “I have some Combiotic that I can give her if that is good enough. How much do you think I should give her?”

“That pig was hung up in there for quite some time,” I said. “With most deliveries, I don’t use anything, but I would give her twenty ccs daily for the next three days.”

“Well, I can get it into her now with no problem,” George said. “But tomorrow might be a struggle, and the third dose, I think you are probably dreaming.”

“You’re probably right, George,” I said. “A good dose tonight might be all that is really needed. Maybe a dose tomorrow, but don’t get hurt trying to give it to her.”

It was dark when I started home. It had been an interesting call. As it would turn out, this would be the only sow that I did a vaginal delivery of piglets. I did do a C-section on an old sow some years later. Swine practice was never a significant portion of my practice in Sweet Home.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

My Christmases in the Army 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Company D, Private Drake speaking, can I help you,” Bill answered the phone on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1965. Bill and I were pulling CQ (charge of quarters) duty for Company D, a duty company for troops waiting for school at Fort Devens.

We were a couple of lucky ones; we were permanent CQs. We were given private squad rooms in the old World War Two barracks that housed an overload of troops in the considerable build-up of Vietnam forces. We worked in twenty-four hours shifts, with forty-eight hours off.

“Yes, I know a couple of guys who would be interested,” Bill said.

“What are you getting us into now,” I asked? I was not expecting an answer, but Bill was always quick to volunteer my services.

“We can meet you at Battalion Headquarters by eight-fifteen. We don’t get relieved until eight, but we should be able to make that schedule.”

Bill hung up the phone and looked at me with a big smile on his face.

“We have a Christmas dinner to go to tomorrow,” Bill said. “We have to be in Class A uniforms and meet the Battalion CQ at Headquarters by eight-fifteen.”

“Where are we going,” I asked?

“Does it matter? It is going to be better than eating Christmas dinner at the mess hall and sleeping for most of the day.”

Bill and I took turns going to the barracks, showering, and changing into our Class A uniform at six in the morning. When we were relieved by the next CQ crew, we walked through the snow the half a dozen blocks to Battalion Headquarters.

I imagined that we looked somewhat like Mutt and Jeff. Bill was six-four and had a heavy black shadow on his face even though he had shaved a couple of hours before. And I was trying to match his stride, and I had to stretch to measure five-eight.

The Battalion CQ was a Specialist four who had been in the Army for several years. He was waiting at the doorstep and fell in with us.

“We meet them at the main gate in fifteen minutes,” Stan said.

Bill and I were mismatched on height, but we were both in good shape and trim. Stan was taller than me and somewhat well-rounded.

“The main gate is over a mile,” Bill said as he lengthened his stride. I was used to matching his long stride, Stan sort of looked like a young kid who had to take four steps and then run four steps to keep pace.

By the time we reached the main gate, the snow was probably close to four inches deep. Mr. Terhune was waiting across the street in his VW van, and he had a couple of preteen boys with him. Getting into the warm van was a welcome relief.

We drove to their house in Groton, some four miles distant. The Terhune’s had four kids, and the oldest was their daughter, a freshman in high school, and three younger boys. We had dinner, which Bill jumped right into the kitchen to help prepare. Then we spent the afternoon and evening telling stories and enjoying the Company.

Having just pulled twenty-four hours of duty, a full day of eating, and storytelling, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow that night. But it was Christmas to remember, and the Terhune’s remained friends and a place to escape to for the entire year we were at Devens.

Christmas in Korea was a different event but just as memorable. I arrived in Korea in the middle of September 1966, and I was well adjusted to the country by Christmas. I was stationed south of Seoul with the 177th USASA Company. I spent a lot of my free time at the orphanage we supported in An Song.

A group of us spent Christmas Eve at the orphanage. Following dinner, the group of the primary school kids continued my lessons in Korean. The little girls were very serious about this instruction. They would frown when the boys were hysterical over my pronunciation of even the simplest words.

We did a Santa for the kids with toys purchased by the guys at the 177th. The kids all went to midnight mass, so it was late when they got to bed. 

On Christmas morning, we loaded everyone up and took them to Camp Humphreys for Christmas dinner with the entire Company. Before dinner, all the staff and the older kids had the opportunity to take showers in the barracks. That was probably the best present we could give them. Then dinner in the mess hall and entertainment in the NCO club. All the kids were well worn out when we loaded them onto the trucks for the trip home.

The next morning the young kids were hanging all over me. It was apparent the kids didn’t want us to go. The staff was still in a state of euphoria from their day at the company compound. But we loaded up in the trucks for the drive back to the Company. I opened the window and shouted goodbye to the kids in Korean.

“Annyeong,” I said. The boys almost rolled on the ground, but the girls laughed and waved.

 The drive back to base seemed longer than usual as we rolled down a dusty dirt road lined with dry rice paddies. My mind did drift back home with only a twinge of homesickness.

My experience in Germany was different still. I arrived in Germany in the middle of December 1967. Even though I had friends from Fort Devens there, I really had no time to settle into an off-duty routine before Christmas. My first Christmas in Germany was spent on the base at Rothwesten. Christmas dinner at the mess hall was well done and accompanied by some German carolers. The evening I spent at the NCO club, again filled with entertainment. It was less than ideal, but it was a pretty good day.

Christmas in 1968 found me in Schöningen, a small village on the East German border. I was stationed at Wobeck, a significant border electronic listening post, with about seventy of us stationed there. Christmas here was super. The town went all out on their decorations and festivities, and there was a Christmas spirit everywhere. 

We had a major Christmas Eve party at our ‘Swing Club’ in the Banhof Hotel. The club was not supposed to make a profit, so it had to give away a lot of booze to make sure the books came out even for the year. Needless to say, there were a few drunk GIs.

A couple of us were invited to Christmas dinner at Howey and Holley’s house. Wives were a recent addition at Schöningen. Until recently, only men without dependants were stationed there. Holley was the best cook that I had seen since my mother. Howey was very drunk at the end of the party, and we had to help Holley get him into the car.

They lived in Wolsdorf, a small village a few miles out of Schöningen. They had an upstairs apartment in a new house, still under construction. It was built on a hillside, and there were three stories with a high porch to the entry on the middle level. The steps and porch were new and not completely finished. There was no railing on the steps or porch.

When we arrived at one in the afternoon for dinner, Holley was slow to answer the door, and she looked like she was running on empty.

“Are you okay,” I asked? “You look like you have been cooking all night.

“I feel like it. We had quite a time at the party last night,” Holley said. “And my night was just starting when we left.”

“You know, we can find a place to eat in town,” I said. “You don’t have to wear yourself out to feed us.”

“I should have had you guys help me get Howey home last night,” Holley said. “Let me tell you the story.”

“When we got to the house, it was not too hard for me to get him out of the car. And I sort of kept him against the wall as we struggled up the steps to the porch. We made it up here with no problem. I stood Howey up on the porch, then I turned around and unlocked the front door. When I turned back around, he was gone. There he was, ten feet below, spread eagle in the snow and mud.”

“Is he okay,” Kurt asked? “That is a long way to fall.”

“He was too drunk to get hurt. But that was just the start of it. I had to get him up out of the snow and mud, back up the stairs, and then up the stairs to the apartment.”

“It looks like you made it,” I said. 

“Yes, I made, but there was a trail of snow and mud all the way. There was mud on the wall going up the stairs. You know how the Germans are. They would kick us out of here for such a mess. So there I am, in the middle of the night, mopping the porch and washing the wall. It seemed like I no more than finished, and it was time to get the turkey into the oven. It was certainly a Christmas Eve that I won’t forget in a long time.”

About this time, Howey makes his entrance from the bedroom. He was fresh out of the shower but still feeling the effects of the party. We greeted him, but Holley didn’t have much to say to him.

The dinner was excellent, as was expected from a cook like Holley. But with Holley shooting visual darts at Howey all through dinner, there was more than a bit of chill in the air. 

Kurt and I made a pretty quick exit following dinner.

Photo by Clarence Nishihara, South Korea, 1966.