The Longest Line

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The fog had settled over the field, and it was difficult to see the players. The fog was thick enough that even the players would lose sight of the ball when it was punted or when the pass was high.

I snuggled into the thin blanket the covered our laps. We were at Coquille, watching my oldest brother play football. I was eight years old in this fall of nineteen fifty-three. The early November night was getting colder as the game wore on. A mallard duck wondered out of the dense fog and into the glare of the lights. It flew in circles hoping for a place to land. For a time, it captured more attention than the ball game.

“If you need to go to the bathroom, you better go now,” Mom said. “It will be crowded when halftime starts in a minute or two.”

“I am okay. I will wait for halftime.”

When the buzzer sounded to end the first half, I started to the small bathroom located at the far end of the football field. There was an immediate crush of people leaving the grandstand with the same destination in mind. 

By the time I got out of the stands, I could feel that I had a bit more of a need for this trip than I anticipated. I maneuvered clear of the crowd and moved at a trot toward the bathroom. Even still, it seemed to take me forever to reach the small building.

There was a bunch of men piled up at the door waiting to get inside the building. They were all talking loud and gesturing with the hands and arms as they told hunting stories from the recent hunt or a story of playing football when they were kids. It was all interesting, but I just needed to pee.

Finely, I pushed between a couple of men talking at the door and squeezed inside. The place was packed, just like Mom had said it would be. There were four or five lines. I tried to pick the shortest line and took my place in the line. Things moved slow, and my urgency grew.

I was sort of bouncing from one foot to the other a big man turned away from the urinal, and the old man ahead of me took his turn. I took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be long now.

I looked around. The other lines seemed to be moving pretty well. I looked back at the old man in front of me. What on earth was he doing? He hadn’t even started yet. I was back to my little dance. Pretty soon, he should be done pretty soon.

Looking around, I started counting the cracks in the paint on the ceiling. There seemed to be a lot of cracks. I wonder how old this building was? Probably as old as my Father, I thought.

This guy seemed to be peeing now. It shouldn’t take him long at all. I bounced from one foot to the other. It was so bad, my bladder seemed to be painful. I started counting the cracks in the ceiling again. This place at least needed a new paint job.

How long can it take for an old guy to pee? He was still at it, and he wasn’t acting like he was getting close to being done. He must have a bladder larger than a horse. Even then, a horse doesn’t take this long to pee.

I looked at the ceiling again, closed my eyes, and started to hum. I don’t think I knew a song. I was just humming like an old tomcat purring. I thought if I could look away long enough, the old man would be done when I looked back. How long can it take for an old man to pee?

I was close to a disaster at this point. He seemed to be done. He was putting things away. I don’t think his mother taught him too well. It even seemed to take him forever to put himself away and zip up his pants.

Then he starts talking to the guy at the urinal next to him. What am I to do. He is telling a story. He is talking about the doctor working on his rigging.

I had to do something. I tried to squeeze in beside him and push him out of the way. He didn’t move. He didn’t notice.

“Mister, I have to go bad,” I finally said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, young man,” He said as he moved away and said to the man that he was talking with that he would tell him the story later.

I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the urinal, but it was worth it. What a relief, I thought as I relaxed every muscle in the body. In a short minute, I was done. I have no idea how that guy could spend all the time.

I moved away from the urinal, zipping my pants as I worked my way through the crowd to the sink. I rinsed my hands, no soap, no paper towels. I walked out into the cold air, wiping my hands on my pant legs.

What an ordeal. Next time I will listen to Mom. 

It would take nearly another 60 years for me to finally have some empathy for that old man in front of me.

Photo by HelpStay.com on Unsplash

From the Archives, one year ago

Click the link below.

/https://docsmemoirs.com/2020/05/01/rosebuds-wire/

Ruth and the Goose

D. E. Larsen, DVM

“Doctor doesn’t generally work of birds,” Sandy said to the lady on the phone. “He does make exceptions at times when it is a farm bird and not a pet. I hear you call this goose a pet.”

“I only called it a pet because that is how my husband treats it,” Sharon replied. “It is the only goose we have. It lives in the barnyard and herds the chickens around all day. He acts like he is the chicken leader.”

“Let me go ask the doctor before you come all the way from Brownsville to have him say no,” Sandy said as she laid the receiver down.

“I am talking with a lady with a pet goose. It lives in the barnyard. It has a large laceration on its chest. She is wondering if you will take care of it?” Sandy asked.

“If she understands that I treat farm birds like food animals, not like pets, I will take care of it,” I said.

Sandy scheduled the appointment, and everyone waited in anticipation for the arrival of the barnyard goose.

When Sharon arrived, the parking lot was packed, and the clinic reception area had no room, filled with clients and their pets. I was busy in the exam room, but Sandy popped in and said, “You have to come to look at this.”

I stepped out front, and everyone in the waiting room was standing and watching Sharon leading the goose down the street and across the parking lot. She had a baling twine tied around the goose’s neck, and the goose was waddling along like a dog on a leash.

As soon as the goose came through the door, chaos erupted in the reception room. The goose spread his wings and charged at the german shepherd pup, trying to crawl under the owner’s chair to escape the charge. The cat in its carrier on Rosemary’s lap was puffed up and hissing at the goose.

Ruth was quick to lead Sharon and her goose back to the surgery room, the only unoccupied space at the time.

When I finally had a few minutes to look at Timmy, the goose, everything in the clinic had settled down. Timmy had a long laceration on the right side of his breast. It was through the skin and extended into the muscle about a half on an inch deep.

“Wow, how did this happen?” I asked.

“We have no idea. My husband noticed it when he was feeding the chickens this morning,” Sharon said.

“We need to get Timmy under an anesthetic and clean up this wound and close it. Things should go well. Birds have a high body temperature, so superficial infections are not common following wound closure. He will just have a bare patch on his chest for a time. We’ll do this right away. I’ll have to work him in between patients, and he will have to stay until he recovers from anesthesia. Still, we should be able to send him home early this afternoon.”

As Sharon gave Timmy a kiss on his beak, I drew up a dose of ketamine for anesthesia to give as soon as she left.

“I am going to give him an injection of ketamine. This should allow us time to close the wound and have him wake up pretty quickly,” I said to Ruth.

“How quick is this going to take effect?” Ruth asked.

“It will take a few minutes. I am going to finish up in the exam room, and then I will be back. It should only take a few minutes to close this wound.”

With that, I left Ruth, a short, petite gal, holding a large goose on the surgery table. 

I hurried through the vaccination on Rosemary’s cat, Whiskers.

“Are you going to be able to take care of that poor goose?” Rosemary asked as we returned Whiskers to his kennel.

“Oh yes, he should be asleep shortly.”

All of a sudden, there was a terrible ruckus coming from the surgery room. Timmy was squawking, and we could hear his wings flapping.

“Excuse me, Rosemary. Sandy can check you out. I think Ruth needs a hand.”

I rushed to the surgery room. There was Ruth, desperately trying to hold onto Timmy. Timmy was flapping his wings wildly and squawking at the same time. I quickly grabbed him and got his wings under control. Ruth and I held him for a moment, and he drifted off into a deep slumber.

“What caused that?” Ruth asked. “He was fine and then just sort of exploded.”

“Just an excitement phase of anesthesia,” I said. “It is common with all anesthetics. We just don’t see it because what we generally use has such a rapid induction. I haven’t seen it with ketamine before, but then, how many geese have we had in this surgery room.”

With Timmy under anesthesia, we plucked the feathers around the wound and scrubbed the area with Betadine Surgical Scrub. After cleaning the wound with a vigorous flush, I sutured the heavy fascia covering the muscle layer with a continuous suture of Dexon. Then closed the skin with a buried subcuticular suture, also with Dexon.

With Timmy in a kennel to wake up, we thought the day’s excitement was over. That was until the girls were discharging one of the morning surgeries cases. The young dog freaked out when he was lead past the kennel with a goose flopping about a little. That just made the pup jump about a bit.

***

“Sharon, Timmy is all fixed up,” I said as Sharon returned to retrieve Timmy. “He is going to have a bald patch on his chest until he grows some new feathers, but that shouldn’t bother him much.”

“No, I don’t think he will care,” Sharon said. “Can he walk?”

“Yes, he is wide awake. We had a little struggle with him as he was going to sleep, but he recovered with no problems. He can walk out of here now. And it is probably a good time since there are no dogs.”

“He doesn’t like most dogs, and he is pretty protective of his barnyard. He sends our little house dog packing every time he strays too close.”

Sharon tied a twine around Timmy’s neck, and he hopped out of the kennel. He waddled out out the door on his leash, like he knew where he was heading.

Photo by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay