The Porter Creek Incident

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The kids were finishing up getting settled in the crowded car. Brenda, our oldest, had taken her seat on the front bench seat between Sandy’s folks, Pap and Grandma. Amy, Dee, and Derek struggled to get comfortable with cousins Dustin and Darin in the back seat.

“You guys are going to have your hands full this next week with this bunch,” I said as I gently pushed the rear door closed.

“We will be busy,” Pap said. “But it will be a fun busy.”

His first grandson, Russ, gave Pap his name fifteen years earlier. Russ called him Papas, but the name was shortened to Pap over the years. Pap was a retired longshoreman. in his sixties, he was starting to show his age.

Pap was old school. His voice was gruff, and he only said things once. His sons knew that he was not to be argued with, me not so much. He tolerated the grandkids pretty well.

Sandy and I stood and watched as the car pulled out of our driveway in Sweet Home. We were looking forward to a week by ourselves.

“Those kids are going to be tired of bumping into each other by the time they get to Myrtle Point,” Sandy said as she gave a final wave. “I hope Dad can keep his cool all the way.”

“They will do okay,” I said. They are excited to have the whole bunch.

***

As they approached Roseburg, almost two hours into the drive, Brenda leaned against Grandma as the ruckus in the backseat was intensifying.


 “Are we going to stop for lunch?” Brenda asked.


“Yes,” Grandma said. “We will stop at Porter Creek. It’s not far past Roseburg and Pap’s favorite.”


With that statement, there was a minor groan in the backseat. 


“The food at Porter Creek is awful,” Darin whispered to Derek.


Derek was our picky eater. That was the worse thing the Darin could have said to him. Feeding Derek at home usually resulted with his mother fixing him something special every night, much to the discus of his sisters.


At a restaurant, it was a real struggle. Usually, we would end up with a plain hamburger, and I would usually have to explain to the waitress just what Derek meant by a plain hamburger.


“When he says a plain hamburger, he means plain, bread, hamburger and bread,” I would explain. “That means no butter on the bun, no mayonnaise, no mustard, no lettuce, nothing! Just meat and bun.”


After Pap and Grandma got the kids all seated at a couple of tables, they placed their orders. Pap took the order from the kids and relayed it to the waitress. Pap always had difficulty with the four younger kids, all their names started with “D’, Dee, Dustin, Darin, and Derek. He usually had to say the whole list before finding the correct name.


Derek ordered a plain hamburger. There were no special instructions for the waitress.


True to form in a small country restaurant, the food came slow, and keeping the kids entertained was difficult for the grandparents. Pap’s patience was wearing thin by the time everyone had their food..


Derek looked at his hamburger. It had lettuce, tomato, onion slice and pickle on the side, but the bun was loaded with mayonnaise, mustard and some kind of special sauce. There was no way he was going to eat this burger. He folded his arms and sat back in his chair.


“What’s the matter, Derek?” Grandma asked.


“I ordered a plain burger,” Derek said. “This has a bunch of stuff on it.”


Grandma walked around the table. “We can just scrape this stuff off, and it will be fine,” she said.


“I ordered a plain burger,” Derek repeated. “I won’t eat this.” 


Now Pap realized what was going on.


“Listen up, Derek,” Pap said. “I paid for that thing, and you will eat it!”


Derek sat there, arms folded and a frown on his face. He didn’t say anything.


Everyone finished their meals. Derek sat there frowning. He never took a bite.


Pap motioned to Grandma, pointing to Derek’s burger.


“Norma, you wrap up that burger, and he can eat it when we get home or for dinner tonight,” Pap said.


Derek didn’t say a word as Grandma carefully wrapped the burger in several napkins. His frown deepened as he realized another battle was pending.


Everyone loaded in the car again, assuming their previous positions. Nobody dared to say anything about Derek’s burger. They all knew that Pap had a temper when provoked.


The ride to Myrtle Point was less than an hour from The Porter Creek Cafe. However, Oregon’s Highway 42 was notorious for its curves.


When they arrived, Grandma carefully put Derek’s burger into the refrigerator.


“I will warm it up for dinner,” she said to Derek. “Do you want a bite of something to tide you over until dinner?”


Pap overheard that exchange.


“If he wants something to tide him over till dinner, he can take a bite or two of that burger,” Pap said, in a gruff voice.


“I’m not eating the burger,” Derek replied. 



“You will go to bed hungry then,” Pap said.

Grandma tried to hush Pap. She could see that there was a test of wells brewing, 

“Derek, you run along and play with the others outside,” Grandma said as she ushered him out the door. Then she turned to Pap. “Brenda says that Sandy usually cooks something special for him at home.”

“Will, this is my house,” Pap said. “I paid almost two dollars for that hamburger, and he damn well better eat it.”

Nothing more was said. At dinner, Pap retrieved the hamburger from the refrigerator. Norma intercepted him and stuck it in the microwave. But it eventually ended up in front of Derek. 

Derek just folded his arms and sat there.

“That’s your dinner tonight,” Pap said. “If you don’t want to eat it, you can go to bed hungry.”

“I am not going to eat it,” Derek replied. He sat through the meal.

When everyone got up to run outside to catch the waning hours of sunlight, Grandma caught Derek as he passed through the kitchen. She handed him a toasted cheese sandwich, and, without saying a word, pointed to the table on the back porch.

Derek sat and ate his sandwich. Grandma went in and talked with Pap to keep him distracted.

In the years following, whenever Pap’s memory comes up, the discussion always seems to include the Porter Creek Incident.

Photo by Mart LMJ on Pexels.

Splints for Scruffy, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Hugh and I were walking out to the small pig pen beside their small barn. The pen held a large sow with a litter of eleven piglets about five weeks old. The reason I was here was because now there were only ten piglets. One had been found dead this morning.

Scruffy, a ragged cross between how many breeds, I don’t know, but he was the size of a Corgi, but that was his only similarity to that breed. He was constantly underfoot on our walk to the pig pen. He would constantly try to brush against my legs as we walked along.

“Scruffy, you’re going to either trip me or get stepped on if you don’t knock it off,” I said.

“He does that to every visitor he likes,” Hugh said. “He just trying to get petted.”

We stopped at the low fence around the pig pen. Hugh had pulled the dead piglet out of the pen this morning. The pen looked small for all the piglets, the dirt had dried, but you could, but from all the dry mud on the sow and the piglets, it had been mostly mud not long ago.

“The wife thought I shouldn’t worry about this guy,” Hugh said as he placed the piglet on an old set of boards they had set up on a couple of saw horses. “She thought the sow probably laid on him, but I want to make sure there isn’t something else going on that we need to take care of.”

“These guys are older than the piglets who get laid on by the sow,” I said. “They are big enough and active enough to get out of the way. Let’s open this one up and see if I can see anything.”

I opened the piglet with a long incision from his chin to his pelvis and spread the ribs wide. With a quick glance, it was obvious that this piglet died from migrations of roundworm larvae.

“Hugh, you can see his liver is covered with white spots, and his lungs are congested,” I said. “This guy died from larval migrations. We need to worm this whole group, both the sow, and piglets, and get them out of this pen and out on pasture.”

“I always thought the worms were just in the gut,” Hugh said. 

“That is where they end up,” I said. “When an infective egg is ingested, it hatches in the gut and migrates from the gut, through the liver, and into the lungs. Then the larva is coughed up and swallowed back into the gut, where it becomes an adult worm. It is sort of a numbers game. The body can handle the damage if there are only a few worms. If there is a bunch, this is how things end up. The problem is the dewormers we have now only kill the worms in the gut. That needs to be done, but if you have another pig or two who looks like this inside, you might find them dead. But we can stop any additional exposure by worming everybody and getting them out of this pen.”

I fixed Hugh up with what he needed to deworm the pigs, and he had a small pasture he put them into. I patted Scruffy on the head and headed back to the clinic.

***

The following week Hugh was in the office waiting to talk with me. I figured he had lost some more piglets.

“How are your pigs doing?” I asked.

“Oh, they are doing great,” Hugh said. “I think they are really growing now, and they have had no other problems. I’m here today about Scruffy. He must have gotten out on the road last night. He’s sort of broken up this morning.”

“Did you bring him with you?” I asked.

“Yes, he is in the car,” Hugh said. “But Doc, we are really short on money right now. I wanted to make sure it would be okay to charge things for a bit. Otherwise, I will just have to put him out of his misery.”

“Hugh, good clients can always charge here,” I said. “Bring him in, and let’s get a look at what’s going on with him.”

Hugh carefully laid Scruffy on the exam table. Even being banged up, Scruffy looked at me with bright eyes, and his tail seemed to play a tune on the tabletop as it wagged POP up away.

“I think he has a broken leg,” Hugh said.

I looked over Scruffy with him licking my forearm every time it came within his reach. His skin wounds were superficial. What we like to call road rash, just deep scrapes from being bounced off the pavement. His major problem was his fractures. Scruffy had fractures on both front and rear legs on his right side.

“Hugh, Scruffy has two broken legs,” I said. “Everything else is superficial, and I think we can repair both of these fractures with some surgery.”

“Doc, we are on a really tight budget,” Hugh said. “There is just no way we can pay for any surgery for Scruffy. Is there anything else you can do?”

“These fractures are both on his lower legs, so we could splint them,” I said. “A splint works pretty well on one leg. Dogs will learn to get around so well that sometimes they will wear right through the splint rods. But I have never tried to splint two legs. The legs will heal, but you might have a lot of nursing care during the month or two of healing.”

“That will be a lot cheaper than surgery, won’t it, Doc?” Hugh asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “A lot cheaper than surgery.”

“That’s what we will do then,” Hugh said. “If Scruffy becomes too much of a burden, we will just cross that bridge when we come to it. When can you do this?”

“We will work him into the morning schedule,” I said. “You can plan on picking him up this afternoon.”

We sedated Scruffy, but I would guess that I could have put his splints on with him awake. He acted like everything was fine throughout the entire process.

Thomas splints are easy to apply, but the splints are longer than the opposite leg. When dealing with one leg, dogs adapt to the splint very quickly. Often walking well the first day and acting like the splint is part of them by the third day. I was unsure how well Scruffy would adjust to having two legs in a splint.

When Scruffy woke up from his sedation, he had some difficulty just getting into a sternal position. He ended up with both splints splayed out to the right side. He looked and acted uncomfortable. But when Hugh came to pick him up, he was all happy, licking Hugh’s face when he picked him up, and his tail never quit.

“When do you want to see him again, Doc?” Hugh asked.

“I usually recheck these splints at the first week and every two weeks if everything is going okay,” I said. “You need to keep it clean and dry. I would guess that Scruffy will need some help, especially with his urination and BM. Let me hear from you if you have any problems. And for Scruffy, I would like to look at him Monday, just to make sure he is adjusting to his situation.”

***

On Monday, Hugh packed Scruffy into the clinic. Scruffy greeted everybody. He was back to his happy self.

“This guy is doing great,” Hugh said. “He had some struggles Friday night but was up on all fours when we got up Saturday. The only thing is his right legs are longer than his left legs now. So he sort of goes in circles to the left. But he gets where he wants to go eventually. We are embarrassed to say that we laugh at him now.”

We took Scruffy into the back of the clinic and set him down on the floor. When I called him, sure enough, he made a tight circle to the left and tried jumping up on my knees.

“You know, Hugh, I think he knows geometry better than most people I know,” I said.

Scruffy continued to do well, and we removed his splints after six weeks. His fractures were well healed, and he had to relearn how to walk in a straight line again.

Photo by Frágil y fugaz on Pexels.

Seventeen Bites, From the Archives

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

Mrs. Wilson was standing by the exam table holding her cat, Fluffy, in her arms. Fluffy was an average-sized female cat with long gray hair and striking blue eyes.

“What’s up with Fluffy this morning, Mrs. Wilson?” I asked.

“She has been sick for several days,” Mrs. Wilson said. “She hasn’t eaten a bit for at least two days, and this morning she started vomiting. I am sick with worry.”

“Let’s set her on the table, and I will get a look at her,” I said.

“Can you get a blanket for her,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Fluffy is used to soft surfaces, and that table looks cold and hard.”

Joleen retrieved a soft kennel mat and placed it on the table. Then she pried Fluffy from Mrs. Wilson’s arms. 

“She will be safer on the table if I hold her,” Joleen said as she directed Mrs. Wilson to a chair.

I petted Fluffy, and she did not respond to the attention. Opening her mouth, her oral membranes were dry, with some whitish mucus at the corners of her mouth. I picked up the skin on her back over her shoulder blades. It almost stood up on its own, slowly sliding back to a normal position.

Palpating Fluffy’s abdomen revealed a painful bladder. I squeezed the bladder slightly, and Fluffy cried a bit and deposited a few drops of bloody urine on the exam table. Mrs. Wilson was out of her chair and at the table to comfort Fluffy.

“We need to get some blood and urine out of Fluffy,” I said. “She obviously is very dehydrated. It might be wise to keep her overnight for some IV fluids and any other needed treatment.”

“I am not going to leave Fluffy overnight, Doctor Larsen,” Mrs. Wilson said.

“This could be a serious illness,” I said. “Treating her as an outpatient could be difficult and threaten her life.”

“If Fluffy is going to die, she is going to die at home,” Mrs. Wilson said. “I can leave her for a few hours while you do your blood work and treatments, but she is not going to be left here overnight.”

“Let me get a look at these couple of drops of urine real quick,” I said. “I just want to see if the kidneys are working.”

The urine had many red blood cells, white blood cells, and some crystals. The good thing was the concentration was very high, so we probably had functional kidneys.

“Okay, Mrs. Wilson, we can try to work within your limitations,” I said. “It looks like Fluffy is probably not in kidney failure. But she does have a serious urinary tract infection. We will do some blood work to make sure my initial assessment is accurate and get some urine for a urine culture. For her dehydration, we will give some fluids by subcutaneous injection. That is less than ideal but may be functional. It will leave a large squishy lump on her back, and her elbows will be baggy this evening. Then we can recheck her in the morning.”

We kept Fluffy and started by drawing blood and getting some urine from her bladder with a needle poke.

Her blood and urine showed a significant urinary tract infection, and we started a urine culture. 

In the cat, lower urinary tract disease is usually caused by diet-related issues and is seldom complicated by infection. Fluffy’s prognosis was pretty favorable with antibiotics, fluids, and a special diet.

Joleen had the treatment table set up to give Fluffy some subcutaneous fluids. We gave Fluffy an injection of amoxicillin in her kennel and then moved her to the treatment table for her fluids.

I commonly treated cats with fluids administered under their skin. It was a fast procedure and generally well tolerated by the cat. It was satisfactory in mild disease, but I would have preferred to have Fluffy on an IV due to the degree of dehydration. 

I stuck a sixteen gauge needle into the skin on her back, and Joleen started the fluids. I stood holding Fluffy by the nape of her neck, and Joleen was applying some pressure to the bag of fluids. We made some idle conversation as Joleen watched the fluids in the bag.

“How much do you want to give her?” Joleen asked.

Suddenly, Fluffy exploded!

Like is visualized in cartoons, Fluffy made circles around and around my arm, starting at my wrist, and in a brief second, she was at my shoulder. I managed to grab her and return her to the table.

“Are you okay?” Joleen asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I think she just scratched me.”

“I don’t think so,” Joleen said. “I think those are bite marks.”

We examined my right arm and my right side. Many bite wounds were evident on my arm and the side of my chest.

“I guess I better get a doctor to look at these,” I said. “The only animal that has ever put me in the hospital was a cat.”

I took a couple of cephalexin capsules and headed for the doctor’s office. They counted seventeen bites on my arm and my side.

“Do you think you should flush these wounds?” I asked the doctor. 

“I’ll have the nurse scrub these really well, and we will get you started on some Augmentin,” the doctor said. “That will be more effective than the cephalexin that you took. I think that should take care of things for you.”

I was cleaned up and returned to the office just in time to send Fluffy home.

“I hope Fluffy was okay for you, Doctor Larsen,” Mrs. Wilson said.

“Well, actually, she objected to the subQ fluids a bit,” I said. “In fact, she bit me seventeen times on my arm and the side of my chest.”

I held up my arm for her inspection.

“Oh my, Fluffy, did that mean man upset you?” Mrs. Wilson asked Fluffy as she reached into the kennel to console her.

“Well, we will be a little more cautious with Fluffy in the future,” I said. “We should recheck her in the morning. If things are improved, we will repeat the fluids and antibiotic injection and set you up with medication for home. And we will need to get her on a special diet for a time.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” Mrs. Wilson said. “We just want our little Fluffy to be well.”

“Well, if you remember, I wanted to keep her on an IV overnight,” I said. “This treatment is our second choice, and hopefully, it will work out okay.”

“Yes, I remember, but Fluffy will be much happier at home tonight,” Mrs. Wilson said.

***

Fluffy was much improved in the morning. We repeated the fluids, but this time we had Fluffy restrained in a cat bag. The urine culture showed an E. coli infection in the urinary bladder.

Fluffy went on the heal and returned to her old self. But she remained on my naughty list.

My wounds healed uneventfully.

Photo by Cocoparisienne/Pixabay