Dinner with Roy

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.

Edith and Coco

D. E. Larsen, DVM

Edith was an older lady who you would see walking down the street in Sweet Home daily. I don’t think she drove, but maybe she just preferred to walk. Her hair was always curled but not what you would call well kept. Some would call her petite, and I am sure she was at one time, but I would say she was matronly petite. In any case, the most important thing about Edith was she was always happy. We would notice that happiness in the clinic, and when you saw her walking, she always had a smile on her face. She could definitely enjoy the simple things in life.

For the first 5 years that we were in Sweet Home, Edith visited the clinic often. In fact, there was not a single month without a transaction on her account. This was unusual in that the average client might have three to five transactions per year. She would come into the clinic with Coco always in tow. Coco was a mutt, many people would call him an ugly mutt. He weighed about 20 pounds and had a gray, straggly coat. His lower jaw protruded well past his upper jaw, and when you looked at him, he would often smile, but it looked like a snarl.

Coco’s monthly trips to the clinic were more of a social event than a medical one. Coco was healthy as a horse, but there was always something that Edith wanted to be checked. I can’t remember finding anything wrong with Coco.

One Saturday morning, we were planning our day and hoped to take the kids to a movie in Albany, when the phone rang. It was Edith, and she was sure Coco had a problem. My initial thinking was Coco never has a “real” problem.  This was going to disrupt our entire weekend to go to the clinic and reassure Edith that everything was fine with Coco.

“Edith, are you sure this couldn’t wait until Monday?” 

But Edith persisted.

“Doctor, I know there is somewhat dreadfully wrong. Coco is just not himself this morning!” she replied.

I was stuck, but it should only be a brief visit. I arranged to meet Edith at the clinic in 15 minutes. Paul was home and could drive her and Coco to the clinic, so that would work.

Edith was smiling but concerned when she came through the clinic door. She thanked me profusely and reassured me that there was indeed some wrong with Coco. Coco groaned a little when I picked him up and put him on the table. Maybe he has hurt his back, I thought to myself. His temperature was normal, but Coco was not wagging his tail and was not acting his usual happy self on the table. His heart and lungs were normal, and the oral exam was normal. Then I got to the abdominal palpation. Coco tensed his abdomen from discomfort. His bladder was distended and uncomfortable.

I had almost made Edith and Coco wait until Monday.  And here we have Coco with a urinary tract obstruction. He could have been dead by Monday

.

“Edith, when was the last time you saw Coco pee?” I asked.

“Well, he was outside this morning and lifted his leg several times, but nothing happened.” 

“Edith, Coco can’t pee. Most likely, he has a stone blocking his urethra. If so, I will have to do surgery to remove the stone. I need to do some x-rays first to see if there are stones, how many stones, and where they are located. Most of the time, there is just one stone blocking the urethra, the tube from the bladder to the outside, and the surgery involves opening the urethra and removing the stone. If there are more stones in the bladder, we will need to do abdominal surgery to remove them also.” I explained.

“Surgery!” She exclaimed. “Shouldn’t that wait until Monday?”

“No, we can’t wait that long. Coco might be dead by Monday if we don’t do surgery now. At the very least, he would have some major complications by then.”

“You do whatever you need to do, Doctor,” she said. “We have the money in the bank to pay for it, and we can’t give Coco up.”

“I will get some x-rays and call if anything changes in my thinking after the x-rays. Otherwise, I will call following surgery, and we will arrange to send Coco home sometime this weekend.” I said.

We were going to have to get lucky to able to take the kids to a movie today. I took the x-rays, and sure enough, there was a stone stuck at the base of the os penis. The dog, like many animals, has a bone in his penis called the os penis. The urethra narrows slightly as it passes through a groove on the underside of the os penis. Most stones that cause obstruction are lodged in this location. Coco had no other stones visible in his bladder or elsewhere in his urethra. This would be an easy surgery.

I called Sandy and had her get the kids ready and come down to give me a hand. All the kids had observed many surgeries, so this would just be one more. I started getting Coco and the surgery suite ready, so we would be prepared to go the minute Sandy and kids arrived. The plan was to do the surgery, recovery Coco and then run to the movie while he was resting in the kennel. We should be able to send him home when we return from Albany.

When Sandy arrived, we got started with the surgery. I induced anesthesia with IV Pentathol and then put Coco on gas anesthesia. With him on his back, I clipped and prepped his posterior ventral abdomen. I could feel the stone. This should be a brief procedure. 

I inserted an 8 French urinary catheter. It came to a stop at the stone. I made a one-inch incision in the skin of the prepuce over the stone. Then I dissected through the soft tissues to the urethra. I pushed a forceps through the tissues on the dorsal surface of the penis to stabilize the area. Then with a careful incision, I opened the urethra over the stone. This incision was just long enough for me to grasp the stone with forceps and remove it. I immediately plugged the hole with finger pressure. I advanced the catheter into the bladder to empty it and avoid leakage of urine into the surgery site.

After emptying the bladder, I left the catheter in place to ensure my closure did not narrow the urethra. I closed the urethra with interrupted 4-0 Maxon sutures. Then with the same suture material, I closed the subcutaneous tissue with a continuous suture pattern. Finally, I closed the skin with 4-0 nylon interrupted sutures. I infused a small amount of Lidocaine for pain control and turned off the gas to start waking up Coco. Maybe 15 minutes had elapsed. Since he would be unattended in a kennel after he was awake, I gave him fluid under his skin on his back rather than IV.

Recovery was pretty rapid, and Coco was up and about. He would be fine and should be able to go home when we got back from Albany. I gave Edith a call and reported favorable results. We arranged to meet her and Paul at the clinic when we returned from the movie.

The kids enjoyed the movie, Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sandy had tried to cover Derek’s eyes in the spider scene, but he was able to fight her off. The kids had been worried they would miss the movie because they had seen family plans set aside more than once by a phone call.

When we pulled up to the clinic, Edith and Paul were waiting out front in their car. They were talking and laughing. Here was our happy little gray-haired lady who adored Coco, sitting in the car outside the clinic, passing a whiskey bottle back and forth between her and her husband. Now my only concern was them driving home.

Photo by Julian Hauffe on Unsplash.

Fast Ball Pitch in the Bullpen

This post is published today to honor the memory of NY Yankee pitcher Don Larsen. Don Larsen died today at the age of 90, he is mentioned in this post, written a couple of years ago as a memory of a from my growing up years.

D. E. Larsen, DVM

     I enjoyed laying in the haymow, resting before evening chores and pondering the mysteries of the world and reliving the day’s events.  The fresh hay was warm and chewing on a stem of grass yielded a pleasant taste. I could lay here, and nobody would bother me as I let my mind wander over the events of the morning before getting to the mysteries of life.

As soon as the barn was cleaned following the morning’s milking I had hurried to the house to change out of my barn clothes. I gathered my willow fishing pole and a can for worms as raced out of the house and off the back porch. That was one of those mysteries. Every home I knew of used the back door to come and go, usually through the kitchen. If the front door was never used and the back door was the main door in life, why didn’t the back door become the front door and front door the back door?

     I ran to the manure pile at the corner of the barn. I was anxious to get to the creek before the sun was on the water. The fish would be biting better early in the morning. I drove the shovel into the ground at the edge of the manure pile and jumped on it a couple of times to drive it deeper into the earth. Then with both hands near the top of the handle, I pulled back with all my weight. After a brief resistance, the shovel flipped over a large scoop of dirt. It was loaded with worms.  Breaking the dirt apart, I filled the worm can quickly.  These worms were large and wiggled a lot.  They had that bright reddish color that the fish seemed to like.  This was going to be a good morning of fishing.

     The run to the creek was several hundred yards, but I covered it in no time. I practiced my moves that I learned watching Crazy Legs at the movie last year. I scrambled over the fence at the wooden section and ran down to the creek.  This first hole was the largest and the best. There was a 4-foot waterfall at the head of the hole. The water was deep under the waterfall. I fished from a rock shelf that ran the length of the hole on this side of the creek. These early summer days were great fishing. The flow was just starting to slow a little, and the water was crystal clear. 

     I put my stuff down and untangled the line on my willow pole. My hands were shaking in anticipation as I threaded a worm on to the hook. The free end of the worm wiggled a lot. I would break this portion off if the worm supply was low, but I liked to leave it on for the first couple of fish. The larger fish would tend the seek out this squirming worm. I dipped the worm in my vial of Cod Liver Oil. I was less than convinced that it made a difference but my Uncle Duke was sure that it did and Dad said that it couldn’t hurt.

     With everything ready, I lowered the worm into the water at the deepest end, just a foot from the foam from the waterfall.  Bam, there was a sharp tug on the line before the worm was halfway to the bottom. I struggled a little, and the willow pole bent with the tip touching the water. But then with the spring in the willow branch and my pull, the fish came flying out of the water. Such a nice fish, probably 14 inches long. I quickly dispatched him with my pocket knife, driving the blade into the back of his neck at the base of his skull.  He didn’t even damage the worm much.

The morning went quickly, I had 20 fish and had only fished 2 of the main holes. I gathered up my stuff and the willow fork of fish and headed back to the house. Mom would have lunch made, and after I cleaned the fish and finished lunch, I could head out to the barn until it was time to do evening chores.

      I cut the heads off the fish with Mom’s large butcher knife.  She was always quick to remind me not to cut a finger off.

     “David, you be careful with that knife,” she would say, “You could cut a finger off before you know what happened.”

     It was good for her to remind me I guess, but you would think she should know that I would remember her warning by now.

     Uncle Duke left the heads of his fish on and cooked them that way, but Mom said she didn’t want them looking at her from the frying pan.

     It didn’t take long, and the fish were cleaned and in the refrigerator. They would make a good dinner tonight, enough for everyone. Mom fried them after dipping them in egg and the flour. They came out golden brown and tasted great. There was nothing better than fresh trout unless it was really fresh trout, cooked over a campfire.

     I washed and sat down with Mom and my brother Gary for lunch. Baloney sandwich and a glass of milk. We ate quickly without a lot of conversation. Gary had not wanted to fish this morning. I bet he regretted that decision after seeing the mess of fish I brought home. Anyway, I finished lunch and headed to the barn.

    The fresh hay was warm and smelled sweet. I pulled a long straw from a bale and casually chewed on it as I laid back and tried to decide if I should take a nap or solve some the mysteries that seemed to bother me a lot these days.

I wonder why girls are so different from boys. I mean the farm girls are not bad, they can do stuff like ride horses and do barn chores. They even fish sometimes. But the town girls, they play jacks and do hopscotch, that’s about it. Last summer when two LA cousins visited and I took them on a hike around the hill, they complained most of the time. They were not impressed with the duck pond on top of the hill, and then when they had to scale down the face of the cliff on the back side of the hill, you would have thought the world had come to an end. I thought we were going to have to turn around and go back the way we came. I ended up taking them down the cliff, one at a time. Almost had to place their every step but we all got down okay. To hear them tell the story when we got back to the house, you would have thought we had climbed down into the Grand Canyon.

     And then, maybe the biggest mystery of all, how does this barn roof shed water without leaking a drop. Laying here I can see cracks between every shake. At night you can see stars through the roof. I asked Mom once, she had no idea how it worked but said that “All barns are made that way.”  When I talked to Grandpa about it, he just chuckled.

     “David, they have been building barns that way my entire life,” he said. “I guess there must be a draft the keeps the water out of the cracks.”

     Grandpas are pretty smart guys, if he couldn’t answer, I was at a loss of who to ask. Then Uncle Ern, Grandpa’s brother who had been listening to the conversation, came up with a reasonable answer.

     “David, the hay is warm, that makes the air inside the barn warmer than outside, the warm air rises and goes out the cracks in the roof, that keeps the water out,” he explained.

     Made sense, but how come the hay was warm? I guess some things in life just are too complex to explain. Answer one question, and it leads to another question.

     I must have drifted off to sleep for a time. When I woke with a start, I could hear the cows coming into the barn for the evening milking. I would have to hurry to change clothes or I would be late for my chores.

     I hurried to the house, passing Gary on the way. He had just brought in the cows and was now trying to practice hitting a baseball. Throwing the ball up in the air and swinging the bat at it when it came down. He actually hit it once in a while. 

     After changing into my barn clothes, I hurried out of the house toward the barn. Just then Gary connected with the ball for a good hit. The only thing wrong was the ball landed in the middle of the bullpen.

     Of all places for it to land. The only place on the entire farm that was strictly off limits was the bullpen. All bulls were dangerous just like all guns were loaded. We were never allowed to touch the bull and even bull calves were off limits. Get caught playing with a bull calf, and your name was Mudd for some time. I never did know why Mudd was such a bad name, but that was the way it was around our place. This particular bull in the bullpen now was a young Hereford bull. The main concern on the local farms was with Jersey bulls. The Jersey bulls had the reputation of being the meanest of all the bulls.

     “What are we going to do now,” Gary said, “we will never get that ball out of there.”

     “Just go in and get it,” I said, “this bull is not mean, and Dad will never know.”

     “Not me,” Gary said, “I am too scared to go into that bullpen. What would you do if he came after you?”

     The bullpen was made with a high fence, two rows of woven wire with barbed wire on top. It was a large square pen, about 100 feet on a side. Right now the bull was standing at the corner near the barn talking to a few of the cows. He wasn’t paying any attention to us or to the ball.

     “I’ll go get the ball for you,” I said to Gary.

     I climbed over the gate and looked at the bull when my feet hit the ground. The bull glanced at me briefly and then turned back to the cows. I walked to the center of the pen and picked up the baseball. Again, the bull glanced at me but did not move and returned his attention to the cows. I started back to the gate. As I walked I made one fatal mistake, I started throwing the ball in the air and catching it as it came down. This caught the bull’s attention. The second toss and bull turned and kicked up his heels. Here he came at a fast trot.

     I first turned to run but immediately realized that being in the middle of the pen, I had nowhere that I could run to and make a getaway before the bull would catch me. I stopped, turned and took my stance. I had watched Don Larsen pitch his perfect game on TV last fall when visiting Mom’s cousin, Margery, and Mid Johnson, in Smith River. I had been practicing my pitching ever since. I concentrated on the bull’s forehead.

     Things were in slow motion now. The bull was closing the ground between us at a rapid pace. I could see Gary coming across the gate with the baseball bat, and I could see Dad jumping off the end of the milk house platform, he would be really pissed. I concentrated on the bull’s forehead. I took my windup and threw the ball as hard as I could. I completed my follow through and immediately assumed an athletic stance, ready to move in any direction if the pitch missed its mark.

     The ball struck the bull squarely in the middle of his forehead. It bounced off hard. The bull stopped in his tracks, shook his head a little, turned and walked back to the cows at the edge of the pen. I quickly retrieved the ball and ran to the gate. Now my next obstacle was Dad. I think I would rather face down the bull.

     “You damn little Buck Fart,” he said as he reached out to bat the back of my head. “What do you think you are doing in the bullpen?”

     I ducked my head just at the right moment to avoid most of the blow to the back of my head. That was from years of practice. “Gary was afraid to get his ball, so I went in after it,” I replied.  “That bull is too young to be mean.”

     “You are just damn lucky. That bull could just as well knocked you down and mauled you to death by the time I got there to help,” Dad said.

     “I hit him with my best pitch,” I said.

     “Your best pitch, I haven’t seen you throw very many good pitches, you are just lucky it hit him.  Now you get your butt in the barn and get your chores done and give some thanks to the fact that you’re lucky to be alive,” Dad said. “You can daydream about you pitching while you work.”

     I tossed the baseball to Gary and went to the barn and grabbed the bucket of milk for the calves. I was thinking while I portioned the milk out into the calf buckets.

     Dad was just like all my teachers, he just thought I was lucky, but just maybe, I am good.

Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash