Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate

The holidays are here. In the ER tonight we have had lots of phone calls and patients coming in from consuming large doses of chocolate. Chocolate is very yummy for us and for animals but why is it toxic to them and not us? .

Well lets start with what chocolate actually is first; This lovely treat is derived from Theobroma cacao which are roasted seeds of theobromine/caffeine. Theobromine is a large portion of chocolate and luckily human digestive systems are able to break this substance down much more efficiently than dogs.  Half life is the duration of action from a drug or substance in which half of its affects subside. In other words if a human takes drug A, after 2 hours this drug will be "half" digested and excreted therefore the affects will have subsided. The half life of chocolate in a human is about 7 hours, in a dog this doubles plus to 17 hours. This means a dog will remain affected from the theobromine for this time and could have symptoms such as increased heart rate, vomiting, diarrhea, increased body temperature, rigidity, seizures, and advanced such as cardiac failure, and coma. Baking chocolate is the most toxic because it contains more caffeine and theobromine than milk chocolate and semi-sweet.

The holidays are great times to share with family friends but the Vet isn't usually a planned way to spend Christmas. As much as we would love to see your pets, we also want them healthy, happy and that includes being with their owners on holidays.  Keep chocolate away from your animals and have a safe and happy holiday. Merry Christmas bloggers.

Emotional Bond

Even as professionals, we too emotionally become bonded to our patients...Unfortunately in emergency medicine we often are faced with critical patients who don't realize we are there or are very very sick and have a poor outcome. Often times our patients also may stay a day or two for "simple" diarrhea or vomiting and those are the happy outcomes. 

As technicians we spend a lot of quality time with our patients and sometimes cannot help but become attached. We are involved in the every aspect of care with the patient and spend a lot of time perhaps just sitting down next to them and petting them on the head to keep them comfortable or administering medications, or "bedside" monitoring vital signs. Our jobs are to provide quality care and with that comes emotions to each and every one we care for on a daily basis. 

Recently we had a patient that was a middle aged lab and was blind, a very very sweet dog and spent a great deal of time in the hospital. The patient came in already blind and had both eyes removed previously from primary glaucoma but fortunately dogs adjust well to being blind. Often times they rely on other senses such as auditory and olfactory to adapt to their environments. This patient was very sick and had been through a lot at the Primary Veterinarian before coming to us. She had an exploratory (a surgical procedure for exploring the abdomen for various reasons) and was very depressed and not feeling well. She had a long stay in the hospital but fortunately went home feeling much better than when she arrived. Her technician was quite attached to her and loved this dog just in a few hours of her first night having her as a patient. Come to find out dad had a video on youtube of the patient with her at home which was very touching. We never get to see the patients in the happy days and it was great to see this one in her own home happy and healthy. 

Nights with patients like this keep us motivated to come back another day even through all the sad stories we could all tell in our experiences, we do love our jobs. We would love to see all of our patients make it home and continue on a happy and healthy life just like this one in particular. 

Thanks for reading, sorry I havent been posting recently. I am going to try and keep up at least once a week or so on just random topics or things that happen in our positions as a Veterinary Technician.  

First Post, Introduction

Hi bloggers,
I recently have become more interested in blogs and have been keeping up with ER Veterinarians up here and I thought I would start one for technicians or aspiring ones. I'm a Licensed Veterinary Technician in Virginia. I currently work at a referral emergency and specialty practice as well as at a zoo very part time. I have years of experience behind me in infectious disease research, academia, private practice as well as zoo and other. I love emergency and feed on the adrenaline that accompanies it. Currently the emergency practice only sees small animals such as Dogs and Cats. We see many great cases from infectious disease to hit by cars, gun shot wounds, and all in the middle. From the most critical patients to the easily managed, they are all special and require a deal of care and commitment from a team. I will likely post about interesting cases, decisions faced as a technician, some of my duties, my challenges faced on a daily basis, and answer any questions aspiring technicians or others may have regarding our field of vet medicine. Enjoy!