Plant Day

This is, of course, a RSS story for @brutal-nemesis’s Plant Day 2021.

And please don’t kill me, but I kinda feel like I bent the rules here. The assailant here is not a fungus or protist. It is a part of the plant kingdom, but not like that.Anyway, on to the story part of this.

Trigger Warnings – also tagged: choking, alcohol, knives, blood, surgery

WC: 897

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“911, what is your emergency?”

A panicked voice came from the other end of the phone. “My boyfriend is choking and we can’t get it out!”

“Okay. Where are you?”

“Middle of the quad at OakU.”

“Any landmarks nearby?”
“Across the street from the ADG house.”

Victor entered the location into his computer and pulled up a map of the OakU campus. “Okay, help is on the way. My name is Victor. And you are?”
“Raegan.”
“Okay, Raegan. You said that your boyfriend is choking?”

“Yeah,” Raegan said, panic once again rising in her voice.

“And you tried the heimlich?” Victor asked.

“Yeah. It didn’t work. One of my friends tried that and they tried smacking his back. Nothing helped.”

“Okay. What is his name?”

“Hugo.”

“Raegan, put me on speaker.” Victor paused briefly as he waited for Raegan to oblige. “Okay, Hugo, if you can hear me, please give Raegan a thumbs up.”

Hugo barely moved. He was rocking back and forth, his arms slowly reaching at his neck, but his hands made no attempt to show Raegan a thumbs up. His olive skin slowly grew bluer.

On the other end of the phone, a message popped up on Victor’s computer. EMS was on the way, but Raegan and Hugo were not accessible by road. It would be at least 15 minutes until help could arrive.

Victor’s attention was pulled back to the call when Raegan began screaming.

“Victor, he’s not moving anymore! How much longer?”

“Your location is pretty far from any roads, so it’ll be 15-20 minutes. Can you try the heimlich again?” Victor pulled out his phone and texted Kai.

“I know you’re off, but I need help. College age male choking. Heimlich not helping. EMS 15-20 out. I am conferencing you in.”

Kai responded with a thumbs up and Victor entered his number into the console. “Raegan,” Victor said, “this is my friend Kai. He is a paramedic. He is going to help you.”

Kai cleared his throat into the phone. “Raegan, can you tell me exactly what happened?”

Raegan sighed as tears made their way from her eyes to her chin. “I was working on a project for my photography class. It was, uh, humans in nature. We were doing a shoot and Hugo decided he wanted a picture biting an acorn. I got a couple shots and then he tripped over a tree root. He must’ve swallowed the acorn and it got stuck because he can’t breathe and it’s not between his teeth anymore.”

Kai took a deep breath. “I am going to recommend something crazy, but it should save Hugo, alright? I think that you should attempt a field cricothyrotomy.”

“You want me to cut open my boyfriend’s neck?”
“Raegan, it will save his life,” Victor said. “Now, before I ask you this, I want to remind you that these calls are recorded, but I do want to help.” He paused. “Does someone over the age of 21 in the ADG house have alcohol, a knife, and a straw?”

“Yeah,” Raegan responded, but it wasn’t entirely true. She always carried a pocket knife and metal straw, and she had filled her water bottle with vodka at a party the night before. Victor didn’t need to know where it came from.

“Raegan, I need you to sterilize everything. Dump the alcohol on your hands, his neck, the knife, and the straw,” Victor commanded.

Raegan carefully poured the alcohol out of her bottle, through the straw, and onto her hands, her knife, and Hugo’s neck. “Done,” she said, putting her phone on speaker and placing next to Hugo’s short, scruffy black hair.

Kai took a breath and began to instruct Raegan. “Raegan, you are going to find the cricothyroid membrane, it is–”

“In that indentation below the Adam’s Apple,” Raegan finished.

“Yes,” Kai said with a slight bit of surprise in his voice.

“You sound surprised,” Raegan responded. “I find that knowing human anatomy is incredibly important to my art.”

“Alright then,” Kai continued, “You are going to make a 1-inch long incision. You are going to drive your knife in until you feel a bit of a pop. That means you are in the trachea.”

Raegan squeezed her eyes shut before busting them open again. She grasped the handle of her pocket knife and slid the blade across her boyfriend’s olive-colored skin. Dark red blood oozed from the opening. At the center of the incision, Raegan pushed down on the knife until she felt something different than the feeling of slicing through fascia and muscle. She slid her finger into the cavity and there certainly was a hole in something. “Done,” she informed Kai and Victor as she pulled her finger out of Hugo’s neck.

“Slip the straw into the hole in the trachea and take a breath into it,” Kai instructed.

Raegan slid her metal straw into the hole that had just held her finger. She wrapped her lips around her purple silicone straw topper. She gently exhaled through the straw. Surprised, she pulled back when she saw Hugo’s chest rise in his green hoodie. “He is breathing!” she exclaimed.

“Good,” Victor said. “Paramedics are about 5 minutes out. I can stay with you until they get there, okay?”
“Thank you,” Raegan replied softly. She buried her face into Hugo’s shoulder. Her tears joined the bloodstains on his hoodie.

Standing surgery to remove an ulcerated wart from a show heifer.

To do the surgery, we restrained her in a headgate with the farmer holding her head as still as possible with the nose tongs, and I did a local block with lidocaine and gave her a shot of banamine for pain/inflammation. I also covered her eye on the surgery side and pet her to help keep her calm (she was used to being handled and enjoyed petting; for some cattle that would make them even more scared). Then Doc prepped the area as best one can in the field and used an elliptical incision to remove the small mass. She closed with PDS, an absorbable suture, so they won’t have to be removed later. She did great!

Cattle warts are a common, usually benign problem that is self-limiting, though recovery can take up to a year. They are caused by several bovine papilloma viruses, which are not transmissible to other species. Surgery is usually reserved for ulcerated warts, as in our girl here, or large warts in unfortunate areas, such as the genitals or udder, that prevent movement or breeding. There is a vaccine available, but it has to be given young, before exposure to infected animals or equipment has occured.