Look who I found in a dog fecal the other day: Giardiaspp!
We did the fecal because the dog had acute onset of profuse, foul-smelling, liquid diarrhea. In addition to the giardia, there’s also some motile rod-shaped and spirochete bacteria swimming around. These may or may not be contributing to the GI signs; some bacteria are normal inhabitants of the gut, others are pathogenic, and some can be both depending on strain or circumstances.
We treated with metronidazole and fenbendazole to kill the giardia, bland diet and maropitant to help with the diarrhea and GI discomfort, and probiotics to help reestablish the good GI flora that will also get killed by the antibiotic. The owner was also instructed in good hygiene and environmental disinfection practices to prevent re-infection and zoonotic transmission (the zoonotic risk is low given that different strains of Giardia typically infect dogs and people, but we don’t know if there are any immune compromised people in the household, so better safe than sorry).
The clinical signs quickly resolved, and the fecal was negative on follow-up.
((Sorry for the jumpy video; I had a hard time keeping these squiggly little dudes in focus and the phone lined up with the lenses at the same time ))
Our faithful old microscope finally kicked it (), and we’d been limping along with a cheapo one we got off Amazon, but we finally got enough saved up for a swanky new professional microscope!
The feel when you haven’t done a pig fecal in forever, so you aren’t sure if that’s ~really~ roundworm ova (since they’re so much smaller than the ones from dog and cat roundworm), but the vet trusts your judgement and deworms for rounds – and then your findings are confirmed. So very much confirmed.
And on top of that, now you have a new jar for your parasite collection!
Me: “Hi, it’s Dr. Blank. What’s going on with Doofers?”
Owner: “He had surgery Wednesday and when we took the bandage off leg, the bone is showing!”
Me: “I see we neutered Doofers on Wednesday. Nothing was done with his leg other than a catheter. How long ago did you notice this?”
Owner: “Wednesday”
Me: “His bone has been exposed since Wednesday?”
Owner: “Yes”
Me: “I’m sorry, this sounds serious. Can you send a photo?”
Owner:
“His skin is gone”
Me: “Ok. So, his fur has been shaved for the IV catheter. But his skin is intact, is there a wound you can see?”
Owner: “You can see the bone right there. It wasn’t like this before the surgery.”
Me: “You can see the shape of his bone, yes, but his skin is still covering it. If you look at your own wrist see how you can see that bony bump? But it’s not exposed bone, it’s covered by skin.”
Owner: “His skin has been shaved off. His arm is skinny.”
Me: “His fur is shaved off. His skin is under the fur. It’s like when you get a hair cut.”
Owner: “But I can see the bone.”
Me: “Ok well let’s get him in for an appointment because that is serious. You can come right now.”
Owner: “I can’t come until Wednesday.”
Me: “We really need to see him, he could be very sick.”
Owner: “We can’t. I’ll call back.”
I’m crying because the STRUGGLE. IS. REAL
Oh sweet potatoes, some people…
Oh god I hate it. She reblogs in the middle of an insane shift on break.
So, I’ve noticed a trend at my new clinic wherein more than one technician has been notating blood pressures like this:
“100, 102, 103 MAP 101″
And I am confused. They’re getting blood pressures with a doppler and it is highly questionable whether or not you can obtain a true diastolic measurement with the doppler, so I’m not sure how they’re doing this.
Unless… they think the MAP is just the average of the three systolic measurements? I was always taught that MAP = DBP + 1/3(SBP-DBP). Am I wrong? The training coordinator is doing this too, so it must be -ME- that is incorrect here. Help!
