Chapter 21

Ashlynn

The full moon is here, tonight is the night. I am excited, yet anxious. I feel like so much is riding on this night. Mom will be running with Cody and it's her first pack run in literally a decade. She's probably crawling out of her skin. I say a silent prayer for her, as I move about my day with my work.

Early this morning, one of the cows that was pregnant, fell sick. Cody and I have been working relentlessly since before dawn, checking all the cattle. I'm not sure exactly what is the problem with this little heifer, but I'm leaning towards colic. She clearly has a tummy ache, rolling around on the ground like crazy. She's got a fever as well, and can't take any water without spitting it right back out. I've given her some morphine to keep her calm, but now we need to get her into our x-ray machine. Cody has rounded up a few of the ranch hands and Garrett, my vet tech, to load her onto a little trailer, to haul her to the x-ray machine door that is located at the back of the clinic. It's intentionally designed to open wide enough to back a horse trailer up to it.

I hear the truck backing up, and swing open the doors. Once the truck is close enough, the group of cowboys come to the back of the trailer and using a tarp with handles, they slide the mama cow out of the trailer and move her over to my x-ray machine. I have my lead on, and motion for the rest of them to head outside. Garret leads up too and we position the x-ray while he keeps his hand on the cows head so she won't move to much. Once I shoot the film, I give Garret a head nod and he walks over behind me to look at the films over my shoulder. I take my time pointing things out to him that I can visualize clearly. Sure enough, she has a twist in her bowel. It hasn't progressed to much, so I think we can try to get it fixed. She has a slight intussusception, and if I can't manually fix this, I may have to try some general surgical methods. I am hoping I don't have too. If we can't fix this, we may have to put her down. Colic can be very painful.

"We are going to need some help Garrett, I need you to go find Mike and Jarred. Tell them to wear clothes that they don't care about. It's about to get messy," Garrett gives me a wrinkled nose and walks out to grab the other two vet techs. I walk over to the heifer, who is moaning and starting to thrash around again, and inject her with a little morphine. Once I've got the extra hands, we will sedate her and try to manipulate her intestines manually. I'm not looking forward to this one bit.

My three techs walk in, wearing some tattered overalls, no shirts underneath. I raise my eyebrow at them, and they all just shrug their shoulders. "About to get messy, right?" Garrett says. "No shirt on, means no shirt to ruin." Fair enough I think.

I tell them all what we are about to do, and in sync the three of them look at me and say, "You want us to do what?"

"To late to get squeamish now boys. You had your arms up this cows uterus a month ago, let's not pretend you don't know what this is about." I just shake my head as I draw up the sedation. "We will try external adjustment first, and if that doesn't work," I shrug. "Arms are going up the anus. Period." Jarred acts like he's retching in the corner and I just roll my eyes.

"Ok boys, you hold her down. I'm going to try to manipulate her intestines externally. It's much the same way we turn calves in utero, or even horses. Once she's calm, I need one of you on her head. It's best if you have a knee on the neck, makes it harder for her to use her head to get up. I need one of you on her hind legs, in fact, tie them. Front and back. Whoever takes the front legs, will also help me manipulate if need be." I watch as they all take their places, Garrett taking the front so he can assist me.

I have massaged the abdomen of this cow for at least fifteen minutes and it feels like something moved. I need to x-ray again to be sure, so the boys step out and I lead up again. Once that's done, they come back in and I point out to them the difference between the first x-ray and the second. Seems the intussusception has improved, but there is still a slight twist in the bowel, very near to the rectum. Arms are going in.

"Alright, who wants to volunteer?," I ask. Every single one of them looks down, suddenly their boots are the most interesting thing in the room. "Pansies," I say. "Fine, I will show you how it's done, then one of you WILL try, because if this happens and I'm not here, I need at least one of you to know what to do." They all look up now, wide eyed.

Garrett steps forward, always the first to assist. It must be because he's mated, with a child and more mature. Can't chalk it up to anything else, because they all look green right now. "Alright Garrett, let's do this." I inject some more sedation, because this heifer is not going to like this at all.

I have Mike and Jarred hold her head and hind legs. The cow is laying on the lift table, so I raise it up and put her at my waist level, walking to the rear. I demonstrate to Garrett how to carefully advance his arm until he feels the rectal muscle. He nods when he's there. Next I instruct him to push past it very gently and just turn his arm counter clockwise. He goes slowly, following everything I'm telling him. Suddenly he gets a huge grin on his face. "I think I felt it move! I think I did it!" , he's very excited. Garrett pulls his arm out. He had on a latex surgical glove that went up to his elbow, but it's covered in poop, and he makes a face of disgust. "Man this is gross," he says as he de-sleeves his glove. Time for another x-ray.

We get the x-ray done, and I pull them back over and show them. "What do you think boys?"

"Holy shit!", Garrett hollers. "I did it."

"Yes you did, now don't you feel like you did something good today?" I slap him on the back as I walk by. He's grinning ear to ear. I lower the cow back down to the ground and now I just have to wait till she can stand on her own. I will keep her in one of the clinic bays for the night, then tomorrow we can turn her back out.

I look at the clock, it's already six p.m. "Alright boys, get on out of here. You have a big night ahead." They don't waste any time and they are off. I'm cleaning up the clinic when Cody walks in. I give him an account of what happened. He's shaking his head in disbelief.

"I cannot believe you were able to save her. I don't think I've ever seen that done. How did you know what to do?" he asks.

"A very good internship I guess. I've done it once before, so I knew it could work. Chances are normally slim without surgical intervention, but hers wasn't as bad as it could have been."

Cody nods his head and is about to walk out when he turns around, "Hey you going to full moon run tonight, right?" he asks. I nod my head yes. "Ok kiddo, see ya then. Good work today." He gives me a wink and walks out. I let out a breath that I'm sure I was holding for the last four hours. Thank the Goddess this went as well as it did. Time to go home and clean up and rest. It's a very important night.