A Veterinary Journal by Claire Poole
February
Chapter 2 - Page 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Sunday 8th February
Back to the Clayfern Intro Page
Sunday 8th February
A friend visited this weekend. She arrived on Friday evening - rather later than anticipated after an unscheduled detour round Glasgow! After one visit, Clayfern is easy to get to, but can seem complicated for the first time. Sue’s trip from the north-west of England involved travelling on no less than nine motorways and several more dual carriageways before a trip across country on rural minor roads.
We enjoy having visitors. It is generally easier for them to come to us than vice versa, as a casual weekend visiting friends (so simple for ordinary people) involves the expense of engaging a locum and a fair degree of forward planning – the downside of being a single-handed practitioner. We are lucky to live in a scenic area, and our slightly eccentric lifestyle holds novelty value for our guests. In the evenings, they become used to my brief absences to answer phone calls and longer absences to attend to emergency cases. The more intrepid quite enjoy meeting in-patients recovering from any dramatic intervention.
As luck would have it this Saturday, Gillian was ill so Jay and Sue were enlisted to help during morning surgery. It was an uneventful surgery until our final patient - a duck named Donald (apt if not blindingly original!). Donald had survived a brief encounter with a dog but his white plumage was covered in blood. The wound on his wing was superficial and easy to mend, but the fresh blood dripping from his rear end caused me more concern. Poor Donald had sustained considerable damage to his nether region, and a further half hour was spent piecing the torn sections together so that hopefully outflow was not obstructed. Luckily, domestic wildfowl and hens, having relatively insensitive skin, seem to bear stitching with fortitude and Donald was no exception. This episode made Sue’s visit - a small ceramic duck we found in a local gift shop will remind her of this weekend, and no doubt the tale of Donald and his injuries will go down well in her city office!
Copyright Claire Poole 2005
