THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509210054
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 172 lines
CHARLES WAS SICK. The 5-year-old had dragged himself though the whole day. Here it was, 9 p.m., and he was dog-tired.
And now, in Exam Room Two, something raised the hair on the back of his neck. Charles trembled on the examination table, bulging eyes darting suspiciously around the little room.
``He's been having difficulty breathing and, see, his eyes are bloodshot,'' said Janet Buchanan.
Dr. Mark W. Honaker whipped out an ear speculum. Charles eyed him, locked his legs, bared his teeth and growled.
Too late. Charles the poodle was trapped in the Tidewater Veterinary Emergency Hospital on Virginia Beach Boulevard. This ER for animals opens at sunset and closes at sunrise.
Through the night, starting at 5 p.m., reluctant injured or sick patients like Charles scurry nervously from the crowded waiting room into the doctor's waiting hands.
And even though Charles would deny it, tonight would be pretty routine.
No wrinkled Shar-Pei with his head stuck in a tire.
``He looked like the people in the stockades in Williamsburg,'' said Honaker, recalling the patient. ``We had to sedate him and pull his skin out first.''
No chow with a knife in his nose.
``Somebody had stabbed him in the snout. He looked like a rhinoceros. The handle of the knife was sticking out,'' Honaker said, his palm jutting from his forehead.
No monkey with a chain wrapped around his neck. ``That was pretty unusual. We don't get many monkeys.''
Pet owners come from as far as Moyock, N.C. That's where a woman the staff affectionately calls ``the cat lady'' comes from, always with one of her scores of felines in a travel case. She was here, too, this night, making conversation in the waiting room with newcomers.
By sunup, and time to close up shop at 8 a.m., some drop-ins had gotten a sympathetic pat on the head, others a prescription. One left achy after surgery and a drug-induced sleep under the bright lights of the operating table.
Charles was lucky. Honaker, the hospital's director and veterinarian on duty, lifted up one of the dog's fuzzy ears and peered in.
``Hmm,'' Honaker said. ``He's got an ear infection. A big one.''
``And he had a headache,'' said Buchanan, his owner.
A headache?
``Oh yes, I can always tell when he has a headache because he rubs his head on the car seat like this,'' said Buchanan, dipping her own graying head to demonstrate.
No one knows a dog like its best friend.
``That woman,'' Honaker said minutes later, ``is in communion with Charles.''
In fact, frantic pet owners who rush into Honaker's waiting room are as anxious to be seen as if they had sick babies in their arms. Details about their pets' appetites, activities, even bowel movements, roll off their tongues as easily as their best-loved pet stories. They pace the waiting room and commiserate.
With the evening's first patients under his belt - casualties of a dogfight, and two coughing birds - Honaker turned to Poombah, a tiny shitzu-yorkie mix with a bad case of diarrhea.
Lori and Brant Handy had bought the pup just three days earlier at a pet shop.
Honaker tucked the dog under his arm for a trip to the treatment room, telling the couple, ``We'll go to the well and get a sample.''
Poombah, it turned out, had a treatable parasite. Other dogs have arrived with much worse in their stomachs.
``Once we had a dog who'd swallowed a dart and the owners didn't know it until it stuck out through its chest,'' Honaker recalled.
This night's drama turned out to be Brandy, an 8-year-old golden labrador who was mauled by two other dogs. The doctor gingerly handled Brandy's legs, all four bruised and bleeding from bites.
Puncture wounds bloodied the hair on Brandy's back and chest. The two attackers pulled the outer layer of skin away from the under layer, leaving pockets that could get infected.
Charles Mathews listened as Honaker diagnosed his pet's injury and advised hospitalization and surgery later that night.
``It was over when I got there,'' Mathews said. ``My daughter's two dogs just ganged up on him.''
He left, arranging to pick Brandy up before the hospital closed in the morning.
Accidents like Brandy's wax and wane with the seasons, Honaker said.
Dogfights are more common in the summer, when pets are outdoors. So is parvo virus, a potentially fatal disease. Cold weather brings in those who've lapped up antifreeze or rodent killer. Spring and fall signal birthing season and a rash of difficult deliveries.
And they all arrive at night.
While the rest of Tidewater put its feet up for the evening, Honaker sipped his coffee and quietly quizzed Julie Brunges, a veterinary extern from Virginia Tech, about a patient both had just seen.
Mary Sowash, his licensed veterinary technician, changed the towels on the surgical table. Sowash is operating room assistant, anesthesiologist, X-ray tech, scrub nurse, hospital orderly, ``I do a little bit of everything.'' Her right hand this night was Cindy Scott, a veterinary assistant and college student.
The staff is made up of softies, often tempted to rescue unwanted pets. Honaker won't euthanize an animal if he thinks he can heal it and find it a home.
Toward 10 p.m., another dogfight victim, a samoyed mix called Malachi, came in with puncture wounds. His bushy cream coat trailed red flecks across the tiled floor.
Odd thing about dogfights, Honaker said later, telling a story about a woman he'd asked, ``Was your dog shaken in the dogfight? She said her dog wasn't in a dogfight. The other dog attacked him. People are so funny. They think it reflects badly on their dog to say they've been in a dogfight.''
Honaker takes a look at Malachi.
``The neck wound is superficial. The shoulder wound, ideally, would need a drain,'' he said to the owners, Paul and Martha Basal.
They asked, ``What would you do if it were your dog?''
Honaker conceded the general anesthesia needed to put in the drain is always risky. The wound could heal on its own with good care and antibiotics.
``What's your opinion?'' Paul Basal asked his wife.
``I want to take him home,'' she said. They did.
Malachi's owners are like most of Honaker's clients. They come in maybe once for an emergency. There's no time to build the kind of rapport they have with their regular vet. When he treats a terminally ill animal or one that must be euthanized, Honaker wishes he knew his clients better so he could be a familiar shoulder to cry on.
``That's probably the place we fall down on,'' he said, ``but we don't have the time.''
Waiting to see him at that moment were a greyhound with a rip in its side, and several sick cats. In the treatment room Brandy was still on intravenous fluids and pain killer. Honaker was waiting for a break in the evening's work so surgery could start.
Dusty Fall, ``the cat lady'' from Moyock, unwrapped Calli, a lumpy-headed kitty, from a baby's receiving blanket.
She had about 100 animals, mostly cats, until she recently saved 50 more kittens from being euthanized at an animal shelter.
``Litter, litter, litter, my whole life is litter,'' she said, twisting her long gray hair into a bun.
Calli had conjunctivitis in her eye. The pus-filled knot on her head had to be shaved and lanced while Fall waited out front, talking to more new arrivals.
Toward midnight, Honaker saw a Chesapeake Bay retriever with possible mastitis. The greyhound with the tear in its side got 11 stitches.
Next came Barnaby the cat, whose owners brought his health record, nearly an inch thick.
In addition to Barnaby, the couple has another cat and a dog.
``We have a cat at the doctor about every week,'' said the woman. ``They're like my children. We've spent thousands of dollars. My family doesn't quite understand the money being spent.''
On this visit, Honaker treated Barnaby for a urinary problem.
By 1 a.m. there was a lull. Honaker and his staff performed surgery on Brandy, the lab. Sedated through his IV, intubated, hooked up to a beeping heart monitor, Brandy got a patchy shave to expose his wounds. Honaker repaired the damage, put in a drain and finished in time to see a dog with a bloated stomach at 2:30 a.m., followed by a diabetic cat with seizures who had to be put to sleep.
At 5 a.m., the waiting room was finally empty. The doctor got two hours of sleep before his office closed and morning rush hour started out in front of the building. ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff color photos
ABOVE: Lori Handy comforts her puppy, Poombah. She learned the dog
had a treatable parasite.
RIGHT: An injured greyhound yelps as Dr. Mark W. Honaker, director
of Tidewater Veterinary Emergency Hospital, applies a local
anesthetic.
Brandy, a golden retriever, was mauled by two other dogs. Honaker
put the animal on a pain killer and intravenous fluids until there
was a lull in the night's work. Then he and his staff performed
surgery to repair the damage.
by CNB