A month as a Cook Islands vet at the
Esther Honey Foundation
I was apprehensive as I left Auckland
for the island of Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands in the midst of
the bright blue South Pacific. It wasn't because I was on my own
or because
I was heading to a new country- it was because I was about to be a
vet again. I tried to reassure myself that all the veterinary
knowledge and skills I'd left behind when I gave up my job in small
animal practice 18 months ago must still be there...somewhere. I
hoped that they were just very dusty, and that I'd be able to brush
them off and feel like a vet again, but there was a real fear that I
had genuinely forgotten it all.
In Rarotonga airport a man with a
floral shirt and straw hat was playing a Ukelele and singing to
welcome the newcomers to the island. It made for a nice chilled out
arrival to a country, and Rebecca, a vet nurse and fellow volunteer,
was waiting to meet me. Even at midnight it felt very hot and sticky
as we drove the short trip in the dog-hair covered car, and I
wondered how I'd cope with working in this humid 32 degrees.
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| Ginger kittens- my favourite! |
Arriving at the clinic immediately
brought back that long forgotten but distinctive smell of all vet
practices, a mixture of medical cleanliness and animals. It was a
messy little bungalow situated in a garden full of barking dogs
attached to trees. This would be where I would live and work for the
next month.
There may have been palm trees, but this was no tropical
haven. Next to the island road, close to the runway, and surrounded
by a yard full of barking dogs and crowing cockerels with no sense of
dawn timing. I asked Rebecca, 'How do you sleep?'. The answer came 'You don't'. I was at least relieved to be able to hear the waves on
the reef- a welcome addition to the cacophony. Having the sea so
close would prove to be a real blessing!
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| Posing with some of our patients |
The Esther Honey Foundation is a
charity animal clinic, the only veterinary practice in the Cook
Islands. Treatment is provided free and the place is run by a
constantly changing group of volunteer animal lovers, mainly vets and
vet nurses. Most of the fund raising is carried out overseas, and
volunteers come primarily from Australia, New Zealand, and
particularly the UK. I was taking up a 'Senior Vet' position, which
felt a bit of a joke given how long it was since I'd held a scalpel
blade, and added to my first day nerves.
The current set of
volunteers were Michelle, an Australian vet of my age, here for 6
months, a Danish vet student Julie, and 4 vet nurses- Kiwi Tracey,
and British Rebecca, Angela and Rachel. All girls apart from Gregg,
the clinic director, and all working hard together in the
heat to care for, feed, clean and treat the large collection of dogs
and cats.
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| The outdoor hospital |
The patients lived in the yard- in a
set of hospital pens under the shade of a corrugated iron roof, a few
kennels and cages scattered around the garden, and on a number of
chains attached to palm trees.
Among the animals here were two dogs
with gunshot wounds, RTAs hit by cars and scooters, anaemic little
kittens mewing mournfully, and three cases of fish poisoning.
Then
there were all the strays- adult cats with one eye (always hard to
rehome), gangs of kittens, and dogs dumped here when their owners
left the island for overseas. They were all desperate for attention,
wagging tails and whining hopefully if it looked like you might be
coming their way.
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| Are you quite sure you want to castrate me? |
It was clear from my first rounds,
talking through the cases in the clinic, that there was plenty of
work to be done here. I tried to imagine what would happen without Esther Honey, and I knew a lot of these animals would be dead
or dying painfully in some corner of the island.
I may have been
nervous about my own role here, but I was really glad to be part of
this team, doing the good work we were doing. It was also fantastic
to be back working with animals! The reason I'm a vet in the first
place of course, but I've hardly even handled a dog or cat for
months. Without exception the animals were gorgeous and deserving
of all the help we could give them. Unlike some pets back home, they
were incredibly accepting of anything we needed to do. It was like Mr
Miagi the dog was saying 'Pick pellets out of the massive gunshot
wound that's blown away half my neck? Okay then, if that's how you
want to play with me, go right ahead'.
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| Lucy, a suspected fish poisoning case |
Fish poisoning dominated the medical
cases, and was something I'd never heard of before I applied to come
here. I had been helpfully educated about it and given information
and protocols for treatment before I arrived. Properly called
Cigatuera toxicosis, this is a poisoning caused by eating certain
fish from the coral reef that surrounds the island. It can happen to
people too and is found in various tropical regions of the world, but
dogs and cats are particularly susceptible. The effects are horrible,
and can include a paralysis of the whole body. It isn't fatal and
almost all cases will eventually recover, but only with weeks and
even months of treatment and dedicated nursing. If we weren't here,
without doubt many of these animals would die. At the moment we had
Jango the dog, and the badly affected cats Vicky and Shrek.
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| Vicky having hydrotherapy |
These three patients took a lot of
time, requiring syringe feeding, regular turning, washing and
grooming, physio and hydrotherapy. They were sorry sights, but
despite being unable to move more than their heads, the cats would
still purr quietly as you handled them. Jango the dog wasn't quite as
badly affected, and he would attempt to get up, wobbling and bashing
himself against something before he tried to rise again. It was hard
to see animals like this but I kept the words that I had been sent in
my head; 'Try not to give up on these cases, even if they seem to be
going nowhere, as almost all will eventually turn the corner and
start to improve'. I just hoped that would happen during my month
here.
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| Hydrotherapy, South Pacific style |
Tracey and I took Jango down to the sea
for his first session of hydrotherapy. He was a dead weight in
Tracey's arms and his heart was beating fast as we lowered him into
the water, his eyes showing his trust in us, but tinged with
apprehension. I worried he might think we'd taken him down there to
drown him, and we gently reassured him. Carefully supporting his body
we immersed him in the water, gently swaying his legs. There was no
movement at all. We flexed and extended his limbs for him, willing
life back into his muscles, but to no avail. It was much the same for
Vicky the cat- we gently held her in a bowl of water, swishing the
water over her skinny little legs.
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| Kisses from the 3 legged pup Boston |
But as the days went by, things started to
change with these fish poisoning cases. The cats raced each other to
lap at food rather than have it syringed, then eat mush while their
heads were supported, and then hold their own heads up for proper
meals. They began to turn their necks and try pathetic attempts at
grooming. Yesterday Vicky overtook Shrek's recover, and walked for
the first time. Her forelimbs are slower to improve than her
hindlimbs which gives her a comical Bambi like stance on rigid
splayed legs. She falls over a lot, but she has quite clearly turned
the corner, and sits in her cage looking almost like a normal cat.
Meanwhile Shrek has started to use his forelimbs to pull himself up
the cage bars. I think he's doing his own pull ups to speed the
returning strength and function of his limbs, and to avoid the
hydrotherapy pool.
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| Jango starts to swim for himself |
On Jango's second hydrotherapy session
in the sea he started to kick his legs, and then all of a sudden,
over just a couple of days, he was walking, swimming, barking,
wagging his tail. His owners came to pick him up and his excitement
at seeing them, yapping like a puppy and tail wagging at full speed
as he ran to the car, was ample reward for our time caring for him.
In these cases it's not medicine that saves the animals, but TLC, and
we have plentiful supplies of that!
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| Getting back into surgery |
As for my own role, I needn't have
worried so much. It helped enormously with my initial confidence crisis to have such patient and brilliant
nurses for my first couple of ops, but within a few days I was
feeling like a vet again. It turns out that even 18 months away isn't
enough to make you forget!
There's a real sense of team spirit here, with
everyone working together to make sure all the animals are cleaned,
fed, medicated and cared for. Consults and surgeries occur on a
fairly ad-hoc basis, with people sometimes turning up at 2pm with no
appointment and 5 cats they want neutering. This afternoon please.
Esther Honey is obviously keen to neuter as many island animals
as possible so we try to fit in as much surgery as we can.
Consultations can be interesting. Normal strategies don't always
work too well, with questions as simple as the animal's name and age
often drawing blanks ('Oh, this one might be Blackie. Or maybe Snow
White', when the dog in question is neither black nor white!).
There's sometimes not a lot of point trying to go into details of how
much it's drinking or how long it's been ill.
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| Dinner time! |
Some owners are very loving and come to
visit pets who are clearly part of the family, but others leave us
wondering. It is quite common to have ill animals left here,
seemingly forgotten. We get them better and then ring the owners with
the good news that their pet is ready to go home. Maybe a few days
later they turn up. Perhaps it's 'island time'.
We worked hard to
save little Jessica the puppy, who came in critically ill, weak and
anaemic. When she'd turned the corner we phoned her owners every day
to come and get her, only to eventually discover they'd moved to Australia!
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| Jessica feeling poorly |
I've had some memorable cases in my
month here, like 'Tintin' the cat, a stray found with his whole head
wedged firmly inside a tin can. To make matters worse he'd also been
caught by a dog while in this state and shaken, causing fractured
ribs and emphysema. He must have been petrified, and was well on his
way to dying of dehydration and starvation, so it was very rewarding
to free him, treat him and watch as he went from having a huge swollen,
distorted and bruised purple face to looking like a cat again. There
have also been some funny moments, like the call out to an attacked
dog that turned out to be a perfectly happy goat! I've stopped
expecting people to come in with a cat basket, most animals arrive
here cradled in one arm, the other hand driving the scooter!
The clinic runs entirely on donations,
and we try to be as efficient and inventive as possible with the
resources we have. It has been an opportunity for me to get to know
many alternative drugs and try to work around problems using what we
have available. Many of the medical supplies are donated, often less
commonly selected drugs in bizarre concentrations, given to us as
they have expired and would no longer be used in practice. This
creates an eclectic array of medicines to choose from, although
there's always something appropriate. It will feel like luxury to go
home to a well stocked practice with, among other things, more than
one anaesthetic circuit, paper towel and different size needles,
catheters and syringes! We always have a long wish list, and anyone
in practice reading this may be able to help - please visit
estherhoney.org.
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| After work drinks! |
I have loved my month here as a
'honey'- it's been hard work at times but often very rewarding, and I
always feel proud to tell people I meet around the island that I
volunteer at the animal clinic. Locals and tourists alike are very
grateful that we're here and it's nice to feel part of the island
community. Although I did get one comment, 'Is that why there are so
many dogs with 3 legs on Rarotonga? Do you vets come here to practise
surgery on them?'!!
It's definitely going to be hard to
leave, and I've even started to sleep through the nightly chorus of
whining, meowing, barking and cock-a-doodle-doos!
Harriet
Another highlight of my time in Nosara was the rodeo. The Nicoya peninsula is traditionally an area of cattle ranches, so the rodeo offers a chance to see the real Costa Rica, undiluted with tourist trash. And what a great experience it was. Health and safety dpeartments in the UK would have a heart attack, but by far the best seats in the house are those actually on the fence of the main enclosure, up close and personal to the action. The main activity at the rodeo is the riding of the bulls as they are released into the enclosure, bucking and kicking as they go. The riders risk snapped necks from the voilent bucking they encounter, but perhaps of greater danger comes at the moment of dismount, which must be done cleanly and quickly. But it´s at this point the real fun begins as those spectators brave (read drunk) enough run into the enclosure and attempt a game of tig with the bull. With so many spectators in the ring, the bull struggles to lock onto a particular target, but occasionally he picks his man out and charges. The spectators scatter, so heading for strategically placed narrow doors in the enclosure, others taking running jumps up the wooden slats. The bull will often run round the edge of the enclosure, requiring everyone to lift their legs clear of his horns. But one time as a bull approached us on is tour of the ring, he decided to start bucking again, with his hinbd legs reaching 10 foot in the air. At this point lifting our legs wasn´t enough, as we quickly struggle to stand on the top woodne slat of the fence, a difficult manouver with a beer in one hand and a camera in the other. So close was this encounter that the girl next to me got swatted in the face by the bulls tail as he went. On hand in the enclosure are two cowboys, who expertly ride their horses around ready to come to the rescue. The skill with which they throw their lassoos has to be witnesses to be believed, with backhand throwns behing their heads whilst galloping at full pace past the bull.
