Holy Cow

Visited with Dr. Moo this weekend. She was on call and on Sunday morning I went to observe her doing surgery. The cow had a displaced abomasum. The abomasum is the fourth stomach of the cow; sometimes it gets filled with gas and it moves and requires surgery to correct it.

The following description is not for the faint of heart, so if you tend to get grossed out, I'd stop reading...

...okay. First of all, when a cow has surgery it does not happen in the emergency room of the cow hospital. It happens in the barn. In this case, it was an UNBELIEVABLY smelly barn because the manure lagoon (yes, a large pit of doody) was being drained that day, and for some strange reason, god only knows why, to drain the manure lagoon the manure shoots up in a fountain not unlike something you see in front of an office building only this one's brown and it reeks. The air, which normally smelled of fresh cow poo, now smelled of really really old cow poo that had been stagnating in a large pool for a long, hot summer. Ohmygod, the smell. Luckily, though, my sniffer was trained for disgusting smells by spending a long hot summer in my own personal stink factory, the city of Boston, so I was able to breath through my mouth for the most part.

The other thing that's interesting about a barn surgery is that all the other cows crowd around and watch. Some of them chew their cuds; some of them moo. The cows in this barn were coming back in a line from the milking parlor and the line kept getting held up as one cow after another stopped to stare. They also crap, like, constantly, and stand so close that they occasionally poop on eachother's heads. It's delightful.

Anyhoo, we're not even to the really gory stuff yet. My sister stood next to the cow, who was tied in a separate stall with her head in this cow headlock thingy. There was hay for her to eat. Dr. Moo first shaved a large spot on the side of the cow; maybe a couple of square feet, with a Bic razor. Then she squirted various and sundry antibacterial and antimicrobial (are these the same things? I don't know) on the cow and on herself. She scrubbed her arms with some stuff and put on a glove -- a rectal sleeve, which goes all the way up to her shoulder. But she wasn't going in near the rectum, so I was confused.

Have I mentioned that it is impossible not to get sprayed with cow poo when you're in a cow barn? Well, it is. But back to the surgery!

Dr. Moo shot the side of the cow full of anesthetic, which was the one thing that would hurt the cow, and she did moo. Then Dr. Moo got out her scalpel. I asked her how big she was going to make the hole. "Umm, big enough to fit my arm in" was the answer.

Oh.

This I was not expecting. I turned my head away.

When I turned back my sister had her ENTIRE ARM (right up to shoulder) INSIDE the cow. Yes, that's right, she cut a big hold in the side of the cow who was standing there not really protesting and she stuck her arm in there. Then she grabbed this rubber tubing with a big sharp wide metal hole-pokey thing on the end of it and poked a hole throught the cow's stomach (this I couldn't see as the stomach was inside of the cow at the time.) All this gas escaped -- you could see it making bubbles out of the antiseptic that the tubing and hole-pokey thing had been in. She stood there for a little while, making conversation with me and talking to the other cows whilst this thing bubbled away like a happy little science experiment and little rivulets of blood ran from the hole in the side of the cow and puddled (only a small puddle!) in the bedding on the floor.

It probably took just a couple of minutes for the gas to escape.

Then, my sister took the tubing and hole-pokey thingy out of the cow and stuck her arm waaaaaaaaay back in there and rooted around. Then she planted her feet and started yanking.
And she yanked some yellow pinky stuff right out the hole she'd cut in the cow!

This was fat. This cow had a fair amount of it. She was trying to reach this specific part of the cow's stomach and she needed to move the fat out of the way.

It is VERY BIZARRE to watch this sort of thing, folks. But also really really REALLY fascinating. The cow didn't mind much at all. She looked a tad upset but apparently (according to the farmer who stood around and watched part of the surgery), she's a tad off and is noisy all the time.

Let me just say here to any animal rights folks who may be reading that this is perfectly normal surgery and my sister is a vegetarian and animal lover and would never do anything to hurt a cow.

Okay. So she locates the part of the stomach she's looking for and she sews it to the side of the cow, inside the cow. Then she sews up the hold she made in the stomach to let the gas out, and sews 2 walls of muscle (this would be the short loin and sirloin area for all you steak lovers) and the skin back together. Then she sprays the outside of the cow with this bandage that looks like silver spray paint. And that's it; we're done. Miss moo cow went back into the general population and we went to lunch.

Where, BTW, I ate egg salad. I don't think I'll be having a roast beef sandwich anytime soon.

As of publication, both patient and Dr. are doing just fine.