Mini Hot Seat

My friend Laura asked on her blog, "Libby - What is the weirdest situation you've seen as a vet? How long have you been studying Spanish? What is the #1 thing you are going to do differently with baby #2?"

Well, ok. Regarding the vet question, a number of things come to mind. 1) The time I went on a housecall in El Paso to retrieve a 100# aggressive dog with a skin wound that had to be brought back to our hospital for a few days because the owner had to be admitted to the human hospital and was unable to attend to the wound. Armed with one technician and a medicine kit full of sedatives to help, it didn't sound so hard. Except that when I got there, there were FOUR 100# aggressive guard dogs running loose in the yard, and that yard went entirely around the house with nothing but a perimeter fence, so as you can imagine, we spent just about all day chasing them around and around the house, trying to corral and sedate the dog we needed. It didn't go well. At one point, we were in the house (a single-wide trailer) with the dog in question, trying to get a sedative injection into him, not a good place to be trapped with a mean dog who doesn't want an injection. At another point, with three doses of sedatives on board, the dog in question was running loose down the street! (We did eventually get him back to the clinic, and the wound healed fine.) 2) The time I was a fourth-year vet student on large-animal ambulatory medicine rotation (farm calls) and they sent the three of us vet students into a pen of buffalo to try to shoo them one by one into the metal stocks so we could vaccinate them. Buffalo are apparently very easily spooked, unlike cows, and they were circling around wildly in the pen after we even approached the pen, with one shooting off every once in a while in a different direction from the group. Never fear though, they gave us these plastic shakers that looked like giant yellow lollipops filled with beads to use to make rattlesnake noises to help keep the buffalo in line and prevent them from running you over. Yeah, that made me feel really safe. (I survived, we got them all vaccinated, and I will probably never have to treat another buffalo ever.) 3) The three times I saw the same lady and the same dog at the Animal Emergency Hospital for the same problem... each time the dog had ingested a pair of the lady's thong panties. Luckily each time we were able to retrieve them by inducing vomiting and not surgery, but you would think that at least after the second time, she would have stopped leaving her laundry lying around! 4) Another time at the Animal Emergency Hospital, when it was just me and one technician there (must have been one of the few times I worked an overnight shift), and this little chihuahua came in seizing. She had just had puppies and had a depleted calcium, which causes tremors then seizures. Easily fixed with a slow injection of calcium, and some instructions to feed the pet tums for the next few days, but then it turned out that the owner didn't speak a lick of English and didn't have a dime to his name to even pay the exam fee, let alone for any additional treatments. We treated the pet anyway because what else could we really do, and then he offered us his belt as payment for services. The funny part of the story, is that the owner was this little old man from Mexico, and his belt was a snake. Not a snake-skin belt, a whole, intact, skinned rattlesnake, with the open fanged mouth as the buckle part, and the rattle intact at the other end. And the technician that was with me that day, was my friend Sam who is TERRIFIED of snakes and could barely go in the room with the man. I thought she was going to pass out when he tried to give us the belt! (We declined to accept it.) 5) The time I had a lab in Vet School about llama behavior. Llamas, apparently, are a lot like giant cats. They are very moody, want everything on their own terms, and either love you or hate you right from the beginning. And as rumored, they do spit. Want to know how to calm a llama? You duck down (so you don't get spit on), approach slowly, stick your hand in their mouth and rub back and forth firmly across their upper gum. Weird as it is, it totally works. When they relax and lean against you, you can stand up and you know you have made a friend. Keep that in mind next time you have to approach a cantankerous llama!

I have been "studying" Spanish for years now. I took two years in High School, but never really learned enough to be useful. Since I've married Albert, I've slowly been trying to learn the language over the years, but I always seem to get to the same point where you have to learn all the verb tenses and get stuck. Then I put it down for months and have to start all over again when I try to pick it up again! I thought my three week trip to Costa Rica during Vet School was going to help, but I stayed at an animal rescue facility that had so many international volunteers that English was the only common language. Since Albert and I both want Alex to grow up bilingual if possible, I've been trying a lot more, but mostly at a 1-year old level, one word at a time. I can say several useful things like "Put that back.", "Eat your peas.", and "I love you lots, my beautiful monkey." I don't think that counts as fluent yet, but maybe someday.

Baby #2. That's the hardest question. Even with the impending arrival of baby #2, I just can't imagine what it will be like to have two children. Have I seen the results of my parenting with #1 for long enough to know what I did really wrong? How are their personalities and needs going to be different? How am I going to have the energy and time (at least at first) to do anything but just keep everyone fed and rested, let alone continue to be the available, instructive, involved parent that I want to be to Alex? I am committed to breastfeeding at least one year, like I did with Alex, and that's about as far as I've gotten.