It has been more than a decade since my initiation into the veterinary profession. But just when you think there are not many more surprises in store in terms of new and unique cases at work, you are proven dead wrong.
This morning, I received a phone call that turned out to be the case of the decade for me. I woke up not to my alarm clock, but to my phone. It is rather rare that I get a phone call so early in the morning, so I made the monumental effort to get up to see who it was. It turned out to be the nurse on duty at the Tseung Kwan O clinic, who usually arrives at work early because she lives nearby. She said there was a frantic client waiting outside.
Trained in basic triage, she noted the dog was not in any immediate life-threatening condition, but she wanted me to know about the client before I came in. I got the nurse to put the client on the phone so I could get a clearer idea of what had happened and if anything needed to be done immediately.
It turned out to be Anderson Junior on the line. He is a television host with a daily lunch-hour variety show and known for his unique style and black-framed glasses. He was frantic and said his dog had been puffed up like a balloon for three days.
Given what my nurse had told me, I wasn't so worried about the situation and suspected the dog probably had a puffy face because of an allergy. The most common reason for a dog to be brought in with a puffy face is that it has come into contact with something to which it is allergic, resulting in the skin around the face swelling. It can be quite disconcerting for the lay person, but is usually easily and quickly fixed with an anti-inflammatory drug.
What was odd, though, was that Anderson Junior said that overnight he had poked the dog's ears with a needle to let the air out. Knowing his profession, I didn't think he was joking. My theory of allergic puffy skin was beginning to unravel.
I jumped in the car and raced to work and found the dog a sight to behold. In all my years of being a vet, I have never seen such a situation. Anderson Junior has what I assume in a normal situation is an adorable dachshund, more commonly know as a sausage dog, but at this moment it was unrecognisable. The whole dog was like a balloon, the skin all over the body, including the tail, paws, ears, muzzle and torso, was bloated like a bizarre creature from hell. All the skin had been lifted off the underlying tissues by air. The long shape of the dog was gone and he was literally round. The bloating was so severe that the pressure on the chest had caused the dog to have trouble breathing. Massaging the skin, I could feel the underlying fat was also crackling with a mixture of fat and air. The poor thing had been in this state for three whole days.