One of the perks of having reached my 90 day mark at work is that I am now eligible for employee discounts and also 2 free procedures. So it is the perfect time to get the cats in my backyard neutered/spayed. Today i brought in Rambo. Rambo is a very sweet male kitten about 5 months old. He lets me pick him up and snuggle with him and purrs when i pet him.
So this morning i put him in his carrier and brought him to work with no problem. He did not make a sound on the drive there. All was going well until i tried to take him out and weigh him. I think he was very scared, and the meowing of the other hospital cats didn't help, because he proceeded to scratch the crap out of me which he has NEVER done before. Needless to say he went right back into the carrier until procedure time came.
When it was time for the neuter we gave him some anesthesia as normal. he did pretty good, and went down pretty easily. the doctor did the surgery and when it was all over we put Rambo back in his carrier so he would wake up feeling safe. The doctor told me just to keep an eye on him, make sure he recovered alright. So about 30 seconds or so later i checked on him and he was not breathing. Sometimes cats breathe pretty shallow coming out of anesthesia, so i patted him and moved him around to make sure he was ok. but he wasn't. I called out to another tech that he wasnt breathing and she said to check his tongue color. well, it was blue. bad sign. the next few minutes was like a scene out of ER.
We called for the doctor to come back and someone said "get him tubed!" "move him to the table!" and so he was moved and intubated. then the doctor did something i'll never forget. she gave Rambo the equivalent of mouth-to-mouth cpr. except that she was blowing air through the top of the endotrachael tube. after a few breaths and he still wasnt breathing on his own she did it some more. then she hooked Rambo up to the oxygen machine directly and started that flowing through him. he eventually started breathing on his own and we were all VERY relieved!
The vet said that its rare a cat survives after not breathing. She said i saved his life because i caught it in time. (i'd say he went maybe a total of 1-1.5 min without breathing) I give the credit to the vet and the staff for their quick efforts of cpr.
For the rest of the day i kept a close eye on Rambo. He is doing just fine but definatly wiped out from the ordeal. He is now closed in my bathroom so that i could moniter him overnight. tomorrow, assuming everything is going fine still, i will release him back outside to his sister who i'm sure is wondering where he went!
Chris is the one who named him Rambo (or as caitlin says, "rainbow") when we first saw him several months ago. But today he totally lived up to his name, cause he was such a fighter-in a good way! :)
an endotrachael tube. the cuff on the left inflates to block off the trachea once the tube is inserted. this allows only the gas/oxygen to be breathed. the vet blew through the opening on the right end.
Rambo recovering in his carrier.
One of the clinic cats keeping an eye on Rambo too
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