Cock-a-doodle-croak

One of the first emergencies I saw during my residency was a pet rooster. At about four PM the receptionist called down to let me know that the owner was on her way with a sick rooster. The woman was driving from Manteca (roughly 90 minutes from the hospital) and would be there as soon as she could.

The owner, an 80+ year old woman, finally showed up at around 11 PM with a moribund rooster named Jaques (or something like that -- it's been a few years). She said that it had taken her so long because she "kept checking to make sure Jaques was still alive". (Remember that, it's important.)

The rooster was just barely breathing. He was dehydrated and had a grossly distended crop and his breath smelled like something was fermenting. Getting any sort of accurate history from the owner was impossible. The only information I was really able to elicit was 1) the rooster was quite old, 2) he had been sick for at least a few days, which was why 3) she was treating him with leftover dog/cat/rabbit/people "medicine" (she didn't know what all she had used) ground up and mixed in with his feed.

I hid my disbelief face under my caring frown, told her that the bird was probably not going to make it ("I'm very concerned") but I'd give it my best shot, made her sign an estimate, and sent her on her way to go 20 mph down the busy freeway.

That late at night it was just me plus the senior student (not someone who knew anything about birds) and the rooster. We got everything ready to give fluids and suck the distillery contents from the bird's crop, but the minute I touched the rooster it went limp. As in, it stopped breathing and fell over, eyes open, no pulse.

I looked up at the student and found her staring at me with wide eyes. Things like that didn't usually happen on other services. (Things like that often happened on the exotics service, but I was still trying to pretend that I had some handle on things in front of the student.)

I grabbed the crash cart, intubated the rooster, and gave it a few breaths. I might have even given it a dose of epinephrine. Naturally it responded in the same manner as the rest of my CPR candidates. In the words of one of the ER clinicians, if you can't keep them alive in the first place, it's hard to make them alive again after they're dead.

I called the owner on her cell phone and told her the news and she agreed to have a necropsy done.

There was cancer filling everything that could be filled with cancer. The crop didn't empty because there was no gut left for it to empty into. This definitely was not something that could have been treated successfully. I left a voice mail for the owner telling her the results and forgot about it.

About six months later, I heard from one of my advisors (who worked one day a week in a clinic near Manteca) that she had treated one of this woman's other pets. While they were talking, the woman told her that she had taken Jaques to the university hospital and that I had told her that he died, but she wasn't sure that was true because he "hadn't seemed that sick" and she thought I might have just taken him.

And people ask me why I don't practice any more...