regular neuter here, they will take Nero to another hospital; we do not
need to drive away business. He will be perfectly fine here, and you two
can keep an eye on him.” Dr. Ellis sternly decided without even seeing the
animal. The tone of her voice made my stomach flip; I couldn’t help but
feel that something was wrong or maybe there was something that I didn’t
know.
Within thirty-five minutes, Nero was sterilized and into a kennel
for recovery, and the three of us continued on to our next client. It was
my job, however, to chart the post-operation temperatures, so I visited
Nero every fifteen minutes to keep an eye on him. All of the animals from
that morning’s procedure were awake and groggy within a few minutes
after surgery. However, when I visited Nero for my second post-op
temperature, he was still slumped down in the kennel nuzzled in a pile
of old blankets. I took his temperature; only this time, it was decreasing.
Quickly, I told Dr. Ellis and Jerry. Dr. Ellis seemed unfazed by this and
simply instructed that I administer warm fluids if the temperature had
not increased within the half-hour. I had never set up an IV and couldn’t
quite manage to hit a vein, so Jerry had to help me.
At this point, everything took a downhill plummet. Jerry, who
was never eager to rock the boat, was in absolute rage when he saw poor
Nero. It was the first time I saw such kind, gentle eyes burn with hurt
and fury. Nero lay, lifeless, in the kennel with his breathing shallow and
his eyes drooping. Jerry sent me to microwave the heating pads while
he administered fluids. When I came back, Nero still hadn’t shown a
response to the fluids. I began to ask questions about what would cause
this and if it was normal.
“No. No, it’s not normal to give any animal, especially a dog
in his condition, expired anesthetics.” The world stopped. We were
administering expired anesthetics? I wanted to cry and scream; I was so
angry.
“These are expired? That cannot be legal. It can’t be safe! Why are
we doing this?” I attempted to figure out what was going on.
“Dr. Ellis chooses to use recently out-of-date anesthetics in order
to keep the costs low, but nobody, not even the technicians, are supposed
to know. I only know because I saw the expiration date on one of the
bottles during the last clinic. Typically, there isn’t any reaction for the
healthy animals, but because Nero was already in bad shape, his body
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