The Art of Seeing
Being a good veterinarian is in many ways, similar to being a good detective. Throughness, precision and a healthy dosis of imagination come into play. A good vet must also learn to “read between the lines”… to interpret the things he is told and search for their real meaning instead of taking them at face value.
When Charlie arrived to the vet in Romania, the veterinarian listen to a tremendously sad story. A young dog, being brought to him inside a blue plastic bag. The person bringing the dog to him, a homeless man has done everything possible for him. He has no money. The man is completely honest in the telling of the story. He didn’t see the person that did it but he is nearly sure that is what happened.
The vet proceeds to a quick examination. The dog is paralyzed, he proceeds to take an X-ray… the resulting image is terribly blurry. No apparent fracture can be seen but because the rescuer has told him the dog has been kicked there must be a fracture somewhere… the vet looks closer.. and closer… and then he sees it… a tiny speck in the blurry image indicates that something is not right. Yes! That is it!!! That is the fracture that left Charlie paralyzed. You can barely see it, it’s invisible to anyone’s eye except him, but yes.. he has found it!
A month passes. Charlie’s condition worsens considerably. Paralysis has extended to the rest of his body and his two front legs. He shakes involuntarily. In Germany a new electronic X-Ray is performed, an X-Ray producing a totally clear image that you can see in full resolution if you click HERE. That image, shows, without any doubt, that there is no fracture or trauma on Charlie’s spinal cord.
And so, suddenly but far too late we have a very different picture. Charlie was never hit, no trauma affected his spinal cord. The reason for his immobility was a very different one, Charlie was affected by the distemper virus. At this late stage it’s too late for him.
What happened here is a combination of mistakes. The person that brought Charlie was given full credit for his story, it sounded terribly real and familiar, in the mind of the vet it made perfect sense. From that moment on the vet had no doubt, it was a a trauma, a fracture, and everything done afterwards was just trying to justify the picture in his mind. Maybe for a fraction of a second distemper crossed the vet’s mind as a possible cause.. but it couldn’t be, because there it was, in black and white on a blurry X-ray.
We must learn to question perceived authority. Veterinarians are fallible people and are as prone as anyone else to make mistakes. Add to that a soapy story and an X-ray machine producing images that look like a foggy London evening and you have a recipe for disaster.
There is nothing more dangerous that an university degree combined with an unhealthy dosage of misguided pride. That combination leads to misdiagnosis and in the end… death.