What a crapola way to end this shift

At 7am this morning, 1 hour before my shift ended and I began my 9 days off, our front doors blew open. In staggered a man carrying a dog that looks EXACTLY like my dog (except for the testicles). The Doberman was rigid and dying. His abdomen was so massively distended, he looked like someone had inflated him.

The hysterical owner laid him down on the triage table and exited stage left while we tried to work a miracle. As my excellent technicians got a large bore IV catheter in the front leg and intubated the dog (not breathing) - I rapidly stabbed 4 large bore catheters into the massively distended abdomen. Gas in huge quantities came pouring out. We poured the fluids into him, but he was already in ventricular fibrillation. Since we didn't have a defibrillator, I had my burly, 6"3 male technician hit the dog as hard as he could on the chest - hoping to help the heart re-start itself. Nothing - just disorganized fibrillating.

The Doberman had suffered a GDV ("bloat"). He had been in this condition for possibly hours and hours. He was an outdoor dog, and the owners had gone to bed around 11pm and found him lateral and groaning this morning.

We did what we could, but he was too far gone.

It reminded me that when Heidi is spayed tomorrow (and no, I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole) that she also needs to have a gastropexy. I never want to have to go through that.