Edie was in a state. She was a thirteen-year-old Afghan hound who had been taken in by a rescue kennels as a neglect case. By the time she arrived at the surgery she had had a bath and been cleaned up, but was still desperately thin. As I examined her the catalogue of her problems grew.

Her first and most obvious problem was her mouth. She found it too painful to open her mouth for me to have a proper look. I could see that there were several large bleeding lumps growing from her gums and the teeth in the rest of her mouth were covered in tartar. The smell was awful and she winced if I

tried to lift her lip for a better look.

The next thing I found was a small but painful lump about the size of a marble under one of her nipples. I could see she would need a general anaesthetic to treat either problem effectively, and that was where I hit the next snag. When I listened to her heart, instead of beating regularly it was wildly irregular.

Next came a hard discussion. With a budget to think about and a hard bunch of problems, should I try and make Edie comfortable or would it be kinder to put her to sleep? Not so long ago the idea of trying to get a thirteen-year-old emaciated Afghan with a heart problem through a general anaesthetic might have been so daunting as not even to try.

With the newer generation of anaesthetics, careful monitoring and a little luck, it could be done. Sure there was a risk, but one that seemed worth taking. We did agree that I should do a blood test to check her kidneys, so before we went any further I took a small tube of her blood from her leg. A few minutes later my nurse came to tell me that Edie's kidneys were working fine.

The next morning I anaesthetised Edie. Once she was asleep I could have proper look in her mouth. Several of her teeth were so loose and surrounded by pus that they almost fell out. The swellings on the gum that I had glimpsed when she was conscious were a kind of benign growth, only in this case they had grown so large she could barely eat. I cut the lumps away by passing an electric current through the gum which cuts and stops the bleeding at the same time. Finally I removed the mammary tumour underneath her nipple.

All went well under the anaesthetic and she was soon awake. In fact I was just beginning to breathe easily some four hours after her operation when the wound where I had removed the lump started to bleed dramatically. No amount of bandaging made any difference so I had no choice but give her another anaesthetic and take her back to the operating theatre. I was soon able to locate and tie the offending blood vessel and half an hour later Edie was awake again.

It was the next morning before she was fit to go home. She still has a way to go before she is well, but the fact that she went home at all is special.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.