Obligatory, this didn't happen today. But it was recent - a few weeks ago.
A very nice couple a few doors down from us asked my wife and I to feed their cats while they were out of town for the weekend. We have done it before. And they have fed our cats while we were away on vacation. The only difference this time is that one of their cats was recently diagnosed with diabetes and it needs insulin injections twice per day. So we went over to their house the evening before they left and they gave us the rundown. I was talking to the guy and his wife was talking to my wife giving her directions on how to give the insulin. My wife is an RN, so it was only natural that you hand that responsibility over to her. During those parallel conversations, I overheard "two units of insulin in the scruff of its back".
Fast forward to the next evening - it's showtime! My wife got caught up at work a little late and had to run some errands since she was hosting a wedding shower the next day. I got our 3 year-old down for bed and my wife still wasn't home so I figured I would go take care of the cats and get that out of the way so when my wife got home she/we wouldn't have to worry about it. So I walk my ass over there - I see another neighbor on the way and smile and wave hello. I'm feeling pretty good since I am getting shit in order so my wife can just focus on the wedding shower. And how hard can "two units of insulin in the scruff of its back" be?
I get to their house, unlock the door and the kitty welcomes me. It's the most affectionate cat I have ever met - and that's what kills me even more about this. The cat follows me up the stairs and into the kitchen. It jumps up onto the island counter top. I pull the insulin vial out of the refrigerator and grab a syringe out of the box. And he just sits there and watches me and I'm like "sweet, I won't need to wrestle this fucker to give the injection". So I draw up "2 units". I grabbed a hold of the skin on top of the kitty's back and poked him with the syringe and pushed the plunger down - smooth as butter. I didn't miss - I got it all in. I check the cats' food and water and all was good. I said hasta la vista to my little buddy and went back home. I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator in my garage, went inside and sunk down into my couch for some Netflix while waiting for my wife to get home.
When my wife got home, she was in an unusually good and chipper mood. She grabbed a drink and sat next to me before we "chilled" for a bit. Afterwards, she said we should go feed the neighbor cats and give the one cat its insulin. And I said proudly with a smile, "I already did it, it's done". And knowing me as well as she does and knowing syringes of all types inside and out, she asked how much insulin I gave the cat in a concerning manner and tone. I said "2 units - what's the problem". She asked if I went to the second line or the number 2. Well, in my world, two equals motherfucking two - "I went to the number 2" I said. That's when the panic set in. She said "you gave the cat 20 mils of insulin, not 2". So we rush back over to their house. I don't have a lot of comprehension of what any of this means, so I am expecting the cat to be convulsing and foaming and maybe exploded - definitely missing its shoes, if you know what I mean. And I have all these thoughts running through my mind of how I will face my neighbors and break the news to them - do I call them? Or do I not ruin their weekend away and greet them at their house when they arrive home? Will we have to sell our house and move if the cat is dead?
We enter the house. The sun has set and all the lights are off. There is that moment between opening the door and turning on the lights that lasts a split second, but I'll be damned if it didn't feel a lot longer - like many, many split seconds. The lights came on... and there the cat was. It was rolling around on its back and purring and happy that hoomans came to visit again. The cat was fine at this point. And just to clarify to clarify to my wife, I grabbed a new syringe and showed her exactly what I did. Then she explained that the syringe is graduated in 1 mil increments and "2 units" means to "2 mils". I'm not sure if that little bit of knowledge would have helped me since I had "2" stuck in my head and all I saw on the syringe was the number "2". It also didn't help that my 3 year-old didn't really the sleep the night prior, so I was running short on sleep.
Now we had to decide what to do next. We called our friend who is a vet tech. We told her what I did and what type of insulin it was. She asked if we were absolutely positive that I injected all of it and I unfortunately was very sure the cat got the full 20 mil dose. She explained that it's a slow release insulin and that it will hit the cat like a load of bricks in the next 4-6 hours and that its blood sugar will plummet and it will die. Well fuck, great. The next call was to the 24 hour vet hospital she works at and they confirmed and said we need to bring the cat in. It's a little after 11:00 pm at this point. I called my mom who lives about 5-10 minutes away and woke her up and told her she needed to get to my house immediately so we can take our neighbors' cat to the emergency vet since our 3 year-old was in bed sleeping.
We get to the vet and the cat is still chipper and happy. They take the cat back to assess it. Meanwhile, we are doing the registration stuff and we don't know shit about the cat. At that point, we didn't know its name, gender or age. So we take a seat and wait a while and the vet comes out a talks to us. The first thing he did was comfort us (mainly me) that on a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being the worst, this was less than a 1. They just had to monitor the cat's blood sugar levels and when (not if, when) its blood sugar inevitably plummets, they just keep giving the cat glucose via IV until its blood sugar stabilizes. He chuckled and slapped me on my shoulder and told me not to beat myself up - they actually see this quite a bit when somebody is watching a diabetic cat.
They kept the cat until the following evening - just under 24 hours. The cat is fine and everything is stabilized. We picked him up and brought him back home.
tl;dr - Almost killed neighbors' diabetic cat by an insulin OD because two doesn't literally equal two. Also, I am $1,000 broker and don't have to sell my house.
Submitted July 20, 2017 at 09:02PM by pizza_for_nunchucks http://ift.tt/2gNuRBv tifu
No comments:
Post a Comment