{"id":932,"date":"2015-04-21T04:38:58","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T04:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=932"},"modified":"2015-06-10T15:13:41","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T15:13:41","slug":"a-knight-in-shining-armor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/?p=932","title":{"rendered":"A Knight in Shining Armor"},"content":{"rendered":"

The back door swings open. \u00a0\u201cMaaaaaa – om!!! \u00a0Hannah\u2019s leg is bleeding. \u00a0There is blood all over!\u201d my son screams. \u00a0I cut short the telephone conversation with the asphalt driveway repair company. \u00a0And again, in yet another franch story to tell, I find myself running out to the barn to respond to a crisis. \u00a0I slow up the concrete ramp to the barn as I see small puddles of blood all over. \u00a0\u201cMaaa \u2013 maaa,\u201d moans Hannah as we make eye contact. \u00a0In her eyes, I see confusion and pain. \u00a0Her hind leg is completely covered in blood and it pools quickly beneath her hoof wherever she steps. \u00a0Hannah, our beloved goat, is seriously hurt. \u00a0The kids are quiet and watching me, knowing to stand ready for instructions having now been through so many franch dramas. \u00a0There\u2019s so much blood, and I know immediately that this is too much for me. \u00a0I don\u2019t have four years of education in veterinary science. \u00a0Nor am I a board certified emergency medicine physician. \u00a0Thankfully, I\u2019m married to a doctor who can easily handle the circumstance I’m in. \u00a0But, of course, he\u2019s on shift until midnight and can\u2019t abandon people emergencies in the hospital for my goat emergency on the franch. \u00a0I know this and feel a bit of panic. \u00a0I take a deep breath, and it begins. \u00a0\u201cGo get my phone please,\u201d the first command is given. \u00a0\u201cYes, m\u2019am,\u201d my son responds, as he spins and races back to the house. \u00a0I halter the goat and my daughter leads it over to the hose at the barn\u2019s edge. \u00a0The water rinses the blood\u00a0away just enough to\u00a0get a quick glimpse of the wound before fresh blood seeps out. \u00a0Sure enough, there\u2019s a deep and wide gash on the rear hind pastern. \u00a0I sigh realizing that a layer of sprayed-on Blue-Kote Spray isn\u2019t going to protect the wound and start its healing process. \u00a0It is just too deep. \u00a0My son hands me the retrieved phone and I ask Siri, \u201cCall my lover.\u201d \u00a0And Siri complies, \u201cCalling my lover.\u201d \u00a0(My husband, as a practical joke, changed his name in my contact list to \u201cMy Lover\u201d \u00a0weeks ago. \u00a0 I make another mental note to edit his contact information, especially since my children have said a few times in public when they see it’s him calling,\u00a0“Mom, your lover is calling!”). \u00a0So, \u201cMy Lover\u201d answers and doesn\u2019t believe it\u2019s as bad as it is until I text him a video. \u00a0Then, he treats me like his medical students and gives me a bunch of orders expecting that it\u2019s as easy for me to do as it is for him to say. \u00a0I\u2019m supposed to put gauze on the fresh wound, apply pressure, and wrap a bandage around it as tight as possible. \u00a0He encourages me that that\u2019ll do until he can get home. \u00a0Sounds simple enough. \u00a0In fact, it’s obvious. \u00a0But, my assistants are young children and my patient is a live goat in pain that doesn\u2019t stand still, and unlike his patients, kicks. \u00a0I decide I need to at least try. \u00a0My eldest daughter tries to hold the goat still while I try over and over again to grab Hannah\u2019s kicking leg, hold on it to while she\u2019s keeps kicking, keep a gauze pad in position, and wrap an ACE elastic bandage around it. \u00a0We could successfully do a few of\u00a0those steps at a time, but not all of \u2018em at once. \u00a0I start feeling like I\u2019m making it worse because I keep messing with the wound but not successfully wrapping it. \u00a0The goat collapses down on her bleeding leg and I do the same beside her, feeling defeat. \u00a0My critical inner voice accuses as I wipe away a tear, Who do you think you are \u2013 trying to live this life and caring for so many animals \u2013 you can\u2019t do this. \u00a0<\/em>I watch the goat quiet in her new position realizing how she\u2019s helping herself whether she realizes it or not. \u00a0With her leg beneath her, her body weight puts pressure on the wound slowing the bleeding. \u00a0In the meantime, my husband has called on a fellow emergency medicine physician and close friend who has always offered to help in an emergency or non-emergency, for anything; he\u2019s basically on-call all the time for our family. \u00a0Thankfully, for his sake, we rarely need to call on him. \u00a0Tonight, he is\u00a0to be my knight in shining armor. \u00a0Well, really, a skilled physician with a surgical kit, which I\u2019d prefer over any knight for the sake of Hannah anyway. \u00a0It is\u00a0his first goat patient, and you wouldn\u2019t know it. \u00a0He came\u00a0ready to give her the best care all of his years of medical school and residency could offer her. \u00a0His lovely wife, wearing a cute sundress in contrast to my dirty farm sweats, doesn’t hesitate to lie with me across a goat pinned down on the cement floor of a dusty barn.\u00a0\u00a0 It is\u00a0quite the gory scene as our friend scrubs out the wound, numbs it, and puts in as many stitches as his basic medical kit provided. \u00a0It isn’t as easy as it sounds. \u00a0It turns out to\u00a0definitely be a battle as the goat tries multiple times to free herself from our hold. \u00a0There are\u00a0plenty of supplies we realized are needed as we work to care for her. \u00a0So, our three children assist our physician friend while all his wife and I can do is to keep the goat in position. \u00a0My eldest daughter dreams of working in a career field helping animals some day \u2013 and so, as she holds a flashlight to give better lighting she remarks, \u201cI can\u2019t watch, I feel faint\u2026but, I have to, because I want to do this someday.\u201d \u00a0Finally, after a lot of blood and sweat and tears, literally, Hannah\u2019s leg is wrapped and she is standing eating some grain and alfalfa in her pen. \u00a0My eldest runs to the house for some duct tape from her craft bin for one final way to secure the leg wrapping. \u00a0She arrives at the barn with a dress-up vet first-aid kit in hand, filled with fake supplies and the duct tape, wearing a scrubs jacket with a pin that says her name with the Dr. prefix. \u00a0It turns out our friend isn’t\u00a0just a knight in shining armor for me tonight but an inspiration for our daughter as well. \u00a0And Hannah is now on the way to a full recovery thanks to our friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The back door swings open. \u00a0\u201cMaaaaaa – om!!! \u00a0Hannah\u2019s leg is bleeding. \u00a0There is blood all over!\u201d my son screams. \u00a0I cut short the telephone conversation with the asphalt driveway repair company. \u00a0And again, in yet another franch story to tell, I find myself running out to the barn to respond to a crisis. \u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1045,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions\/1045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/franchlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}