Veterinarian still wonders why he had a peculiar effect on clients during a certain procedure

by Brent Kelley, D.V.M.

I WAS NOT overly exposed to horses in veterinary school. As I look back on it, this was disappointing because horses were the reason I went to veterinary school. Sure, we covered the main points of horse health in lectures, but when it came to dealing with the real thing, our education was sorely lacking. This was in large part due to the fact that the school I attended is located in a non-horse area of a not-very-horsey state.

I recall working on only two live horses while in school: I took a blood sample from one animal and removed sutures from another. I did not put the sutures in; that was done by another student on the previous rotation.

I was fairly proficient at suturing. In my small-animal rotation, I sutured a lot. One of the clinicians even told me, "Kelley, you suture very well." So, even though I never got to suture a horse, I was confident that I was capable of doing a good job, should the occasion ever arise.

And the occasion finally did arise when I was out in the real world for four or five days. I worked in a large-animal practice in another state then, and the practice was about 30% equine.

Lights out

One evening in my first week out of school, my employer's wife, who was also his secretary/receptionist, called. It was almost dark, but she had just received a call from a farm in the northern part of the county. A horse had a large laceration.

The county we were in was long and thin, and I lived in the southern part of it. The trip to the farm was about 30 miles and the roads were narrow and rough, so I needed the better part of an hour to get there. It was totally dark by then.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a young couple in their late teens or early 20s, I estimated. They took me into a dark barn.

"Turn the lights on," I suggested.

"The barn has no electricity," I was told.

I examined the horse's injury with my penlight. On the left shoulder was an L-shaped laceration, about ten inches long on the vertical portion and six or seven inches long on the horizontal side. The injury definitely needed to be sutured.

As luck would have it, this was a cloudy, moonless night with not even any stars visible. I told the young man to hold the horse and handed my penlight to the girl, telling her to keep it aimed where I was suturing.

I washed the lesion and administered a local anesthetic, then I freshened the edges of the laceration. This was done by trimming a very small portion of the skin away with scissors. I began to suture the wound, but just as I finished tying off the first suture, I heard a moan. The light went out and there was a soft "plop." The girl had fainted.

The young man and I moved her to a wall, revived her, and told her to sit there with her head between her knees. I do not know why, but I have always been told to do that when someone faints or feels sick.

"You'll have to hold the horse and the light," I told the fellow. And he did.

I had placed two more sutures when I heard a groan and the light went out, followed by a "thud." He had fainted, too.

I moved him over next to the girl and got him situated just as she was. Then I went back to the horse. I finished suturing by standing on the shank to hold the horse still and holding my penlight in my mouth so I could see what I was doing.

As I was driving home, I thought about the situation. Two faint-hearted souls had apparently found each other.

About five days later, I was summoned to the same farm, this time in the daylight. Another horse had another shoulder laceration. The injury was almost identical to the one of the previous visit: L-shaped, about eight inches on the vertical portion and five inches on the horizontal side.

This time, the person present to help was the farm manager, a big, burly, rough man. The operation was primarily a cattle farm, so the farm manager was not used to working with horses, but the task did not require an experienced horseman to hold a shank.

I washed the horse's lesion, administered a local anesthetic, and freshened the edges of the cut. The farm manager had heard about my experience of the other night and he was laughing about it.

I had sutured about half of the vertical portion of the laceration when a deep groan emanated from the manager, followed by a heavy "thud." He had fainted.

This was a big man, probably 6'2" and 250 pounds. I revived him, but I was not about to move him. I finally got him up and over to a wall, where he sat quietly while I continued to suture, again standing on the shank to hold the horse.

What did I do?

On the drive away from the farm, I tried to examine my technique. I had sutured lesions on two horses and put three people out cold. What was I doing to have that effect?

Perhaps a week later, I was called upon to suture yet another shoulder of a horse on another farm. I thought about the two previous experiences, but this time the owner was a nurse (I had been to the farm before), so I knew there would be no problem.

While freshening the wound, I told her about my limited experience in the world of repairing cuts on horses. She laughed.

Her horse's laceration was only about four inches by three inches, so I was quickly finished. The owner did not faint, but as I was putting my stuff away, she commented, "I don't feel so well."

Now I was really worried about my technique. I had made a nurse sick!

All three horses healed uneventfully, so I apparently did a good job on their repairs. But I still worried about what I was doing to bring about the reactions I did.

I guess I will never know. More than 30 years have passed since then, and I have sutured dozens of lacerations on horses and have never lost another person.

Brent Kelley, D.V.M., is a retired veterinarian living in Paris, Kentucky.