Tears for Cuba

Gf and I got home from Guanajuato with a some broken pottery and a suitcase full of laundry, after having been stripped at the departure gate of the duty-free tequila that the shop was all too happy to sell us, despite the prohibition on ALL liquids (whether they be unopened, purchased-within-the-secure-area $40 tequila or a Molotov cocktail) which the lovely gate-meister from Aero Mexicana was all-too-enthusiastic about enforcing.

No matter. The tequila was for Ex, who has been dutifully watching the dogs and cats during our absence, and the mirth that Ex derived from hearing my recounting of the events leading up to the full-on hissy fit I threw at the gate was probably worth more than the tequila itself would have been.

After our cab dropped us off, gf and I threw down our bags, took long-overdue showers, checked up on the renovation at her place (fully gutted now, except for the kitchen) and went to dinner-- home at last. Five days away felt like five weeks.

The trip was amazing: Guanajuato is in central Mexico, a mountainous, high and dry region. The 7,000 ft elevation and intense sun reminded me of Quito. The colorful Spanish colonial towns had a distinctly European feel. It was a great mix. Gf and I make excellent travel companions. We share the same aversion to churches and museums and same affinity for sitting for hours at cafes, eating street-food and feeding stray dogs.

This was the long-anticipated spay/neuter rampage for an animal rescue organization run by an American ex-pat in Guanajuato. It is a fabulous idea: the group raises money and resources for tri-annual spay-neuter campaigns to reduce the number of abused/neglected/starving animals on the streets, and recruits the veterinary talent from Mexico and the states to come to these weekend-long spay-athons.

Gf was part of a team of three American vets and two Mexican vets. They were assisted by 6 or 8 vet techs. The campaign was done in an elementary school, commandeered for the weekend by the group. Its four classrooms were converted into anesthesia, surgery, and two recovery rooms. Each room was up a flight of stairs from a central outdoor stairway. Half of the physical challenge was simply running up and down the stairs all day, hefting dogs, heaving buckets, balancing trays of instruments or lunch vittles.

I was running support for everything-- fetching coffee and making sandwiches, holding off veins for anesthesia, shaving bellies, carrying animals from the anesthesia room to the surgery room and from the surgery room to the recovery room, checking on animals in recovery, throwing blankets on them, talking to owners in rudimentary Spanish, setting and cleaning up surgery tables.

In all, gf and the other vets spayed and neutered 99 animals, not including the 6 we sent home for being too young, too old, or otherwise unfit.

Of those 99, there is one who whose memory will be with me forever. Cuba.
She was the first dog there Sunday, the second day of the campaign. Number 40. A big, black dog with a sweet disposition, wagging her tail. She was waiting patiently with her owners when we came at 8:30 for the 9 o'clock opening.
She was registered and tagged and anesthetized and on the table probably by 9:15. I think I was fetching coffee or helping straighten up the other surgery tables at the time, because although I generally helped carry the heavier dogs, I didn't take her in.

A young vet from Brooklyn, newly engaged to her lovely boyfriend whose fluency in Spanish was an enormous help to our entire group over the weekend, did the surgery. The day went on. Dogs in, dogs out. Cats in, cats out. More gauze needed here, adjust the ties there. More coffee. More people to register, animals to weigh.

At some point I noticed Cuba had been brought out of the recovery room into the sun. She was cold, someone told me when I asked. The family was with her, a couple and two young kids. They were talking to her, rubbing her flank under the blanket. At some point later gf came out of the surgery mayhem for a cup of mixed nuts and a quick shoulder rub. We sat next to Cuba in the sun. Gf asked. She was cold, and having a hard time coming out of the anesthesia, I explained.

The night before gf and I had taken two of the younger cats who had had a difficult time with the anesthesia home with us over night to keep them warm while they shook it off. I kept one in my sports bra during dinner. By morning, gf and I had been peed on and bitten multiple times but the cats were fine and ready to go back to their owners.

Sometime later I checked Cuba's gums, more out of feeling like I should do something than any great alarm. Cuba's gums were alarmingly white, but I had no cause to believe she would not muscle through just as the kittens had, despite the anesthesia's lingering effects that were manifest in their white gums and tiny, inert bodies.

More dogs in, more dogs out. Cats in, cats out. Cranky vets, tired techs, worried owners, recuperating pets. A chaos of good intentions.

And suddenly, where Cuba had been in the sun, there was only a red blot, a puddle really, of blood, and a trail of red drops leading into the surgery room. A great commotion around the corner table. Cuba had been re-opened, was bleeding internally. Gf and another vet stopped the bleeding but there were pools of blood in her cavity, blood that should have been in her veins. She was cold, her breathing not good. Her heart stopped once. Gf jabbed it with a needle full of epinephrine. Another vet intubated her and breathed into her lungs. A tech pumped away her chest. I was called in to hold an IV bag of fluids over my head and squeeze with all my might to force the fluid into her veins. Her heart started to beat again. Everyone sighed.

Then, just as quickly, it stopped again. We recommenced our heroic efforts, but there was nothing. The tech monitoring her heart kept sighing and shaking her head, "No, try harder." We tried. I squeezed, gf jabbed, tech pumped, vet breathed. Nothing. Still nothing. How much time went by? I don't know. My arms ached but I kept squeezing, trying with all of my might to force the life back into her, as if I could undo the past hours during which it had seeped away from her a drop at a time. "It's over," someone finally said. One by one, we dropped our instruments until we all stood, not sure of what to do next, next to the dead Cuba, surrounded by the instruments of last resort.

The vet who had done her original surgery came by and began sobbing, great heart-torn wails. We all shook our heads, "It's not your fault." Someone told the family. A tech and I carefully wiped down the blood from Cuba's glossy coat, off of her nostrils, laid her on a fresh layer of newspaper. We pulled out her IV, the breathing tube. Someone closed her back up.

And just like that she was gone.

From a happy, wagging dog whose owners were there first thing in the morning to do the right thing, to...dead. Nothing. Gone.

For the rest of the day a pall hung over the surgery team. Work resumed, but with a grief that couldn't be shaken. We sent animals home without surgery, unwilling to take risks. We looked at each other with pain in our eyes.

When we got back to our hotel, gf sunk into a pit of grief, guilt and despair, convinced it was her fault, that as the vet with the most experience she should have noticed more, should have done something. But, I pointed out, she was so busy saving the other dogs, the ones on the tables, the ones being operated on by vets with less experience and poor training, the ones who wouldn't stop bleeding despite everything, that there was no way she could have been expected to. She should have, she countered, insisted on doing Cuba-- she knew it would be a difficult surgery, an older female with multiple past pregnancies. But, I said, the other vet volunteered to do it, and gf didn't want to step on toes. It wasn't gf's fault-- it wasn't mine or the vet's who did the surgery, or the tech's who didn't bring a vet to assess her when she wasn't recovering-- but it was, as gf pointed out, our responsibility, and we ALL dropped the ball. The system was inherently chaotic-- too many balls, not enough catchers. Cuba's death was statistically inevitable-- and it is amazing that it was only one of nearly 100-- but as a specific, individual event, it was inescapably horrible and sad and painful and traumatic for all of us, not to mention Cuba and her family.

But while in Guanajuato I was so focused on bringing gf out of her guilt and despair over Cuba, insisting that it was a system, not an individual, failure that I squelched my own reaction. Until last night, dinner when at last I cried, and could not stop crying, for Cuba. I will write more about this trip-- the wonderful aspects of it. But for now, I wanted to devote this space to mourning Cuba.