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Baby Blue was a different sort of
rescue. The picture is of another baby coati the same age as
Blue. I, unfortunately, didn't get a picture of the real Blue
with all of his fixings.
Blue was a tiny coati that was
brought to the clinic by his owner with a severe injury to the
snout. He had been bitten by another animal. He was a mere 6
weeks old and almost lost his nose. I don't recall his true
name, but after you read this story, you'll understand why I
named him Miracle Blue.
He was originally brought for
treatment to another clinic known for their "greatness" with
exotics. Well, they messed up badly, using the wrong suture
material and not putting enough stitches in. Needless to say,
the little baby ripped the stitches out and needed emergency
surgery. Mike was a phenomenal surgeon, so I referred the owner
to him. I stopped by on the way home from work to pick up our
lynx kitten Kodiak (Mike had custody of him during the day),
and I decided to stay to help with the little coati surgery.
The 20th and last stitch was being put in the coati's nose when
he stopped breathing. We tried everything! Heart massage,
adrenaline directly in the heart, etc...He was blue and
pronounced dead about 6 minutes later. I thought Mike was going
to lose his mind. He was so upset and in tears. He tried again
to no avail to save the baby. After he left to go calm down, I
decided to perform my own last ditch effort to save this baby
coati. I picked him up and stuck his entire head in my mouth
(mmm - yummy) and started breathing into him and pushing the
air back out and massaging his heart. I was pretty rough with
the little guy, but I figured he was already dead anyway. I
even blew too much air into his tiny body accidentally, but I
kept squeezing it out. The noise it made was a bizarre
crackling noise. About 5 minutes later the coati started
gasping for air. OMG!!!!!!! We warmed him up and it took
about 20 minutes of stimulating him to get him fully awake.
Had little Miracle Blue's heart not
been injected with adrenaline, my perseverance probably would
not have paid off. Blue recovered FULLY and eventually returned
home to a very happy owner.
The moral of the story... Never ever
give up too soon. I don't think any vet would've done anything
differently than Mike did, but we can pass this story on to all
of our vets out there!!!
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