Fall 2024 Season Recap
I spent October through mid December helping animals in Grenada, Carriacou, and Mayreau in the Southern Caribbean. Most of my time was spent on the Island of Carriacou due to the need following Hurricane Beryl, and the amazing partnership that I was able to make with Carriacou Animal Hospital.
I started this chapter of work in Grenada with Vets on the Go, a traveling veterinary service that moves around the island. From there, I made the journey to the island of Carriacou. There, I helped with emergencies, surgeries, routine care, and community outreach with Carriacou Animal Hospital. While I was only initially going to be there for a week, the island captured my heart.
The beauty and resilience found on this island is truly remarkable. In the face of extreme devastation brought on by Hurricane Beryl, the people are some of the warmest, most welcoming, generous, and positive individuals that I have ever met.
The volunteers and staff of Carriacou Animal Hospital helped make my time there something I will remember forever, and are much of the reason that I have chosen to return in February of 2025. Their approach to medicine, outreach, innovative care, and volunteer work is impressive.
They have managed to reach so much of the community with their efforts to spay/neuter and provide flea, tick, and heartworm prevention to the island at no cost to the residents.
When talking to local people, almost every single person has heard of heartworm, what it does, and how it is spread. The vast majority have with them currently, or have heard of, the low cost ivermectin medicine that they formulate within the hospital as heartworm preventative. It is inexpensive, easy to store, and very safe. The quality of medicine and surgery that the hospital is able to provide with often limited resources is beyond remarkable, especially given that their hospital location was completely destroyed by the hurricane. They are currently in the process of rebuilding at another site.
While working with CAH, I was able to use my skills in so many ways and simultaneously expand my knowledge and skillset.
I did surgery, emergency medicine, preventative care, community outreach, and client communication. While I have done a great deal of medicine, communication, and preventative care with some ER stuff mixed in, surgery has been something that has created somewhat of a block for me. While I am skilled in surgery and my perfectionist nature serves me in many ways, I did not have good surgical mentorship out of veterinary school and after quite some time, I decided to stop doing it. Without appropriate support, it is difficult to grow as a surgeon. While working with CAH, I was able to lift my surgical block thanks to the staff and other volunteers there. I got some truly excellent surgical mentoring from volunteer veterinarians from the UK.
This experience changed the way I feel about surgery and I will forever be grateful to CAH and these vets for helping me move forward with growing as a doctor.
While in Carriacou, we had some boat problems, which is not uncommon in this sailing lifestyle. Due to this, I ended up taking a water taxi to Mayreau instead of sailing our boat there. I was only able to stay for the day to help Mayreau Animal Welfare, but was able to see about 20 patients during that time! This island has no veterinarian and has struggled with rebuilding since Beryl. There is still widespread devastation there, and while rebuilding has begun, this small island faces many challenges with its location, small size, and limited resources. I worked with some local volunteers through the organization and they were fantastic! We got to remove a wire from the jaw of a little pup that sustained an injury during the hurricane, treat lots of skin disease, hang out with some goats, and follow up on/modify previous medical conditions and medication protocols as appropriate. I got to deliver some much needed basic medications as well.
A Brief Map Overview Of Locations Mentioned
From October to early December, I have been able to serve or help serve around 230 patients.
About 80 of those were the result of community outreach rather than immediate patient exam.
Due to the medications, equipment and supplies that I donated to one of the organizations or to individuals directly:
-about 200 doses of anti-inflammatory can be given for dogs in pain
-about 60 dogs can be sedated for procedures and have pain relief at the same time
-100 dogs can be dewormed for GI parasites
-All dogs on the island of Mayreu (160) can get a month of free heartworm prevention plus an additional 50 doses for follow up the next month.
-200 dogs can receive relief from skin itching or partial heartworm treatment
-100 animals can get nausea relief from post anesthesia or gastrointestinal disease like worms
-50 animals can receive a course of antibiotics for animals with common problems such as wound infections
-Wound dressing, bandaging, cleaning, and repair materials for 50 animals including stitches
-About 20 dogs can be treated for tick born disease that is very common in these islands
-75-100 dogs can get relief from a common cause of sudden diarrhea
Equipment donations will allow:
-improved quality of anesthesia and monitoring by being able to see heart rate and oxygen saturation level in real time.
-The ability to monitor blood pressure accurately. We know that that this parameter is intimately linked to organ health, risk, and quality of recovery
-The ability to have IV medications delivered at a safe pace and for very small animals to get IV fluids in a controlled and slow manner.
-A more accurate and efficient way to place a tube for breathing under anesthesia
-Together these things mean safer and better anesthesia/monitoring for animals and reduced risks for patients