Dr. Cliff Redford (00:06)
Hey everyone, this is going to be a little bonus story. I don't think it's going to be a full episode. A little bonus story on Ben Cliff and Dr. Cliff. Again, I'm driving back from Shades of Hope. It is Thursday, June 13th. Happy birthday to my big brother for tomorrow. He turns 53 years old. My brother has a master's degree in aeronautical space engineering. I've mentioned that before. I'm a pretty smart guy.
I did really well, I test well, let's put it that way, but compared to him, next to him, I'm a friggin' idiot. I remember shortly after graduating, I told him he has to refer to me as Doctor, because I have my doctorate in veterinary medicine, my doctorate in veterinary medicine, and he said, no problem, I have a master's degree, so you have to call me Master Redford. So we decided to stick with the first names.
Anyways, happy birthday, big bro. That should be great. So, before I talk about Shades of Hope, I want to do one of my little minor random rants. And the reason I'm thinking about it is I was hoping to be doing this bonus episode using my new Rode 2 wireless microphones. A microphone that sticks to the lapel and then it's wireless to a low receiver that hooks up directly into the iPhone.
And I imagine they're gonna be great. They arrived yesterday. I've charged them up. I went online to see how to set the whole thing up because I am 50 years old so I don't know how to technology very well and unfortunately I needed it's called an ST 15 cable something like a IBC or ICB to lightning I can't remember but
I need this cable that's basically going to take the attached microphone into the little import doohickey thing that the iPhones have, which I get if you've got an Android versus an iPhone versus maybe you're using a laptop versus you're going into a DSLR camera. Like any of these things, they're going to have different little doohickey inputs, right? But like there should be something on Amazon, which is where I ordered it, because I don't think you can.
couldn't get these Rode 2 mics anywhere else. We called around and some places kept just saying, well, we have the singles but not the doubles. You gotta go on Amazon, go on Amazon, go on Amazon. So I went on Amazon and you would think there'd be something that would say, if you have an iPhone, you need this. If you have an Android, you need this. If you have a laptop or a DSLR, it already comes with this or something.
because now I gotta order another one. I gotta order one, it's 60 bucks, that's fine. It's probably here today, but meanwhile it's too late for me. At least next episode will be better. But it just would have been a quicker 60 bucks for this road to opening. But what can you do? So that's my little minor random rant for whimsical wine. Let's call it that. It's a whimsical wine. So shades of hope today.
I had fun working with students again. Leo returned. It did not scare him off last time, and he came back with some information. I had sent him back with homework, asking him what this structure in the back of a bird's eye is. And he returned saying it is a pectin oculus, I think it's called, but pectin. Kind of like an optic nerve, disky thing, but you can see that I'm not an expert when it comes to ophthalmology.
But I didn't scare him off. He brought, he got, he sent me the information and he came back today for more, more lessons. And when I left last week, I'd left him, he was doing surgery on the deceased, on a ADC ring -built gull, not a sea gull, with a student -inflicted broken wing, obviously broken after the animal had died. And he showed me the x -ray. He thought there was some problems, but I said, no, this x -ray shows.
this bone is all lined up, this animal will heal except for the fact that it was gone. But good job, Leo. And then also Queen Lee joined us. Queen Lee is a student also from University of Guelph, also wants to be a veterinarian, and the two of them helped me basically with orthopedic day. I've not done a lot of orthopedics recently, that's just sort of how it worked out. But we had multiple orthopedic surgeries, and the two I'm gonna talk about, the two that I found sort of interesting.
they're kind of connected. One was it started off with a Eastern Grey Squirrel in EGS and this Eastern Grey Squirrel had a nasty fracture to its humerus bone, the funny bone, the humerus bone from the shoulder to the elbow, the main bone in the arm, right? And it was a perfect fracture for repair and we had to do external pins. But the biggest problem with this was...
The muscles had contracted because the fracture was multiple days old, at least three days old, probably longer, because there was already some sort of inflammatory fibrin attachments once I went in that were holding the bone. Instead of holding it lined up, it was overlapping. So I had to break down these adhesions and basically stretch the arm.
this nasty warrior yoga pose kind of thing to stretch the arm to get these two bones to line up, these ends to line up and kind of click into place, which is what ended up happening. And then we did these external pins. And then we, because I'm not a real orthopedic surgeon, I don't have the fancy attachments. These external pins are then attached to each other using
Plumbers putty, which is like this poxy putty that basically you mush together and you just get it at a regular hardware store and it's there to fix your pipes, but it mushes together to form like a steel hard sort of contraption. And you'll see if you go on Instagram at drcliffworldwidevet, you'll see some before and after X -rays and then also maybe some photos and you'll be able to see what I mean.
But, so they got to learn, Leo and Queen Lee got to learn about sort of the problems with when bones contract and how you have to do this warrior yoga pull to be really aggressive. Obviously the animal is under full anesthetic when this is happening, but even without there being any pain, those muscles have already contracted and stayed much shorter than they need to be.
So that little Eastern Grey squirrel is probably going to do well as long as he, she, pardon me, as long as she behaves and keeps the bandage on and doesn't mess around with those pins. But even if we can get it to stay for two or three days, I think then those vibrant attachments will reform. This time they'll form with the bone in the right position. So that's good news.
And then the other one, one of the other orthopedic surgeries was a raven. I'm thinking about it because raven are pro. And ravens are bigger and ravens ca -caw. Whereas crows crow. I don't know what they do. But it's different. But they look very, very similar. And if you're a Wheel of Time fan, you can say they're eyes of the dark. Anyways.
So this raven had a broken femur, which is the thigh bone. And in that one we did an IM pin, so intermodulary pin, intermodulary or intermodulary? It goes within the center of the modulary chamber of the bone, intermodulary I think. So this IM pin, and it runs the length of the bone. And again, there was major contraction.
And the issue with this was even with as strong as I am, pulling those two bones apart once I got in there and released all the adhesions, I could not get them to sort of come in contact. There was always a tiny bit of overlapping. So I actually used some bone ranchers and basically cut slash surgically chewed with this little steel clamp device. And...
basically slowly took away ends of the bone on either end of either end of the fracture. And it did sort of shorten the femur bone probably by about 2%, which is negligible, but allowed us to line this this fracture line up and then extend the IMP down towards the down towards the knee, I guess dogs are called the stifle. But sure.
birds if they called stifle or knee or you know what horses the elbows considered the front knee something like that or maybe the back either the knees called the back elbow I don't know all these terms I should know these things but I at least know how to stitch them back together or in this case do a little bit of carpentry work with leg screws and I have pins and
So that was sort of the cool, it ended up being two cool orthopedic surgeries for Leo and Queen Lee to learn about and for me to knock off some of the rust. I get a lot of rust at my age, some of the rust off my fingers and off my brain, because I've not had to do these orthopedic surgeries too much. So it was a fantastic, it was a fantastic day. Yet again, I learned a little bit extra and...
wonderful time and stay tuned for more. I think this this turns out to be a bonus episode. Great. Send in our questions, send in questions as usual and share and comment on this podcast. Please give it five stars. Apparently that makes a difference. and I just found out today we've only really posted a couple of episodes. We're already number five in the science category in the country in Canada.
That's pretty good there, eh? Nice job. Not gonna be a hoser anymore, eh? Take off. Okay, that's it. That's my awful Bob and Doug McKenzie. Not Shorzy. Bob and Doug McKenzie were the original Shorzy hosers of Canada. Rick Moranis and... Not Steve Hart. Rick Moranis and Dave... Shoot. Dave...
Damn it. All right, someone send me a message. Dave Folt, not Dave Foley, that's from New, that's from Kids in the Hall. Damn it. Okay, who is, who are the original or who are the only Bob and Doug McKenzie? Can you remember that from the theme song, Strange Brew? Darn it, who is it? All right, Eugene Levy is rolling over in his grave, although he's not dead.
Okay, that's enough. Someone send me a message or else I'm going to Google it. Let's see if you guys send me a message first. Thanks for listening. Thanks for letting me ramble on. And be kind to animals, yourself and others. And I love you guys for listening and we'll talk soon.
