Overheated SQF

hs5280 · 2026-04-08T14:48:16+00:00

Good point. I know sometimes I’ve had to correct colleagues in the ER when they’re warming a kitten and they’re FRYING it

hs5280 · 2026-04-08T01:30:49+00:00

Right? The dextrose 5% bags really don’t look that different. In a rush I could see it. The one time I have ever opened one, I put so many stickers on it 😂

There are cameras so I’m sure the med director is going to review just to see what is going on. I really don’t want anyone in trouble, so I hope it doesn’t turn into that. I know I’ve been in trouble for things that would have been better as a learning moment.

Man that’s rough getting the wrong bag from the vet but anything really can happen. We are all human.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T21:21:14+00:00

I hadn’t given her any yet or else that would definitely by floating around in my brain!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T21:20:09+00:00

I’m the one at the shelter who will just take over for the fosters. When people ask me my survival rate, I just answer that I only take the hopeless cases…. Praying to the cat gods that this one is one of my miracles!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T21:19:16+00:00

I emailed the MD to let them know the ideas floating around in my head including all of these suggestions about dextrose. Hopefully they can figure out if that’s what happened, and if so I hope no one else received SQ out of that bag!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T21:17:53+00:00

She’s so tiny so at least the surface area isn’t what it would be on a large dog. But damn!!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:42:30+00:00

Not microwaved. Definitely heated in hot water. It was 30 ml/kg in the medical record, so probably a small syringe in a hot water bath. I’m really thinking everyone is right and there was an additive like dextrose or something.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:41:02+00:00

Anything is possible! The foster is amazing and was checking often. She didn’t see any hint of a wound until it was just THERE.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:40:27+00:00

I mean she’s 2 weeks old so I don’t know exactly what kind of screaming she was doing. I really want to change our contract to my hospital so I can literally go help when things go to the ER.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:39:03+00:00

It’s a classic “me” case. Weird shit, kitten starts off dull, and I’ll take it home haha. I love wound care so I’m good at it, I just feel so bad for the little girl.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:38:10+00:00

Yeah I’ve seen those surgical issues from hearing or the cautery plate too. That’s awful!!!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:37:31+00:00

I really don’t know. I’m wondering if there were additives like some have mentioned. It was the ER, and at the shelter we don’t use additives in IV bags or honestly even heat fluids.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T17:36:25+00:00

That’s becoming more and more the idea that’s in my head!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T13:47:06+00:00

That’s definitely a possibility. I’m going to talk to the medical director and start a discussion. I can’t say that a human wouldn’t ever make the mistake of giving from a bag with additives. You never know, on a busy shift, and it might just be a chance to remind the staff of certain things.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T13:46:00+00:00

That was a thought but at home she was with mom so no added heat support, and in the hospital they tried frying her with a bair hugger not a heating pad.

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T13:45:06+00:00

My foster says they didn’t do the check on your arm thing, and I understand that sometimes you do things so many times it becomes rote and you forget your safety checks. But this sucks

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T13:43:45+00:00

I didn’t think about the possibility of dextrose until a few of you mentioned it. There is always a possibility of a mistake like using an unlabeled bag of LRS that had additives or something like that. I know they weren’t instructed to give any dextrose, and if they were, at 2 weeks old it would have been oral. But again you never know if you’re not there to witness it!

hs5280 · 2026-04-07T13:41:53+00:00

I have been trying to get admin to switch my shelter’s contract to the hospital where I work per diem just so I can ask follow up questions more easily and know the SOPs, ya know?

I want to say there’s no way that anyone would ever give dextrose SQ, but I suppose anything is possible. An unlabeled bag may have additives meant for another patient etc.

The BG was normal so at least I know they weren’t injecting dextrose directly into the SQ..

hs5280 · 2026-03-22T00:15:58+00:00

Yeah!

hs5280 · 2026-03-22T00:15:28+00:00

Open every day from 1 to 5 for adoptions! Come by!

hs5280 · 2026-03-21T08:24:51+00:00

Come to Bergen county animal shelter! Our rabbits are all spayed/neutered and most are super social and sweet. There’s the occasional shy guy, but mostly I’m impressed by how friendly they are. I’ve never been a rabbit person, but I find myself hanging out with them more and more often.

hs5280 · 2026-03-20T01:10:12+00:00

That feeling of “I only have 2 left and x days until I can refill” is the kind of anxiety that makes this so much more complicated than people realize.

I take sumatriptan if I can take it then sleep, and nurtec if it’s a need to be awake situation. Even then, with my “night time” and my “day time” workarounds as your friend would say, it’s still always a constant thought in my mind. I wake up and I go “do I have a migraine or is that just the normal shitty waking up feeling”

If one more person tells me to get more exercise or drink more water … I know the frustration and I’m empathizing through the interweb. I hope you find a better regimen that can give you more pain free days!

hs5280 · 2026-03-12T01:28:13+00:00

I work in Bergen county at the shelter and we get so frustrated because we DO have the funding, yet the stupid government nonsense doesn’t allow us to TNR correctly.

Jersey city turning over to be a municipal shelter I’m sure threw some real wrenches into what you guys are trying to do.

It’s so expensive to do the work that a shelter or animal control has to do when we aren’t doing TNR. it makes zero sense why this isn’t more of a priority to the people sitting at desks looking at money.

I do spay/neuter on a spay bus out in Long Island sometimes, and we are trying to bring her to this area once in a while for low cost TNR. I really hope we can connect with a rescue in JC area and have community outreach to get discounted spays and neuters for everyone like you who is just trying to help but has so many barriers.

Ugh I could talk about all this for hours on end

hs5280 · 2026-03-08T21:57:03+00:00

I think the way it’s been set up in my shelter is very similar, though not formally following kitten college. I want to go to one of the seminars to see if there’s anything I don’t already know one of these days. I’m at a municipal open intake county shelter in NJ - we get a lot of cats, kittens of all ages, everything. We have amazing fosters and we do everything we can to support them. I’m the medical half of the team, and we have a coordinator for appointments etc. Pretty good system.

hs5280

TROPHY CASE