The Hippo with Toothache (9 page)

The shoes lasted longer than I'd imagined. Though the ones on the smaller inner and outer toes fell off by three months, the central toe shoes were still in place and doing their job for another six weeks. And although the chronic infection began its slow recurrence, Mo's nails did grow out. When he and Mechi left the zoo for a wetter, swampier exhibit and a warmer climate, we felt we'd given him a better footing for what remained of his captive-rhino life.

Lucy H. Spelman grew up with a menagerie of animals on an old dairy farm in rural Connecticut. While in middle school, she looked forward to “old clothes Wednesday,” a day set aside by one of her teachers to explore the nature trails across the street. She earned a bachelor of arts in biology from Brown University, then her veterinary degree
from the University of California, Davis, and completed her postdoctoral training at North Carolina State University. Board certified by the American College of Zoological Medicine in 1994, Dr. Spelman's work experience includes nearly ten years with the Smithsonian National Zoo, half as a clinical veterinarian and half as its director. She joined the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project in October 2006 as its Africa-based regional manager. Dr. Spelman enjoys sharing her work with others through all forms of media. In addition to writing, she has been filmed at work with animals in more than a dozen cable television documentaries, and has served as a consultant for various media and education divisions of Discovery Communications, Inc. “We're all in this together,” she says of today's conservation challenges.

IN 2005, I
was in Chengdu, China, preparing to perform a colonoscopy on a female giant panda with an undiagnosed intestinal disorder. This visit was the latest of several I'd made to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. My Chinese colleagues had picked out several animals with chronic illnesses, and we'd planned to give each one a complete physical under anesthesia—including endoscopy and abdominal ultrasound. This particular panda, Yaloda, had been losing weight, her coat had lost its shine, and she hadn't come into heat in several years.

In my capacity as staff veterinarian at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC, travel to China is part of my job. I like foggy Chengdu, despite the challenges of working in a place where the language and the culture differs so
much from mine. And I've gotten into a regular routine when I visit the Panda Base, which houses 35 or so of the world's 260 captive giant pandas. Even so, it's impossible not to feel a bit nervous the night before a scheduled procedure on a giant panda. I know that I'm one of very few veterinarians who will ever have the chance to take care of the animal many people consider the world's rarest and most loved.

I still remember the day in July 1981 when the first living cub was born to a giant panda outside China, at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City. I was twelve years old. A few months later, my mom took my brother, my sister, and me to see the cub, Tohui. We stood in line for almost five hours before reaching the viewing glass that framed the panda's night-house. Because of the great number of people, we were allowed to watch for only a few minutes. We waited anxiously until the mom turned around. Then we saw the fuzzy little black and white baby panda, moving about and trying to climb up his mom's arms. When I saw Ying Ying with her cub, I realized that we were in the presence of an amazing creature. But I never imagined that this exotic species would become a focal point of my career, and indeed of my life.

By the time Tohui turned fourteen, I'd finished veterinary school. That year, the Chapultepec Zoo hired me as staff veterinarian. Working there was a dream come true—the zoo had six giant pandas by then. And yet I wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, no program in my country could offer me further training in zoo animal medicine. Though it was a difficult decision, I decided to leave Mexico in order to become a better veterinarian. I moved to London to do my master's at
the Royal Veterinary College under a full scholarship from the British government. Next came a three-year zoo medicine residency at the National Zoo.

Washington's favorite old panda, Hsing Hsing, had just died when I started my program. But two young giant pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, were on their way from China. Playful and dramatic, they stole the show at the zoo. As in Mexico, people couldn't get enough of watching giant pandas. And they wanted more. So did the zoo staff and its scientists. After some seasons of trial and error, Mei Xiang became pregnant via artificial insemination and gave birth to their first cub, Tai Shan. This was an exciting time for us all, and especially for me: I finished my training that year and was hired by the National Zoo as staff veterinarian, a second dream come true.

On this trip to Chengdu, we planned to examine eight pandas—several with intestinal problems, including Yaloda—over the course of three busy days. Our first day went well. But as we prepared for the next, someone accidentally pushed our endoscope stand. Our fiberscope (a very specialized and expensive piece of equipment) fell to the concrete floor. I reached for it, but wasn't fast enough; as if in slow motion, I watched the delicate instrument land on its base and saw three pieces detach themselves from the lens. A long silence filled the room. No one had to say that we needed the scope tomorrow, when we were scheduled to examine Yaloda.

I evaluated the damage. The piece that attaches the camera to the scope was broken. Without the camera, I could not attach the TV monitor, making it impossible for me to show
my Chinese colleagues how to interpret what we'd be seeing inside the panda's stomach and intestines. Nor could I make a recording to document the exam. Without the camera, the scope was virtually useless.

Determined to solve the problem, I gathered my tools: medical tape, scissors, and hair clippers. My improvised fix didn't result in a perfect view through the lens, but it was better than the alternative, which was to cancel the exam on Yaloda. She'd been suffering from some kind of gastrointestinal disease for months. I didn't want her to go any longer without a diagnosis and treatment.

With the key piece of equipment repaired, we reviewed the schedule for the next day: first Yaloda's exam, then two more. We'd start early in the morning, setting up and checking all our equipment, including several plastic crates' worth of veterinary supplies I'd brought from the US. Once everything was ready, each panda would be anesthetized with a combination of drugs injected via a plastic dart.

I also made a point of running through the techniques we'd be using for the endoscopy. Every time we do this procedure together, the Chinese veterinarians gain confidence in their knowledge; one day, they will perform it themselves. When it was safe to handle the panda, we'd move it from its night-house to a room with an operating table. We'd insert a tube into its windpipe to protect its airways and place a catheter in one of its arm veins to give it some fluids while under anesthesia. The exam would include an oral exam, abdominal palpation, a blood sample, and endoscopy. This last procedure would be performed with our special, now-repaired fiberscope. We'd introduce the endoscope inside the stomach
(gastroscopy) and into the colon of the animal (colonoscopy). Each exam would take two and a half to three hours at least, maybe longer for Yaloda, since we knew she was the panda with the most severe problem.

The night before Yaloda's exam, our excellent hosts took us out to a restaurant, where we ate many colorful, delicious dishes. I felt completely at ease with my Chinese colleagues. Though most of China's traditions are very different from Mexico's, some things are the same. For one thing, Sichuan food is spicy, just like Mexican food. And as at home, friendship and trust are established here over a social meal—socializing that usually includes drinking the traditional Chinese liquor, unless you're doing giant panda anesthesia the next morning! (We had tea, instead.) Chinese
baijou
is very strong, not unlike Mexican tequila. We all looked forward to a proper banquet at the end of our three-day stint.

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of Chengdu's incessantly honking cars, a brutal alarm system, and took a taxi to the Panda Base. Before we anesthetize our patients, we like to look at them first. So I found the head veterinarian and we went together to see Yaloda. She was in her night-house, sitting on a wooden platform surrounded by stalks of bamboo and piles of loose leaves. It didn't appear as if she'd eaten anything overnight. The room temperature was comfortably cool in spite of the heat outside; still, Yaloda seemed uncomfortable. I could see that her feces were soft.

The panda was thin, her abdomen appeared slightly bloated, and her coat looked dull and coarse. Though only eight years old, she looked older. I'd been told that her feces had been abnormally soft for several years now, and that she
had not responded to conventional therapy. In China, “conventional” therapy can vary from traditional Chinese medicine to powerful antibiotics. Although I didn't know why she had not responded to previous treatment, I felt confident that if we could make a definitive diagnosis, we could propose a different treatment and possibly cure her.

Our team had agreed we'd need to perform a colonoscopy on Yaloda as well as gastroscopy. We didn't know for certain which part of her intestinal tract was affected. We'd take small pieces of her stomach and large intestine to be evaluated under the microscope. We hoped this procedure would explain why she'd been sick for such a long time.

Yaloda is a gentle animal, and she was calm before her procedure. When one of the Panda Base vets darted her with the anesthetic drug, she jumped slightly, but then sat back down and watched all of us with her mild dark eyes. I had the impression that she knew that we wanted to help her. I'm sure she found it strange to have so many people paying her all this attention. She fell asleep slowly, having experienced a smooth induction, and continued to do well under anesthesia.

Although I still worried that the scope might break in the middle of the procedure, I felt we had no option—we had to try.

With Yaloda sleeping deeply on her side, we placed a mouth gag between her canines to avoid the possibility of her jaws crushing our scope. I passed the scope in slowly, first into the back of her throat, then down into her esophagus and into the stomach. With the camera and TV monitor running, we could all evaluate the images. Nothing in her
stomach looked abnormal. We decided not to take any biopsies there but to move on to the colon. I pulled the scope out of her mouth and went around to the other end. So far, we'd found no explanation for her illness. The puzzle was still unsolved.

As soon as we had a clear view of the inside of Yaloda's large intestine, we could see that the lining, or mucosa, looked unhealthy, even angry. It was irregular and dotted with red where it should have been smooth pink. We had our answer. We took multiple tiny samples of the mucosa—a procedure used routinely in human medicine—and checked them under the microscope. As expected, we found severe inflammation in the cells of the intestinal lining consistent with inflammation of the colon. Based on these findings, we proposed treatment with a specific medication combining anti-inflammatory and antibiotic drugs.

Yaloda would likely need this treatment for life. Since pandas have a life expectancy of twenty-five to thirty years, this would mean another twenty years or so of treatment. I was concerned about how she'd tolerate the medication. Giant pandas can be picky about foods with medicine in them, and digestive side effects are always possible. We offered Yaloda the medicine in a piece of apple; to my surprise and relief, she had no problem with it. Indeed, she has turned out to be a great patient, taking all her meds since day one. Almost immediately, her intestinal problems started to improve, and soon the consistency of her stool turned normal.

On my next visit to Chengdu, I went to see Yaloda first. She had gained weight, and her coat was thick and lustrous. She seemed a happier panda, more energetic and active. She
appeared comfortable this time, even playful. Then, for the first time in many years, Yaloda presented a breeding cycle. Because she'd been so ill, her estrus cycle had been abnormal and the staff at the breeding center had felt she was not a good candidate for pregnancy. Now that she's healthy, Yaloda has been artificially inseminated, a process similar to that performed in humans. We hope Yaloda will become a mom in the near future.

Personally, I couldn't be happier. I had the opportunity to help restore a gentle creature to health, and maybe contribute to the conservation of this rare species if Yaloda is able to have babies. Giant pandas are on loan to zoos around the world, where they receive excellent veterinary care, but there is something very special about working on them in their own land. I look forward to future trips to Chengdu to visit all my friends there—including, of course, Yaloda.