By Carole Cloud
Dr. Vikram Arora, chief resident in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Temple Medicine, was on his way home after a long shift when he noticed a little white dog scurrying across North Broad Street.
When he checked his rearview mirror to make sure the dog was safely on the other side, he saw a pickup truck smack right into the dog, now lying on the street, crying.
\”When I saw Lucy get hit by the truck,\” said Arora, \”I drove about a hundred feet and realized that no one had stopped. I turned around and went to check on her. It was heartbreaking to see her try to stand with the obvious deformity of her leg. When I walked over to her, she just wanted to get into my lap, never displaying any aggression. At that point, it was a pretty easy decision to take her to get the help she needed.\”
![\"Lucy](\"http://www.vet.upenn.edu/images/default-source/penn-vet-extra/lucy1.jpg?sfvrsn=2\" "\\"Lucy")
Arora knew that if the dog was to survive, he had to move quickly. Carefully placing the little dog in his car, he drove as fast as he could to the Emergency Service at Penn Vet’s Ryan Hospital – the only certified Veterinary Trauma Center in the region.
The young dog was in bad shape. In addition to an open wound on her hind end, she had blood stains on top of her nose, upper left lip, chin, right hind leg, and tail. On examination, she was in shock with evidence of significant blood loss.
When Emergency Service resident Dr. Laura Ateca finished her examination, it looked as if the dog, underweight and with no owner identifiers or microchip, had suffered major trauma when she was hit by the truck.
Initial blood work revealed a pre-regenerative anemia, most likely related to acute blood loss, as well as elevated liver values likely due to hypovolemia, a condition in which blood volume or fluid levels can drastically drop as a result of a traumatic injury. The dog’s condition was critical since hypovolemic shock quickly impacts renal, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and respiratory systems.
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