Adventures of an elephant veterinarian

I just finished my final week as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed elephant veterinarian in Thailand. Time sure does fly!

This week I’ve been busy working with the elephant veterinarians from Chiang Mai University. They have a mobile unit and drive all over Northern Thailand to treat sick and injured elephants. Just like in the US, there seems to be a shortage of veterinarians in Thailand, especially elephant vets. It’s a difficult and strenuous job and the pay isn’t as good a small animal veterinarian here. We’ve driven as far as 2.5 hours into the remote areas of the mountains for some of our appointments.

Elephant behavior and body language

Like most animals, elephants have a wide range of behaviors and body language that tell you how they’re feeling – if they’re scared, happy, unsure, frustrated, relaxed, etc. Thinking back to Elephant Nature Park last week, I’m realizing just how much I took away from that experience. Besides the mental and emotional impact, being around elephants 24-7 for a week straight really sharpened my instincts about elephant behavior. I feel much more comfortable reading their body language.

Each elephant has his or her own personality. Many are known to be sweet and laid back and can be trusted not to show aggression. But others can be a bit unpredictable. Especially when we’re doing things that may cause some temporary pain (like flushing a penetrating wound or giving an injection). An aggressive cat can give you a nasty scratch or bite. But an aggressive elephant can kill you with one swing of their trunk.

When I’m doing treatments, I have one eye on what I’m doing and one eye on the elephant to continuously assess their behavior. I am nowhere near an expert but I definitely feel a shift in my understanding and instincts. My mentor this week, Dr. Paan, is wonderful. She’s been an elephant veterinarian for about 7 years now. She sees how excited and passionate I am about elephants, so she let me do just about all the treatments and interactions with our elephant patients throughout the week.

Treading lightly

It’s a bit intimidating because here I am, this white female foreigner, showing up to these elephants camps. I don’t speak the language. No one knows who I am. So I have to try to strike the perfect balance between showing my respect to the mahouts (Thai elephant caregivers) with the few Thai phrases that I know coupled with bows to convey that I’m not above them. I also need to show some confidence – that I am comfortable around the elephants and know what I’m doing – so they will respect me as a veterinarian worthy of treating their elephant. It’s a fragile dance sometimes. Thankfully, the elephant gods have been on my side this week. All my interactions have been positive, and I’ve been able to play the part of competent elephant veterinarian (even though I’m still quite the amateur!).

Drawing blood

If you had to guess how we draw blood in elephants, what would you say? I’ll give you a hint. It’s from an area of thin skin that’s highly vascularized. The elephant flaps this body part to help cool down and to allow heat to escape from the large surface area. If you’re thinking an elephant ear, you are correct, my friend!

Fun fact: Elephants don’t sweat like we do. They only have sweat glands in one location – the cuticles around their toenails! So when you see a little moisture around the cuticles on elephant feet, it’s a sign of good foot health.

Dr. Paan let me draw blood from a ton of elephants this week! Mostly female elephants to measure progesterone levels, which allows us to track their heat cycles. We also drew blood for standard blood panels (CBC, serum chemistry) in sick elephants with non-specific signs like lethargy, weakness, decreased appetite, and decreased defecation. My other treatments included wound cleaning and debridement, intramuscular injections, administration of eye medications, therapeutic massage, and even laser therapy treatment! Every day was an exciting adventure full of off-roading, case discussions, and of course, elephants!

The eyeball vs. the stick

On Wednesday, we saw one of the craziest eye cases I’ve ever seen (and this includes all my cat and dog cases!). We got a call that an elephant was walking through the forest and a stick injured her eye. We drove 2 hours to a remote village in the mountains near the border of Myanmar. The family owned two elephants and ran kind of a crunchy, hippie-type small resort. They host 4-6 guests at a time, and when we got there, the guests were doing some sort of kumbaya singing in a hut.

Just like cats and dogs, elephants have a third eyelid located at the medial canthus (inner corner of the eye opening). It produces lubrication for the eye and can slide over the eye to protect it if there is significant pain or inflammation. In this elephant, the third eyelid was inflamed and completely covering her eye. It looked like there was a teeny little piece of stick poking out of the lateral canthus (outer corner of the eye opening).

After cleaning around the eye and flushing it with copious amounts of eye wash, we used forceps to grab onto the protruding piece of wood. To our shock, we pulled out a chonker of a stick! I literally don’t understand the physics of how the stick was able to fit in there. We couldn’t see the extent of the damage as the third eyelid was still completely covering the eye. But Dr. Paan recommended transporting the elephant to the closest elephant hospital, which was about 5 hours away for further care. She will need continuous monitoring, eye treatments, and medications for the next 4-6 weeks depending on the full extent of the damage.

And the winner is… the eyeball!

We got an update yesterday (Friday) that miraculously, the eyeball was not punctured by the stick. Her third eyelid is still very inflamed and has some lacerations around the edges. The extent of potential nerve and vascular damage is still unclear, but the attending elephant veterinarian at the hospital is optimistic that she will be able to make a full recovery and retain her vision.

The final countdown

It’s hard to believe I only have 2.5 days left in Thailand. So far in Chiang Mai, I’ve stayed in Old City and Nimman. This morning, I moved hotels and am now in my third and final neighborhood, Riverside. Every single day in Thailand thus far, I’ve either worked with elephants or taken a long bike ride. This weekend will be my first two days with ZERO PLANS before I start my journey home on Monday.

My plan is to just do a café crawl (Chiang Mai is known for it’s hundreds of eccentric coffee shops that serve delicious coffee) and write, write, write. I need to make up for this past week. We worked long hours, and I was too tired to write when I got back to my hotel each night. However, I managed to make some time most evenings to explore the city, trying all sorts of different foods for dinner. Chiang Mai is very safe, so I often just start walking. Inevitably, I’ll stumble upon a bustling night market, get some street food, and just sit my butt down to soak it all in.