Eye Spy with Dr. Todd Marlo

Get ready to see eye to eye with us in the next episode of Feces & Laughter! We’re joined by Dr. Todd Marlo, a specialist in veterinary ophthalmology from the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine. Together, we’ll delve into everything you need to know about pet eye health, from common issues to treatments and tips for keeping those peepers bright and clear. It’s an episode full of insight, laughs, and a few eye-opening surprises!

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Transcript

Oh my God, it's happening. We've got the mayor of f town. Don’t start me like this, I cannot …..that is true.
No, no, it's so good. Oh, it's there? It just lives there, okay. Alright, well, it's there now. Can't take it back. Um, no, we're so excited because we've got a friend here who's not even here and welcome to the world of technology when we can have people join us and they don't even have to physically be here. I love it.
We're super excited to have Dr. Todd Marlowe, who is with the University of Illinois. Look at you go! The College of Veterinary Medicine. Ooh! Wah wah! [00:01:00] Um, and he is going to talk about eyeballs. Ooh, we love eyeballs. You're a specialist in eyeballs. You're an eyeball specialist. Otherwise known as an ophthalmologist.
Yes. That's a fancy term. I like mine better. Mine's easier to spell. Um, but I think before we go any further, because I think that we're going to cover a lot of great content tonight. Um, I'm Amanda. I'm Dr. Olson. I'm Dr. Marlowe. And we are BC's of Laughter.
This is gonna be good. I already can tell. This is gonna be such a great time. I'm so excited. for joining us for real though. Oh, absolutely. This is pretty fun. I mean, I think so. It just started but it's gonna be so far so good. Yeah, this is great. Do you do this often? No, not at all. Like I [00:02:00] said, my last time I did this was on a PBS show.
So I think this is a little bit different audience, but Hey, let's go for it. You're our audience. It's just, it's just you, I think. No, no, no. This is not true. I've had clients tell us in the lobby. I really like your podcast. Yeah. Even today. And it's today. It was one of my, it was a teacher from my son's elementary school.
And she said, Oh my God, I love your son. I'm so sad that he's not going to be here next year because he's going to middle school. But I also love you guys podcast. And I was like, Whoa, there you go. Look at, I'm so excited. Um, but I think before we jump any further into. Talking about eyeballs. Um, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Tell the people. Yeah. So tell me a little bit. Yeah. So, um, from Illinois, I did. So I actually met Dr. Olson, which I was not Dr. Olson at the time. [00:03:00] In veterinary school. We were in anatomy group together. And I remember when I met Dr. Olson, actually the first time I was not even in anatomy. She, uh, yelled across the yard at the VTH or the vet school.
Saying who she was and that she was going to be in my lab group with me. Um, so that's how I got to know you to be as excited as I was. Yeah. You were really excited. I was much more of a shy child at that time. And you were so shy. And I think I scared you to death. You did scare the bejesus out of me, but then I think through bonding, traumatic bonding in the anatomy lab, because I don't even care if they listen to this podcast or other two were.
Rough to get along with and we, Todd has trouble getting along with people and we got, but me and me and Dr. Olson got together really, really well. So anyway, did vet school with Dr. Olson, graduated the same class as her, and then when she went down to North Carolina to practice. I went on to the University of Missouri, did [00:04:00] my internship and residency there.
So did four years there, then went down to Chattanooga and ran a private practice ophthalmology clinic there. And now I'm back up here at the University of Illinois as their sole ophthalmologist. I like to say run their ophthalmology service, but my mom always knocks me down and says, I just am the boss of myself.
I like it. No one would have known. You could have just went with it. Exactly. No one would have known, except as Marlo's around, she knocks you down every time. He doesn't have any employees. He's just there by himself. And now you're just teaching the precious baby vets. Yeah, the vet students of tomorrow, or I guess the vets of tomorrow, not the vet students of tomorrow, the vets.
Yeah. So, yeah, so we're teaching them, um, had a lot of them. The class size here is really, really big anymore. So off those are really popular rotation. And so, yeah, we got a lot of students that we teach, um, everything that I know, which [00:05:00] doesn't take that long. When you specialize, right? You, you know, a whole lot about very little about something really, really small.
I know a whole lot about hardly anything. That's what I say. Perfect. Perfect. But I feel like it's such an important thing to know about. I feel like our clients, I think that's one of the biggest things that I hear from our clients when we have dogs that come in that have any sort of eye issues is, you know, one of their biggest fears is their dogs going blind or, you know, Heaven forbid having to have their eyeballs amputated.
I'm so sorry. I had to say that. You're such a jerk. I had to say that. Stop. Yeah. Like, I don't even remember what that's from. I don't remember. I don't even know if we're offending anyone right now if I say that. We're sorry. So yeah, yeah, that is, that is a, we are a very popular service. We [00:06:00] stay, we stay really, really busy because people don't want to, well, a lot of veterinarians.
So my clientele is referring veterinarians. And so a lot of Arab Americans don't like dealing with the eyes and our, Eyes are hard sometimes if you don't deal with them all the time. And so, um, we, we stay really, really busy because yeah, we try to prevent people having to have their eyes enucleated would be a more proper term.
I do know that. Okay. You know that I know that. I know that you know that, but yeah, I don't even remember what we're referencing right now in order to know how upset I should be that you said that out loud. Um, I really don't. Um, I was gonna say something. Oh, about how being it's, I think it's really scary as a veterinarian because the condition of eyes changes so quickly sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've had a dog that had a superficial ulcer, which is like a little scratch on the surface of the eye. And the vet saw it that morning and then within [00:07:00] 12 hours the eye had what we call melted or completely got infected and just gone into a full thickness perforation where it had to remove the eye that night.
So within 12 hours the dog went from just a little scratch to having his eye removed. Wow. So all you listeners, if you're veterinarians, now you can know why we don't want to deal with eyes even more. Thank you so much for the frightening news. So you've already kind of alluded to what a veterinary ophthalmologist is, but do you kind of want to talk a little bit more about what that specialty entails.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So veterinary ophthalmologists, we're, I like to say we're pretty rare. There's only about like practicing about, I think like less than 500 in the nation practicing right now. Um, wow, you're pretty cool. Yeah. Elite. Elite is what we like to say. No, my gosh, no. Um, but so, What we do, so you gotta go through an internship, which is a [00:08:00] one year program, and then if you're lucky enough, like me, to get a residency right out of your internship, you have to do that three year program right afterwards, and then you get to practice and take the most hellacious boards that you've ever had to take.
Um, so our boards, we have to do two surgeries in front of a group of three ophthalmologists that are asking you kind of rapid fire questions while you're trying to do these surgeries. And then you have to do a one day multiple choice question test, and then a one day image recognition where they just flash a bunch of images in front of you, um, and you have to pass those.
And so you got to get, I'll pass all four parts and then you get to become a board specialist. Um, but yeah, so that's what an ophthalmologist does. And then what we do is again, as we work with. So like I tell owners, I treat everything but people. So we work with a wide variety of different species, anything pretty much.
Um, and we have to know all of that different information, um, for boards and, and for also, when you go out into practice, most veterinary ophthalmologists do work primarily in just, you know, [00:09:00] animal care. So just dog for me being here at the to do quite a bit today. geckos. Uh, next month do
A lot of labs. So I look at a lot of rats and different things like that. Bunnies, obviously I look most of my stuff's dogs and cats, but I had to look at horse today. I had to do surgery on a calf last week. Um, so a wide variety of different animal species. Cool. That's wild. Yeah, definitely. Dr. Olson's had some gnarly leopard gecko eyes recently.
Yeah. Yeah. You'll have to teach me everything. That's our, um, next podcast with you. Leper gecko. It'll take about five minutes because they rupture their eyes, about all I've seen them do. Oh, don't even. Why do you have to unlock fears in me? I have zeroed so far. God bless. Get out of here. Nevermind.
Shutting this [00:10:00] shit down. It's true. It's fine. They'll be okay. They'll be okay. It's fine. So for our listeners out there, because I think one of the, I think an area where we really, where we struggle sometimes, I won't say all the time and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but when a pet, when, when our doctors have exhausted.
Yeah. Our resources are our knowledge. Then they are making that referral and they're unfortunately the closest referral is about an hour and a half away, but that's where most, most of our specialists are anyways. But I think one of the hardest Things is getting people to comply with that, getting them on board with why they need to make that trip and why it's so important.
So different than in general practice where we might have different equipment and things. Yeah. Well, I mean, in taking it from like, just looking at from my family's perspective. So my wife was also a veterinarian, but did general Olson has done. And so like, and [00:11:00] knowing what she's seen. Yeah. I mean, she doesn't see this little minutiae of stuff that I see all the time.
And so while things that I see very commonly because my case that is very skewed towards ophthalmology. So I see something I'm like, Oh, like we were talking about early. This is a sequestrum real easy for me to diagnose. If you've seen one or two sequestrums your entire career, then it's really hard for you to diagnose.
It'd be the same thing as me trying to go and be an internal medicine specialist. I mean, you wouldn't want me doing all of this laboratory values. And I mean, it would probably take me three hours to spay a cat. So How things are because I see so much of this repetition all the time and I've had that extra those extra three years really really increase your knowledge base and that's you get to go through things really fast and that's why you know local veterinarians working with an ophthalmologist are really important one because while we can also advise your local veterinarian on what to do over the phone I do that with Dr.
[00:12:00] Olson as well sometimes. Don't tell my secrets. They just think I'm really smart sometimes like suddenly light bulb moments Hold on this just came to me. It's too though because I mean we have different, you know instruments We you know have different instruments that we can evaluate things We have different tests that we can do that a general practitioner veterinarian unless they are really into eyes Would not have the ability to do all of that.
Yeah, and they're braver They're so brave. We're, we're pretty brave, yeah, I mean like Like you got an eyeball, like it's an eyeball. They're like, let's just take stuff and like, scrape at it and stuff. Yeah, I mean I've had one squirt at me in the face when I was trying to flush something off of it and perfed it, and then, you know, it's not that big of a deal.
We just, we were going to surgery anyway, so just fixed it right then. Yeah, no, that's not what happens here. You got to be a little fearless with stuff. Um, cause you're the last line of defense. So, you know, who do I refer to? I don't refer to anyone. [00:13:00] So if I can't figure this out, you know, it's, it's kind of the end of the road.
So I got to do what I can for this. Yeah. Um, I know earlier you said that you, you tell people that. You see anything except humans. Um, so when you're looking at eyeballs, um, that are, are, are all eyeballs the same? Yeah. So that's great, that's a great question. No, um, most mammalian eyes. So like your dogs, your cats, your horses, cattle, stuff like that are pretty similar.
Um, there's anatomically, but when you start getting into the exotics, so like fish, and then when we start getting into even invertebrates, so like octopuses and squids and, uh, different things like that, their anatomy dramatically changes. Same things. Have you seen an octopus eyeball? Uh, yeah, yeah. So their retina uniquely, their retina is 180 degrees different than our [00:14:00] retina.
So their rods and cones are right up there close, so they get to see more waves like than we do. But yeah, I have a whole presentation on aquatic ophthalmology, so I had to learn about like all the different sharks, all the different fish, and all sorts of stuff. That is so cool. Yeah, it's really hard though.
I'm mind blown. Mayor Marlow, you have blown my mind. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's fun. It's really fun though. Yeah. It's challenging at times, which I think is good, but ophthalmology, you just, I don't know. I never thought I would be an ophthalmologist. I wanted to be a large animal person. I don't really, I don't even really know why I did this.
To be honest with you. I know when I was in my internship and became a resident, I know why I did that, but I don't know how I specialized. I still don't know why. Well, and at one point you were torn, but you're like, I wanna specialize, but I don't know what cardiology, ophthalmology, like you were just throwing things around.
I feel like you picked this out of a [00:15:00] hat. Yeah, I, well, kind of, I was, I mean, why did, would I want to be a car? I, I don't know why I like cardio, I think, or like interventional cardiology, but looking at those EKGs, oh my gosh, , he's like, good thing I didn't choose that in my, well it's funny because you moment of insanity.
Yeah. Like you say that now as a specialist in. ophthalmology, but I'm like, I feel like you would probably be great at that too. You just, it's Well, I mean, there was a, I mean, I remember in my internship, the cardiologist was kind of like, was like, this is not for you because I remember when I did switch to ophthalmology, I looked over because cardio was next to off though at Missouri.
And I looked over and ophthalmology was always, they always dressed really nice. They always had a good quality of life. They always going to be having fun. fun. They got to leave on time. And I was like, I'm applying. And I thought this was easy for me. So that's why I was like, this is, that's what I [00:16:00] want to do.
Like, that's who I want to be. Nice. That's really cool. Yeah. So that's why I did this crazy. Boss of yourself and look at me now for myself. Um, so I know that we see a lot of common eye issues here. Yeah. And I'd say probably the The biggest one that I struggle with, um, even the discussion with owners is probably, um, this is going to be sound stupid to you, but like cherry eyes, like having the discussion that the surgery may fail is I think difficult because the surgery itself technically is something that I don't want to say it's easy, but it's, it's not like it's something that we're not capable of.
But I feel like. Even when we do it the same as we do in multiple pets, there's occasionally where you have that like older, like cane, I feel like it's always like a cane Corso or some sort of Mastiff that [00:17:00] wants to fail and owners, it's really hard for them to understand why we recommend an ophthalmologist or why we, you know, Explore options like you teaching me how to do an orbital tack on my own great Dane eye and things like that So just like if you can give a short little Informational blurb about cherry eyes and what makes them a little bit challenging Yeah.
Yeah. No. And just today I had a 86 kilo. Um, so about 180 pound King Corso come to me today for cherry eye evaluation. Uh, because the exact same reason. So in this area, yeah, they send to the specialist, which is me, um, for that. So just a little, it's all about experience. So like I said earlier, you know, with me, if you had me do a spay, could I do a spay?
Absolutely. Um, but it takes me three hours. So I do a lot of cherry eyes. So I have a different techniques that I have formulated kind of through reading, through different knowledge and stuff and how to do those. And I do them very quickly because I've done so many of them, but I think it definitely is something, you [00:18:00] know, in talking with owners, I've had owners that say, well, one, why do we need to do this?
Well, the reason we do this is one, it causes a little bit of irritation, but two, it's not an emergent thing, but if you leave it out for five years or so, so if it's just hanging out there prolapse, it'll scar over and still have a decreased tear value. So that's why we don't remove an eye too. That's why a lot of vets will say, Hey, we can just cut it out.
Well, yeah, you have a hundred percent success rate. It won't re prolapse if it's gone, but down the road when this bulldog develops dry eye and you send them to me because you can't get a hold of it. As those veterinarians, yeah, I can't get a hold of it either because you just removed about a third of those tears that I can no longer get back.
And now we're babbling that the one gland's not working. So, that's why, you know, we do the surgery because we want to get the dog more cosmetically appealing, reduce inflammation and that irritation, and then also prevent down the road, um, dry eye from occurring. Very cool. Yeah. [00:19:00] Um, so what are even, I know cherry eyes, a big thing that we see here, but what are some common things that you see as a specialist?
Yeah. So as a specialist, so I, I jokingly tell people that I do cataract surgery and I remove eyes, those are my spays and neuters. of my life. Cataract surgery is, is our big surgery that we do because cataract surgery you have to have specialized, a lot of specialized equipment, you gotta have specialized training, um, so that is definitely a referral only procedure.
And cataract surgery in dogs is done the exact same way. Dogs and horses, because we do horses too, is done the exact same way as, um, humans. So same procedure. Then we take out a lot of eyes. So we do that as well because, like I said, that's our spay and neuter. But yeah, those are two most common. And then other procedures that we do would be entropion, which is where the eyelids are really, really rolled in.
They're causing irritation on the eye. Um, cherry [00:20:00] eye or prolapsed gland of the third eyelid. We do a lot of those surgeries and then we do crazy surgeries like one I just did where we had what's called a limbal melanoma and we're resecting part of the cornea and the sclera or the white part of the eye to remove this tumor and suturing things back up.
We can also do long acting implants for different horse diseases. We can actually implant stuff into the eye. So it's good for three years. Um, those are all specialized surgeries. Eyes are so scary. Why do you want to stare at them all day? Eyes? I hate myself every day. You get to see some really cool stuff.
I know it is really neat. It's like you think it's going to be less scary. Diverse I feel like because you talked about how you say see the same thing all these times But then to see it in so many different species and the different little Treat not even just in the eye like even if I anatomy was similar like how to manage Conditions in different species like with us seeing exotics like working with primates [00:21:00] having them have be so dexterous and be able to get anything off and Like it's it's so much hard to work on that you constantly have to be thinking about how to manage that Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
And it's, I really lean when I do with exotics, I really lean on the exotic stuff here. But when I'm out, you know, yeah, I mean, having to figure out, you know, because you can give a drop one drop is the same drop, whether I give that to an 86 kilo, uh, you know, King Corso, if I give that to a five ounce, You know, a little bird, a drop is a drop.
And so you have to figure out what medications you can use without using toxicity on these small guys, especially large guys, you get a lot large safety zone on the small animals for sure. So I know that since we are a GP and a lot of our listeners are probably dog and cat owners, and, you know, sprinkled in with some exotic pet owners, do you find that Breeds, different breeds are more [00:22:00] prone to certain things.
Yeah, so absolutely. So there's definitely, so we've already highlighted like King Corsos and English Bulldogs, Cherry Eyes, very, very common. But, um, if we started talking about, so the number one breed that I see and I saw when I was down in Chattanooga and every other ophthalmologist in the world sees is Shih Tzus because they have diseases outside the eyes.
So they get dry eye, They also have diseases inside the eye. So they get cataracts and they get retinal detachment and stuff like that. So shih tzu's overwhelmingly are our number one breed that we see, and they're a popular breed, um, but other breeds like Cocker Spaniels are more notorious for, um, Cataracts and dry eye, um, bulldogs.
They don't really have inside the eye disease, but going outside the eye. So their eyes, everything's always wrong with cherry eye. They get ingrown hairs. They get those rolled in eyelids. They get ulcers or scratches to the eyes. So bulldogs are a hot mess most of the [00:23:00] time. Um, but yeah. And then in the world of like horses, we see Appaloosa is much more commonly with stuff.
Um, But yeah, so definitely, there's definitely dog breeds and then in cat breeds too, we see the brachycephalics or the smushed face cats, so Persians, um, they spend all this money on Persians and then all of a sudden they get different eye diseases, much more commonly like sequestrums and have more harder times with feline herpes viruses and different things like that.
So yeah, the, the smaller the snout, the more likelihood you're going to need an ophthalmologist. That would be my recommendation. I'll just, if you don't know, you probably should read me. I love it. Yeah, no, pen insurance for sure. And then also for listeners where, A big thing I feel like is when to seek emergency care and when it can wait for your regular veterinarian.
And do [00:24:00] you have like some tips for owners to make that, that call when we might be closed? Yeah, so that one's a little harder. So, um, Well, yeah. So if you have like a lot of discharge and a discharge, meaning that if your dog suddenly has a lot of tearing from one side of the face, you probably really need to see somebody, especially if there's a little bit of blood in there.
Yeah, that's not normal. You probably really need to see somebody. Other things like if your dog is producing a lot of mucousy exudate and it's like keeping the eyes open. Closed. Those would also be things where you need to see, seek medical attention to, or if the eyeball is just hanging out there, because if it's outside the orbit, that probably really needs medical attention.
I hate you so much. So I know that we have had some We've had patients that have come in that needed, that did have their eyeball [00:25:00] outside of that orbit. And so I, I know that it's a question that we get from clients, like, are you able to save the vision if something like that happens? Yeah, so a little bit about proptosis.
I'm a firm believer, you've probably seen them during the daytime, but I do not believe that proptosis occurs, uh, during the waking hours. So that has to only happen when the sun goes down. It's okay. Um, but yeah, so we do, we can't save it. So we look to see if there's a cut between the cornea and the square of the white part of the eye.
Is the eye full of blood? Can the eye move around? We look at all these different things. How long has the eye been out? Because I had one, one time that looked like a black rubber bouncy ball. The owner said it just happened. I was like, no, this is necrotic. It's falling off. So yeah. So I mean, there's, Time is the key one is really time for owners to know about.
So you need to get those in right away, but then we'll have to evaluate things like blood [00:26:00] within the eye. How do they respond to light? How can they move their eye and also what breed? So if you're a cat and this happens, this is going to get removed. But if you're a whole dog and this happens, they actually have a better success rate than a Labrador would or a Sheltie would.
Um, but cats and horses, cattle, anything like that. Yeah. There's no go that I needs to be removed. That's interesting. Um, we do have
that, that is, that's, that's pretty wild. Um, we Luther, Luther me up. We have a patient that's in the hospital right now that has some very time precise blood draws that are needing to be done. And that's why her alarm went off. So she ran to go do that really quick. Um, but are there, as an ophthalmologist, Are there at home, like eye care routines that you recommend for [00:27:00] clients with their pets?
Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, that's a good question too. So, um, you can do so it's like, if you have one of these brachycephalic breed dogs, you definitely can use artificial tears. You can go to Walmart, Walgreens, wherever you want to go and get some over the counter artificial tears. They come in drops, gels, ointments.
It doesn't matter. But I think if you have a dog that. either has issues with dry eye or you just want to be quote protective from like a pug from getting an ulcer when they go to the groomer or something you want to protect those eyes you can get one of those ointments and just a little strip just a little strip put in that eye and that'll help give additional lubrication to that you just want to look for something that says there you don't want to use visine anything that says get the red out you don't want to use that but anything else you can definitely use and then Just good ocular hygiene is really important for owners to do with their pets.
So some of these dogs with really, really long hair, different things like that, just using, you know, Johnson Johnson no tear baby [00:28:00] shampoo or something like that to clean around the eye works really, really well. And I always tell owners that if it's safe enough for babies to be out there, then it's definitely going to be safe enough for our canine patients.
I told him that you had to run into a very time specific dog. Um, but I was just talking to him about just at home, I hear routines that clients could do with their pets. So that is some really cool information. Um, and then, Oh, Oh, I did want to ask just because you, you had mentioned if something happens and the eye needs to come out, it needs to come out.
Um, Yeah. Kind of going back to the very beginning when we first started chatting, I think that's one of the biggest fears that our clients have is their pet going blind or having to have an enucleation done and so I guess Coming from you like what? I always try to tell them, you know, I feel like animals are so resilient.
They bounce back from these things, but what kind of, [00:29:00] what do you tell a client if they have to come in and something like that has to happen? Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely. So kind of, well, the first thing that I tell people is I'm in the business of two things, vision and comfort. So my first goal for you is to try to restore vision.
And so we do things like cataract surgery and stuff like that, but that is not an option. So let's say we have a dog. with glaucoma, which is a high pressure within the eye. They have cataracts and they have a retinal detachment. So we found all that when we did our cataract testing. So we're not going to be able to restore vision, no matter what we do, vision is not happening in this dog.
So then we have to restore comfort. And so we do that through either medicine or if medicine fails, or if the dog just wants to bite everybody and is really difficult to medicate, then we do things through surgery. And I describe it to owners that if you have, finger that was broken an and was couldn't use it, you would want to have th so you can move on with l with our canine patients.
eye that's there that's j [00:30:00] Your dog is not seeing out of it. I'm not taking out visual eyes. There's only been a few instances where we've had to take out visual eyes and that's due to massive tumors or cancer that's within the eye. But we take out these eyes when they're not visual anymore. And so for the dog, we're just removing a source of pain while it's really hard on us, the owner.
For the dog, the dog doesn't care what they look like and they just want to be pain free. And I remember when I was in my residency, I had an owner. that had a Cocker Spaniel that had waited for an incredibly long time with this glaucoma and they thought the dog was just getting more lethargic as we were aging.
And we finally convinced them to remove both eyes. This dog had glaucoma affecting both eyes. So I removed both eyes. Um, and at the two week recheck, the owner, the same owner who thought their dog was 14, just becoming older, couldn't run around anymore, said their dog was like a puppy again because that source of pain were gone.
The dog was running around the room doing so well. The dog just wanted those eyes gone because that's just like a migraine [00:31:00] headache chronically on this dog and so I think when you tell stories like that to owners and let them know that yeah we don't want our eye removed we want our dogs to look normal and we do everything we can to keep that going but we need to as our owners restore comfort.
And that's how one way that we unfortunately have to do that is to remove an eye. And that reminds me of, um, our old aborter who would always come and they were pretty aggressive. Like it was hard to leash them, to walk them, and they were constantly trying to bite. To put the eye drops in was terrible.
Um, and they finally did allow enucleation of both eyes. So we took out both eyes and that dog was So sweet afterwards like it was so painful all the time And especially when you're trying to apply drops and might be holding them and coming towards his head like he was so Up like uncomfortable and after that he did so well like he would come in and prance into the door like he knew the place like it just was a Totally different dog and seeing that was so such a relief to the [00:32:00] owner because it was to them They thought it was gonna be scary to see Visually to look at their pet who they've seen for you know, 10 years with both its eyes And even through glaucoma the eyes changed but they were still there And it was they thought it was going to be scarier.
But after seeing his eyes develop such changes with glaucoma. It actually looked better without them at that point. Yeah. I mean, the same type of thing, like, I mean, when we were growing up and you're like teddy bear doll loses an eye, you want to get that eye sewn back on because that's what looks normal.
It's the same type of a thing. We're broadcasting that onto our canine patients. You want that eye, those two eyes there, because those are the eyes that have always looked at you for 10 or 12 years. Um, but we need to do a good job and remove that. Um, if that is causing pain and discomfort, but now on the flip side, the coolest part of my job is when we get to restore vision.
So these dogs that have cataracts and then I get to do cataract surgery. The coolest part of my job and [00:33:00] my cataract surgery is my coolest or my best surgery that I do. I think is these dogs all of a sudden they wake up from anesthesia and you just kind of see them looking around the room. And then I've had dogs that were really aggressive and then we do cataract surgery and they're now.
You know, cause they're not afraid of you anymore. They see what's going on. And so their whole personality changes. I have one little Italian Greyhound that before was really timid and now it looks like he's smiling the whole time and like prances around every time because you can see again. So that's the coolest part of my job and why I absolutely love what I do.
Um, yes, we do take out eyes, but one thing I was going to let you know too, Lou, so I will share in with your listeners. So I've probably done. Probably 2, 000 enucleations or removals of the eye just because of how long I've been doing it. And I have had zero owners ever state that they wish they hadn't done it.
That's so good. That is good to know. That is good to know. And I would say, [00:34:00] so, I know that A lot of times you're seeing this when they're getting a little bit older, you know, that, you know, when we're seeing dogs that are getting to that point, but we had that kitten that we, it was new clients to us. They had found a kitten somewhere outside and it had Really bad.
Like, I don't think I saw this kitten. Do you know who it, do you know what I'm talking about at all? Um, but little kitten came in really bad upper respiratory infections. Eyes were awful. Um, completely matted shot. I think when they were finally actually able to get things cleared out, the eyes were just ruined.
Like there was no salvaging. So we ended up doing a double enucleation on this kitten. And it was like, I think the eyes were ruptured. If I know who, I think you might be right. One was wrong, I think. But in after the surgery, um, to start its vaccination series and just the sweetest little thing. And they said she's doing so [00:35:00] well at home and gets around just fine.
And, um, so I, I don't know. I think it's really cool. That's what I try to tell, share with clients. I'm like, you can make adjustments in your home to where it's a little bit easier for them or don't move things around, especially if they're older. They're used to where things are already placed and just making sure that you've got it set up in a manner that they're not going to hurt themselves.
Um, but no, I, I think it is really cool how resilient animals in general are, how they can bounce back from these things. Yeah, no, I completely agree with it. It's really cool. And young animals do better than older animals in that regard when they suffer trauma like that. Um, I mean, I have animals that are born blind and you would never know that they're blind.
That's just how things are. They attack the other cats and do just fine. Marco, Polo. That's what I'm envisioning. I had a question, I don't know if you guys hit on this when you [00:36:00] guys were talking when I had to step out, but, um, I have a lot of owners ask questions about tear staining. in their pets and, um, like hearing about probiotic use and things to help reduce the appearance of it as like a cosmetic thing.
So I didn't know if you had anything on that. Yeah. So tear stain or otherwise known as epiphora is probably the bane of my existence, um, because that is a really hard problem to solve. So, uh, so you can do things like probiotics. Um, those are, that's definitely one thing you can do. You can give an antibiotic, which works fantastic, but then you have your dog on chronic antibiotic use and so you don't want that.
We also have a surgery that we can do where we, it's called a medial gansoplasty, where we kind of remove the hairs in the middle part of the eye here and we close it down just a little bit to prevent those tears from getting whipped onto the face. So, we have a couple things that we can do, but Sometimes I just tell owners, this is just your dog.
Like I can't [00:37:00] do anything, this is just your dog. Um, and it's not causing any dermatitis. Yes, it's not cosmetically. Everybody wants the perfectly white Westin, but this is just your dog. And that's just how it is. Um, I try to not do those surgeries for just purely cosmetic reasons. Cause the owner wants it, you know, I like to do them whenever the dog has actual dermatitis or something like that.
But. But yeah, no, tear staining is, it's a tough one. That's a real tough one. Especially in cats. Tear staining in cats is Oh, that's terrible. It's terrible. Really? I don't see it. Well, I, and I guess maybe we don't really have much, many like colored cats or like these like fancy cats. Apparently I'm the only ophthalmologist I feel like that gets it because I talk to other ophthalmologists at conferences.
I'm like, yeah, we see two a year. I'm like, I saw two last week. Like this is, you followed me from Chattanooga to up here. It's like the caseload. I don't know where I go. It's [00:38:00] So, um, oh man, I, I don't know. Eyes are really interesting to me. I like to like, Whenever the doctors are doing something, I'm like looking over their shoulder trying to see it.
Um, but this has been really eye opening Oh, I see what you did there. I went there. I went there Um anything you feel like i've missed anything that you want to Chat about that we didn't cover No, no, the only thing you guys didn't ask me what my most interesting case was that was the oh, oh, but do tell That I was working on an elephant And I was up on a ladder and I was pushing the lens back behind that I was trying to what we do couch the lens and push this lens back behind The iris so that the lens wasn't in the front of the eye and the elephant had a brain tumor And would sway back and forth and my hand [00:39:00] was up on the eye and I didn't want to let go until the pupil constricted so that that lens didn't come back forward and so then my hand got between the bar and the elephant's head and that was the only time in my life like I couldn't move my hand at all my arm was just there I mean what do you do with the elephant pressed up against your hand in the metal bar so I just had to hold my hand there and then the elephant slowly moved to the other side and I kind of followed with him and then pulled my hand when he swayed back to my other side but I was up about 10 feet in the air too.
That's a good one. That's a good one. That's so cool. But that is so cool. Elephant. So that was pretty fun. The elephant did have a brain tumor, so they said if he seizes, they weren't going to be able to get him up. And I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. You're like, I'm sorry, I do eyeballs. I don't know what I'm going to do.
I can check out his eyes while he's down here, but that's about all I got. Well, good. Well, this has been fun. Yeah. Thank you so, so much. This is great. We're gonna don't worry. We'll call on you again. I'm sure. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. [00:40:00] Absolutely. Yes. I'll be your guest panel. Yeah, no, this has been super exciting.
Thanks so much for taking some time to chat with us and talk some stuff. Right? Bye. Bye.
Yeah. No. All right. Well, you go take care of, um, all of your employees and your busy residents of town. And we'll, uh, all of you listeners, thanks for joining us. We will catch you on the next episode and thank you, Dr. Marlowe. We'll catch up with you later. All right. Bye. [00:41:00] Bye.