My Take Tuesday: The Squeeze Chute Kidney Mishap

Ask any veterinarian who’s worked with large animals long enough, and they’ll usually have a story to tell—a scar they carry, a limp they’ve learned to live with, or an internal ache that flares up every now and then to remind them they’re mortal. We don’t often talk about these injuries. Maybe because they feel like the cost of doing business. Maybe because they remind us of the thin line between control and chaos in this job.

For me, that reminder lives on the right side of my body: a kidney that doesn’t sit where it used to.

It happened during a long day of pregnancy checking cattle. If you’ve never had the pleasure, here’s the glamorous rundown: you put on a long plastic sleeve, slide your arm into the rectum of a cow, and carefully palpate for fetal membranes. It’s part science, part feel, and all grit. After a few hundred cows, your arm is sore, your back is tight, and you’re starting to question your life choices. But there were only two cows left. Just two.

That’s when I made the mistake.

In my haste, I entered the side gate of the chute without closing off the alley behind me. The cow in the alley saw an opportunity—and took it. She lunged forward, pinning me between herself and the cow already restrained in the chute. Cows don’t just push. They drive. With a thousand pounds of force and not an ounce of hesitation.

I felt it immediately—an unnatural pressure deep inside me, the kind of pain that pushes the breath out of your lungs and replaces it with panic. My organs were being crushed. There was no escape, no leverage. The owners quickly released the cow in the chute and, as the other cow barreled through, the pressure let up. I collapsed in the back of the chute, dazed, hurting, and trying to convince myself I hadn’t just lost a vital organ.

The final diagnosis? A torn kidney. My right one. It had been yanked from its usual home in the retroperitoneal space and now floats—free-spirited, if not entirely cooperative—inside me. It still works. But going on spinning rides like the Gravitron at the county fair? Not recommended.

We joke sometimes about how this job takes a piece of you. For me, it took a kidney’s anchor point. But it also gave me perspective. I’m a little slower now. A little more cautious. I triple-check gates. I don’t rush the last two cows. And I carry a deep, embodied respect for the sheer power of the animals we work with—because I’ve felt it firsthand.

Veterinary medicine isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it’s bloody, messy, painful, and humbling. But it’s also real. And honest. And worth it.

Even if it rearranges your insides a bit along the way.

And that is My Take!

N. Isaac Bott, DVM