A few years ago I was presented with a cat with a marked posterior paresis. Examination and radiography determined the cause as a pellet lodged to one side and plugged into the high thoracic spine. Despite conservative management the patient showed no improvement in some 3 or 4 days and so i elected to remove the offending object. It was bit fiddly working between the rib heads but the pellet came out..whether due to that or just time and good fortune (but I'll take the credit!) the cat recovered it's posterior functions.
The owners were delighted.. so much so that they told the local newspaper and inevitably a reporter arrived to photograph the cat, me and the radiographs.
Now my opinion of journalists was unaffected by his asking me what these curving parallel white lines were and what was that large valentine object on the middle of the black bit...but I do profess to some suprise when , after I pointed out that it was the heart, he pulled a tape measure from his pocket.
I really didn't expect a journalist to know how to operate anything quite that technical and to this day I can only assume that he was a failed Estate Agent that just had to find a less noble profession!
"Oh dear," I groaned. "Let me guess..you're going to write about how close it was to the heart?"
"Yes," He said. "It's good journalism.. to write that 'one inch lower and the bullet would have hit the heart' is good journalism. I could even make the national dailies with this one!! That cat was really lucky!"
His credibility was ruined at this point by coming up with a result of 71 inches distance (but I turned the tape round for him..)
"Hells' teeth!" I stated "You call that lucky? Half an inch higher and it would have missed the cat!"