One night last week, I was pecking away at the keyboard while nibbling on a bit of Easter egg. I don’t know what made me glance up at the TV screen at a particular moment, but I was really sorry I did.

The show that was on was called Dr Pimple Popper. For any of you that haven’t heard of this show, I will give you fair warning. If you are squeamish or have a delicate stomach, now might be the time to turn the page or swipe to the next story.

This TV show is about different skin conditions, but, as far as I can see, its main focus is popping spots. The doctor in this show loves nothing more than to squeeze, cut into and pop pimples and spots of all shapes and sizes.

Thankfully, I have a fairly strong stomach and I continued to eat my chocolate egg as I returned to the computer.

However, my stomach did turn a bit when, after a quick google, I found out that the doctor on the show is a multi-millionaire. All from what basically amounts to lancing abscesses!

I thought to myself that, after seeing a few similar things this week in the animal world, my bank account was sadly still in a pitiful state. Being Dr Pimple Popper in the veterinary world is not nearly as glamorous, and even less well paid.

The first case that sprung to mind was that of a pedigree bull calf. I had been fertility testing a few bulls for a very nice farmer and he asked me to “throw an eye” on this calf as I was washing up.

The calf had gotten his first injection of a clostridial vaccine two weeks previously and there was now a firm swelling around the injection site.

The calf was thriving well and didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. Even when I felt the affected area just in front of the shoulder, he didn’t even flinch.

An area about twice the size of my hand was hard and firm, but there was what felt like a small fluid-filled bubble right at the top of the firm part.

I clipped the hair over this bubble, put some surgical spirit on and carefully inserted a needle through the skin into the fluid. A few drops of off-white, watery fluid came out. There was only one thing for it — a little local anaesthetic numbed the area and, with a small surgical blade, I lanced the spot.

The most foul-smelling fluid proceeded to pour from the opening, flowing down the calf’s leg and out through the front gate of the pen.

Pain relief and antibiotics were administered, along with instructions to massage and clean the area daily for a few days

The calf most likely got this abscess from bacteria introduced on a dirty needle, which highlights the importance of hygiene and regularly changing needles on automatic injectors.

The next ‘pimple popper’ case was a cow with mastitis. She was a dairy cow that had proved not in calf and was being fed for fattening. The farmer had made the decision to not use any antibiotic on this cow at drying off as she was nearly factory fit.

He hadn’t used any sealer either as she had a long-running issue with high somatic cell count. Unfortunately, she developed mastitis in one quarter, which the farmer treated with a course of antibiotics. That was two weeks ago. Now, the cow was in good form and eating well.

However, the affected quarter had swelled to a very significant size and he called me to see if anything could be done.

The cow was in a pen with two others when I arrived and as I waited for the farmer to get a bucket of nuts to coax her up the crush, I stepped into the pen to have a look.

The affected right hind quarter was huge, resembling a beach ball. I caught a glimpse of a small, purple, ulcerated area about half way up the swollen quarter.

The cow’s body had fought the infection well and walled it off, turning the quarter into a giant abscess. It would have to be lanced to allow the fluid to drain out.

On this occasion however, I didn’t get a chance to pop the pimple. As we guided the cow into the head gate, one of the other cows in the pen decided to make a break for it. She put her head down and ran up the crush as hard as she could go.

When she collided with our patient that we had just locked into the head-gate, there was what I can only describe as an explosion. The small ulcerated area I had caught a glimpse of earlier was obviously the weak point of the giant abscess.

Pressure from the other cow caused the abscess to burst at this point and spectacularly spray all over the crush, the cow and the poor farmer that was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All he could do was laugh because, as he said himself, “if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry”. I was left to give antibiotics and pain relief to the cow while the farmer went for a well-needed shower.

I was chatting to a farmer earlier in the week about a weanling he was looking at. “She has a lump over her hip” he told me. “It’s not affecting her and she seems in good form.” My advice was to leave well enough alone and monitor it closely.

He rang me a few days later to ask me to call to have a look as it had gotten “a little bigger”. When I got to see the animal, I realised that “a little bigger” was a gross understatement.

The weanling looked perfectly normal from the left side, but from the right, she was double the size. She had a swelling that extended from her hip all the way to behind her shoulder.

After some local anaesthetic and a quick clip, a needle gave us our diagnosis — another lovely abscess. I decided that some sedation was going to be in order here to avoid a similar scenario to the cow.

Some sedative was given intravenously and the weanling lay down quietly and started to snore. I made a decent sized incision at the lowest point of the swelling, which allowed — and I’m not exaggerating here — gallons of pus to flow out.

This animal will need to be watched closely for a few weeks as an abscess of this size will leave a lot of ‘dead space’. This is empty space between the muscle and the skin that can take a long time to ‘knit’ back together again.

All in all, a vet’s life can be much more spectacular than that of Dr Pimple Popper, but sadly, not nearly as well paid.

Eamon O’Connell is a vet with Summerhill Vet Clinic, Nenagh, Co Tipperary.