PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 19, May 3, 2001

On the Job: Richard Keen

Interview by Sharita Forrest, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Richard Keen is an animal imaging technoligist in thelarge animal hospital. Keen started his career with the university Jan. 2, 1970.

What is your educational background?
I’m a licensed radiographer by the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. I trained on people over at what used to be Lakeview Memorial Hospital in Danville. From 1961 until the end of 1969 I radiographed people, but then I ‘went to the dogs.’

Why did you decide to ‘go to the dogs’?
It was something different. I have two miniature schnauzers at home: Rhett "Buddy" Butler and Katie Scarlett O’Hara.

What kinds of animals do you work on?
In the ultrasound, the C-T and the MRI, it’s primarily dogs and cats that are referred to the Small Animal Clinic. I guess you’d say we’re like the Mayo Clinic for animals in this area.

Do you do MRIs on horses and cows, too?
The weight of the animal is the limiting factor and the size of the animal. The table holds up to 350 pounds and after that, we can’t do it, because it won’t index the patient in with accuracy.
Believe it or not, you X-ray cows for what’s called ‘hardware disease.’ They graze and pick up a nail or something, and it can perforate the wall of one of their four stomachs. So they’ll put a magnet down, and it collects and holds all the ferrous metal.

Working with animals, you must have had some unusual situations come up.
You have to remember one thing: A horse is a very big, nice-looking thing, but they have a very small brain, and they can kill you. So you have to learn how to read what the horse is telling you: If the ears are laid back, look out. If they’re agitated, they can stand up and strike or they can kick you very quickly. Dogs and cats, same thing. The animals will tell you straight up what kind of mood they’re in, and you go accordingly.

Have you been kicked, bitten and all those good things?
Let’s see, in 31 years, I’ve been bitten four times by dogs, twice by cats and stepped on several times by horses, but I’ve never been seriously injured.

How many patients do you typically see in a day?
In radiology, we run upward of 40 patients a day. And you take multiple sites, so each site has two views, if not more.

Who are easier patients to work with: people or animals?
You can talk to people, but I have a little more compassion for the animals. It’s a lot like working in the geriatric section or the pediatric section of a hospital: You have to humor them and be gentle and kind to get the films you want. But our patients never complain about the table being cold like people do.

What do you enjoy most about your job?
When I walk in the front door in the morning, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing that day. I don’t know if I’m going to be sitting at the computer for a period of time writing specifications for new equipment, doing orders, calling people on the phone, calling salesmen to get prices, calling for service, doing a CT or an MRI or setting patients up for radiation therapy.

What’s the hardest thing about your job?
Trying to X-ray the pelvis on a cow because you have the udder sitting right over the pelvis. Soft tissue is a great absorber of radiation, so you have to get this udder out of the way so you can radiograph that hip. It’s a chore.

What is the most unusual thing you’ve ever X-rayed?
A mummy from Krannert. We didn’t have a C-T scanner at the time, so we took it over to Burnham City Hospital. We tried to run it through the MRI, but you have to have hydrogen protons, which is water, and the mummy’s desiccated, so there’s nothing there to get a signal out of. But we got the C-T scan, and I think they determined the sex and the age and took some of the stuff off it for carbon dating.
And I’ve done clay artifacts and a Japanese wooden statue to see if it was in its original condition, if it had been restored.