All Creatures Great and Small

All Creatures Great and Small

Last night we were startled by our neighbor’s frantic knock on our front door in our quiet neighborhood.  One of their Yorkshire terriors had been hit by a car just moments before.  She’d scooped up the little dog and run a few doors down to our house, begging my husband Bob to look at her.  As we laid her on our front porch, it was obvious she didn’t have long.  Her entire back end had been crushed and she was already lapsing into her last moments.  It was heartbreaking to listen to her owners sobbing as they stroked her tiny head, no bigger than my fist.  Bob grabbed the stethoscope that hangs at-the-ready on our closet door and did his best to help her owners say goodbye to one of their family members.

Over 20 years ago, after 8 years of college, an internship in central Detroit, and a week-long stint on Plum Island (the infectious disease center) in New York, my husband Bob became a DVM (doctor of veterinary medicine).  I’d read the famous James Herriot novels featuring the quaint country vet, driving to the lovely British cottages to minister to farm animals and family pets.  These books had inspired me to briefly entertain becoming a vet myself once upon a time.  That is, until I encountered advanced chemistry classes and hung up my imaginary stethoscope for good.

We married just after he’d completed his first year of vet school, so instead of hours spent lovingly gazing into each other’s eyes, our early marriage had to weather long sleepless nights of foal duty in the horse unit at school, endless hours of viewing slide after slide of parasites, and a washing machine filled with scrubs covered in I-don’t-even-want-to-know.  But he made it through to graduation day, where each graduate jokingly presented the dean of the college a Milkbone dog biscuit in exchange for their hard-earned diploma.

As a fresh new graduate, he took a job with a mixed practice in a rural west Tennessee town.  After half a year of vaccinating hogs, tromping through cow pastures in the wee hours of the morning, and getting stomped by horses that were strongly against being castrated, he switched to strictly companion animal practice in a bigger city, which suited both of us much better.  We took a giant financial leap and bought our own practice, having to learn on the fly how to run a business (something they only briefly touch on in vet school).  Like any other doctor’s office and fully functioning hospital, we had to purchase pharmacy inventory, surgical supplies, and medical equipment with entirely too many zeros in the price tag.

Sometimes it comes as a surprise to people how sophisticated veterinary medicine is.  Anything they do at human hospitals, we can do for animals in a veterinary setting.  Most medical innovations and techniques were first perfected on animal patients.  Although DVMs and MDs have the same years of training at school, a vet studies physiology of allanimal species, not just that of the human being.   In practice, veterinarians act as surgeons, radiologists, oncologists, fertility specialists, dentists, optometrists, cardiac and orthopedic specialists.  They practice geriatric medicine, hospice care, and act as ob-gyns, and behavior/psych experts.  They practice chiropractic medicine and incorporate natural or alternative medicine such as acupuncture, massage, and nutrition.  This is all standard stuff–it’s not just for the Paris Hilton crowd that carries little FiFi around in their purses as an accessory.

When people are frightened or in pain, they don’t often peck, scratch, or bite their physicians; however, veterinarians bear multiple scars from trying to help their patients who cannot speak to them or tell them where it hurts. Sometimes vets contract serious diseases from their patients.  And quite often, they work on patients they’re allergic to–diagnosing cats or guinea pigs despite the itching and sneezing that ensues afterwards.

If you go to the ER with a broken leg, after they’ve checked your insurance of course, it’s assumed you’ll receive pain management, x-rays, consultation from possibly several different specialists, especially if surgery is needed. You might have an anesthesiologist in the room with the orthopedic surgeon, and you’d of course have several nurses on staff for your follow-up care during your stay and any physical therapy you’d need afterwards.  If you rushed to the ER with your child having broken a leg, most people wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever is necessary to fix everything.  Vets do all the same things, at a fraction of the cost of human medicine, while still paying off debt from school, equipment, and malpractice insurance—just like MDs.  They’re on call at all hours of the day and night, holidays and weekends.  Yet so often people grouse that vets are just trying to do a bunch of unnecessary procedures and tests to make a buck.  Pet insurance does exist (and is a good idea for some people), but vets do not base their care on it.  Do a google search–their salaries are not even close to a typical MD.  I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked Bob a medical question and then said they hadn’t wanted to bother their “real doctor”.

Veterinarians are the Other family doctor, working on the family members who are perhaps the most loyal, trusting, and giving to us.  On any given day, the office phone will ring:   Our lab just had puppies–8 of them!–and they all need shots.   My old collie is having trouble walking. I just lost my wife to cancer and I’m worried Sallie might have cancer too.  We recently had a baby and our normally friendly dog has become aggressive–what should we do?  I’m a 3rd grade teacher at the school down the road, our class pet (hamster) is not eating and I have 25 students who are very concerned.  I was mowing the lawn and came across a nest of baby bunnies that I “rescued” –what do I do with them?   My parakeet caught her wing in the cage.  It’s time, Doc: we need to come in to put Chipper down.

Bob didn’t become a veterinarian because of the prestige or glamor.  He grew up on a farm with horses, dogs and cats and learned that these creatures had something to teach us.  He thought we owed them something back because of the companionship and joy they bring so willingly to us.  Over the years, we have had cats, dogs, hamsters, horses, donkeys, chickens, a guinea pig, doves, finches, fish, and even a hedgehog.  I drew the line at reptiles.  Our kids have seen puppies being born and have witnessed the end of life for many of our pets.  We know the emotional bond that you can share with even the smallest of critters.  He often cries along with families during a particularly tough euthanasia.  He doesn’t mind giving advice or help to people and animals who need it.   Vets are some of the most upstanding and gentle people I know–in any field.  While sometimes it is an inconvenience to take an emergency call during a family event, it’s easy to put ourselves in the caller’s shoes and brush aside our selfish wish for an undisturbed night’s sleep.

It’s an honor to be called on during the critical moments in someone’s family.  The little Yorkie never saw it coming last night, and bless them, neither did her owners.  We all went to bed last night with our hearts heavy for the grief they were feeling and the empty space the loss will bring to their home.   Despite the risks we took getting into this profession, at the end of a day like yesterday, it’s been a privilege.