Up late

Vacantly sitting in bed, checking my phone again and again. Looking for a new update, something happening, someone saying hello, an email maybe.

I know what I am really waiting for. A message from him. 

It will never be from him again. 

Veterinary Medicine loses another extraordinary colleague.

You were the brightest and best and I am shattered into a thousand shards of sharp black grief. 

Client Conversations #7

A guy came in with his cat and an anxious expression on his face. He said  

"She’s not good with people who aren’t me."

"Not good aggressive or not good timid?" 

"Well, when we went to the Cats Protection to get a new cat, this guy was coming out of her kennel at feeding time. He was wearing a face visor, body suit and gauntlets. We looked at each other and said – if we don’t take her, who will?"

"But she’s okay with you at home?"

"Well when we arrived at the house, I got a plate of chicken ready whilst she was still in the basket. I opened the door, she came out, looked at me and started eating. It was love at first chicken."

A serious post

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I was discharging an inpatient when I heard it, and stopped mid sentence, spinning on my heel to see where it had come from.  “Vets have the highest suicide rate of any profession”.  A cocky teenaged boy showing off in front of his Mum, a client I knew fairly well due to their dogs persistent allergy problems.  I caught his eye and turned back to finish what I had to say before smiling and sending my patient on her way. Turning back to him I said “It’s not so funny when it’s your friends.”

Walking back to the consulting room they all came flooding back, a flashing show reel of those I have known and lost. The girl I grew up with who went to a different vet school, qualified, worked for a couple of years in mixed practice then took a calculated overdose one night. Her funeral was the saddest thing I have ever seen, her parents hadn’t been in a room together for over 10 years and ignored each other throughout.  The racecourse vet who was reputed to have a sixth sense with horses, kind and gentle, who had stopped drinking for a few years then one day headed off on a binge and was found dead in his house with head trauma. The one who hung himself over the back of the door, so that when they tried to get into the house they couldn’t get past his body and had to break the door down with an axe.  The vet who was a one man ambulatory practice, who took all the epilepsy tablets washed down with a bottle of coke in the back of his car. The guy who just couldn’t do it any more and overdosed on propofol in the flat above his vet surgery.

It’s a far cry from the cuddly James Herriot image that the public has, backed up by the portrayal in all those TV shows. The reality is that we are simultaneously dealing with multiple cases, often very complex, in a difficult financial climate where we are expected to fix everything within the tight time allowance. Time off is a nuisance for everyone else.  I am lucky to work in a good area, in a practice where I have colleagues who I can talk to, about cases or other stuff, and get some support. I have worked in places where that is not the case.

Be kind to your vet, you don’t know what they might be going through until it’s too late.

Exam mascots

     It was the middle of exam time,  and there was a nervous tension all over the University. You could feel it just walking up University Avenue, students brisk and urgent on their way to the library or one of the many exam halls.  I was similarly agitated, but it was a bright clear day in late early summer and my head was a mixture of pharmacology and the call of the open countryside just half an hour away. I looked to my left before stepping off the pavement to cross the street, and it was then I saw it, lying in the gutter. A squirrel. It was perfectly intact, not a spot of blood or any sign of trauma, but it was dead as a doornail and rigid with rigor mortis in a Shakespearean pose. Without pausing to think, I scooped it up and carried on to the exam hall. We filed in immediately, dropping our bags and coats against the wall, clutching our lucky pens, a packet of polos and whatever superstitious trinkets we had brought. I placed the dead squirrel on the desk for retrieval afterwards.

     The exam was rigorous and demanding, and within a couple of minutes I was fully absorbed in a panicky world of my own.  I hadn’t prepared well, and I was struggling to triumph over the negative marking system: one point for a correct answer and one point deducted for a wrong one or a pass, meaning you need to get at least 75% right. I knew about half. A further quarter I could whittle down to two possible answers. The rest were a complete guess.

     When the invigilators announced our time was up, I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough and down to the union for a sorrowful pint before going home to prep for more exams the next day.  I grabbed my bag and rocketed out the door.

     It was several hours before I realised what I had done. I had taken a dead squirrel into a vet exam, and left it there, on a desk.

Nobody ever mentioned it.  

Client Conversations #6

Whit dae ah caw you?

Sorry, what do you mean?

Weel, dae ah caw you Vet? Or are ye doactor or whit but yer no a doactor but like a doactor?

Most people just call me Heather

“Right.” (she thought for a minute) Can ah caw you hen?

*smiles* Aye, if you like.

She turned to leave. “Thanks hen”

Client Conversations #5

My, she’s a big cat! 

“Yes, I’m her feeder”  

*awkward silence*

You for whom I have cared

After your owners have gone

And the light has left your eyes

I lift you up

Cradle your head in the crook of my arm

Gaze softly upon your brow

and say

You were a good boy.