Hello 2022, Whatcha Got Up Your Sleeve?

It's the dawning of a New Year, and, hope springs eternal, again!

(yada, yada).. as we all try to shake loose of this pandemic. Time to look back as I plan ahead. 

Or, as I feel is more realistic.., what couldn't go right from here?

So, here it goes,, pen to paper, heart on my sleeve, best attempt at optimism to carry me through another year. (Roaring 20's comin' round again?)

I want to open this new year full of old hopes and new dreams.... 

This year I am making some lofty goals. It's a combination of feeling obligated to make resolutions for a brighter future, and, be reminded about the bleak recent past.

Here's the dilemma..

I have this nagging lingering insecurity that I am going to find my dear friend Havahs' fate. She died in 2020 at 47. She was also a veterinarian, and a veterinary practice owner. She had two kids under 10. Or, my mom who died at 74 thinking she still had another 74 years left to get her dress rehearsal right. They both died too young. They both thought they had more time. Turns out life will hand you a shit sandwich and then watch you die trying to accept it. I prefer to not have any of this nonsense. I much prefer to die old, tired, contented and meeting that new book of the afterlife with a smile of gratitude and the look of the cat who swallowed the canary glee on my face. I hope to get away with everything as I accomplish more than imaginable. Maybe that’s not relatable to anyone? Maybe, in your opinion 47, and 74, are ripe old ages and there are too many people on this planet anyway? But, if COVID has driven home one thing it is that life is short, fleeting, unpredictable, and disposable. A bug/virus can rule the world and keep us hostage while it permeates every corner of every human life. Fear shouldn’t be the only motivator, but it makes a damn good coach.

There isn't much that my life is without. I seem to have so much that I wonder where it all belongs at times? It's a comfortable nest of fluff and fodder that I made for myself. Just enough dogs (two, and they are inseparably happy together), three house cats (and they have found a way of avoiding each other just enough to no longer have cat fights), my two clinic cats (Seraphina, she's famous, (see my Jarrettsville Vet Facebook page if you don't believe me) and Oreo, her ever devoted side-kick), and, the amazing group of people who keep the inner soul of the vet clinic burning bright. I seriously fear that way too many vet hospital owners claim success based on the thunderous magic of their worker bees who keep their practices alive. It's tragic and pervasive. I don't subscribe to it. I might pick the paint colors, and pay the mortgage but JVC is the magical kingdom of hope and miracles because of it's people. I have just enough, and yet there is this relentless nagging that I can do more. Maybe not for me, but others. That place where inner calling supersedes personal preferences to the laurels and my nest they lie upon.

I was talking to an old friend who now hosts a podcast on "successful veterinary practices" (of which JVC seemed to qualify based on metrics that remain mysterious to me). He asked me how the pandemic had changed the way I manage the clinic? I told him that I will never be the same on the other side of it. Early on, when the world was closing down to a hide-away halt, I told myself that no matter how bad this pandemic got I was not going to be the person who failed JVC. I am the third owner of a place that has survived and served its community for over 80 years. I have their legacy to carry and preserve. If that meant I would have to sleep on a cot, work any hour of the day needed, answer every call for help regardless of its severity, I would. I was prepared to be the vet of one against the pandemic of all. Whatever it required I would not let this clinic fall or fail. I was not going to succumb to the fear. The virus might claim me, and I might be one of those little ones in the litter of parvo pups where you are the single one who will survive. I had seen infectious disease wipe out populations before. I knew this villain, but, I wasn't hiding and surrendering. At this same time my mother was bedridden at her home battling a demon of her own. She lost her battle to cancer quickly in the beginning months of this world wide quarantine and fear. Her fear wasn't all she had to shoulder, she focused on the worlds of panic, tucked herself away, and gave up without ever fighting. It was the darkest hours of my life, without question.

Through that loss the clinic chugged along. In the beginning we lost some staff due to personal preferences about exposure and family obligations. As our numbers dwindled so to did the demands for routine care. It was a symbiotic relationship that made life manageable. But through these early days I had this burdened heart that was unshakable. Fear. Dread. Despair lurking. I got through it reminding myself that "to each beginning there is an end." One step, one day at a time. Breathe. Be brave. It's all I could do. 2020 took two lives very close to me. 2021 was the mourning dark veil of a still life still frozen in COVID paralysis.

At a vet conference mid Summer 2021, mid pandemic, I met with other female practice owners. We were all grateful for a get-away, and, we were all exhausted. Most of us qualified as 'burnt out,' I was charred. What I wasn't expecting was how much their attitudes about their practices had changed because of COVID. All, and I do mean all, were once (pre-COVID) worried about how the new corporate ownership would affect their staff. Two years prior I would have said that this was the biggest and most significant factor swaying practice owners to not sell to corporate. That concern had evaporated. Their viewpoint now was exactly what the corporate acquisitioners wanted to hear; "I'm too tired, too broken, and too frustrated/fed up to care anymore about anyone else. I just want out."

I never got there, but, I understand how others did. Had I been forced to run the clinic solo I am not sure I wouldn't have crumbled. I know of one veterinarian who lost 9 of her 11 vets in the first few months of COVID. They left for many reasons, but, they also left her largely incapable of meeting the demand. When I asked her how she did it she replied that the techs did everything. She stayed in surgical scrubs all day and the techs did everything else. It was now 9 months later and she was selling. Her team had abandoned her in her darkest hours of need. 

The backside of this pandemic has left me feeling relieved of a burdened heart that couldn't have taken much more. Where early on the demand for services was so great we were stretched thin to meet them, now we are anxious for its departure. COVID vaccines are available to anyone who wants them. Where I had feared people would be putting themselves at significant risk to stay employed with us, they now had options to protect themselves more than the mask and PPE's, (which make medicine inherently more difficult to patients who cannot talk to you), could. If a staff member had gotten exposed at work, brought that home and infected others, and anyone had died along the way the guilt would have crippled me. I was out of that self-imposed fearful scenario by end of 2021. The burden was now solely and singularly on them.  I could go back to being grateful for their help and not burdened by the fear of their presence.

Maybe being able to forge your path from the end is a good way to not be hesitant or afraid of the now? Maybe as I live everyday with such a constant reminder of what we are all going to lose from living through this, is a way to be more free to make huge mistakes, take huge risks, and live without caring about what others judge, call, label or even think about me.

I can say with a full belly of castigation that almost everyone who is anyone in vet med thinks I am an awful person. From the vet side my colleagues hate me. Yep, hate. Such a cruel word. I am not on twitter anymore and I cannot use the Facebook peer pages without at least one veterinarian trying to berate, bully and intimidate me into hiding in shame. I am outspoken. I remain this way. And it compels my every move in vet med. We, this profession, have failed so many pet parents whose lives revolve around their companions. The prices, expectations, and yes, our own interactions with pet parents is decaying. Vets don't seem to care as much as we believe we portray ourselves to the public. Too often in this, my own clinic, if I try to be vegetarian I am faced with the same shaming and ridicule. As if this life choice is insignificant and banal. And this is from people I actually care about. As I try to be kind to all animals I have staff members insulting me and mocking me. That hurts. I remind myself of this as I try, (operative word), try, to be respectful that others have different opinions. Even opinions on COVID vaccinations. I have had to accept that they may get sick, or even die, and it was their choice. I can almost accept this, except for one small thing, that person could infect another person who might not survive. So I try to be respectful of civil liberties and freedoms in the face of vulnerable defenselessness and yet I struggle to elevate them to the place of pride and dependency they hold.

I have done all I can do as a leader in a small town with a vet clinic that has no equal. We are the sum of all of our parts and yet we are still here facing another year of undoubted challenges with unknown obstacles and a big heart on our sleeve which I will be the first to say is our biggest strength for our greatest chances at success.

We survived the pandemic. What has it done to me? I suppose it will take 2022 to see? 

We were so lucky.

That fact has brought me back to being able to set goals. Make wishes. Be at peace.

What had gotten us here? I think it was just being true to who we are. Not being reluctant to be genuine. And staying there for them in both of our darkest hours.

How do these fit into this book of my life? My singular narrative?

I am left with feeling that they are the root of everything in life. 

Here's to all of us finding a new dawn in a new year, and the hopes that dreams are still possible on the other side of gratitude that we are all still here.