The Measure

The measure, (of really anything right?), is too often based on "success". But who gets to decide what that is? Who decides that measuring stick has increments other than dollar signs? Why is our society so fixated, obsessed, with money? The success measured by profits and the magnitude of the beast that the business is based upon. So often I wonder if people are really happy behind that? So often I wonder if the whole damned world needs a smack in the face about success with respect to where success, and hence, happiness lies?

At some point enough is more than you need and the result is finding meaning within the days after financial security.

The clinic has become so busy that I have to repeatedly stop, look for, and find myself. Days become so chaotic, hectic, and fervor-ed that I have to remind myself to breathe. Step away, take a breath, maybe even take a sip of water, and, ask myself if I have peed yet today? I have to do this... actually consciously tell myself to STOP. I have to repeatedly ask myself if I still remember why I am here? I have to force myself to take pause,,, Re-center, refocus, and renew the hopes, dreams, and aspirations that got me to right here. In the chaos.

Kitten pile.
5 of the 54 we helped re-home from a dire hoarding situation.

Here is a veterinarian. Here is a 7 day a week veterinary clinic with a heart so big people travel from miles away to be a part of our mission. The marrow of our purpose. Here is 12 hour days packed with more cases than the day can contain. If I can't help them they too often don't get help. There are industry wide whispers about seeking and maintaining a "work-life balance" but the reality is that the advice easier to dish from afar than it is to swallow. The reality that I hoped for this. I got exactly what I asked for.

I got here because I love pets more than my compassion for humans could convince me to study medicine for the sheer bliss of helping a human who already had a death wish provided. People are complicated. They like complicated. Pets, animals in every species, are easy. Life, liberty, freedom, and no false bravado or pretense for personal gain at your expense. The simplicity of their lives, as little and seemingly insignificant as they seem, are splendidly beautiful in their quest to live in the moments they are given. Their fears are only in their losses, never their greedy gains. Humans make life hard, painful, burdensome. There are angles, trust issues, and acquisition/preservation of gains to contemplate. Pets, no they never steal your heart and break it for less than you were willing to invest. They fill it without asking what's in it for them. They define, and eternally exemplify, unconditional love.

There is an endless sea of veterinary need. For those of us who take personal pride in the feeling of being needed, even desired or sought after in the professional sphere the ego boost can be invigorating. The problem lies within the minutes between the chaos. I get lost here too often. I can't find my footing and with that I lose my compass.

One of the Motel 5, 2022edition of the Good Sam rescues

So many days, (I would say the vast majority), go like this: 

I start the day driving to work heart pounding. Cortisol surging through my veins. Every inch of them. Heart beating out of my chest. The drumbeat reminder that the day looms before me. Taking deep slow breaths and trying to replace my current overwhelmingly dismal mindset with some podcast of light jovial banter. Half of my days are filled with surgeries. These are the days that cause the deepest despairing and yearning. "Lord, just let them all live through the day and be better off for my scalpels precision." I absolutely say something this corny and pathetic. I obsess over these patients. Their predicaments. Their necessary, life changing surgical interventions at my hand. The cases that only have me as their only life saving options. The much heavier burdens to bear; the routine spays that can bleed out behind your back after you thought they were sewed up nicely and left to warm up and revive. The routines will break you. The adverse outcomes you never saw coming. Never mind the pet parents who debate, doubt, and despair over these "routine surgeries" and whether the risk of anesthesia is worth the lack of heat cycles they will have to endure. People worry about their pets in degrees that I both identify with, and break my back over fearful burden with. For all of those clients that fret, I promise I fret with you. I am hiding in the bushes these days. Passing cases anytime I can to a boarded surgeon, internist, cardio specialist. I pass the buck at every chance possible in the hopes that these patients are better served elsewhere. The measure of success is in outcomes, not deposit slips.

For these days, these fearful-filled stress like you cannot imagine, days, I know every patient that I will see. I compartmentalize them. If hope and well-wishes could motivate fate I expect I am blessed and flush. It also makes the weight of the elephant on my shoulders mammoth sized. Remember the days when pets were just "pets"? The kind that lived in a box outside? On a chain. Yeah, I don't either. I know the pets that have names as endearing as the well thought out collar and matching onesie they had custom made for them. I know these pets, my patients, and I know that they are just exactly like my own. Family. Irreplaceable. The most important part of our human days are the pets we share them with. They don't just fill our home space, they define our happiness, well-being, and place of belonging. It is the kind of clientele I attracted. Hoped for. Wished into existence and fought for. Heart on my sleeve, berating the profession that so vehemently wants to protect the "pets = property" legal designation as they promote their personal professions of "pets = family" worthy of kidney transplants, chemo and costs of care tipping the bar of elaborate weddings and lifesavings. Smiling out both sides of our faces.

Two of the 54 from last years Good Sam endeavor.

My patients, the ones who land on my surgery day, they are much more than a name, an age, a species and a problem. They are my lifeblood. My responsibility. My only obligation for that period the anesthesia is running and the heartbeat is defining the rhythm of the moments. They are my mammoth to carry to the other side safely.

The measure for me is really simple. Your pet is one of the greatest gifts ever given to us. A personal treasure beyond weight, or measure. That value is unmeasurable. Hence, my mammoth, and my dilemma. 

You see my challenge. How do I stay true to my belief that every pet is someone's bedrock, and, not let that become a mammoth that puts so much pressure on me I hyperventilate on the drive into the office?

Clarke.

I am successful. Profitable, but yet still so burdened. I wonder if they are inseparable? Does one only come without the other? 

Yes. I think so. For me. For my measuring stick. For the kind of success that I am interested in. 

Oaken. May they all be as beloved as he.

Maybe I need to be asking myself about contentment. If that is measurable? 

Related blogs;

New Beginnings and Old Responsibilities. The building of my legacy.

The Mistakes Veterinarians Live that Make Us Paranoid. Or Kill Us.

This is a blog about the journey. There is not a destination. Nor, is there a typical audience. Just a diary into the ethos to cast out the inner musings and  hope they find a place to settle outside of my soul.

Each entry is a step to a place that like every other will have an ending. Its the little fragments of time I steal away to peel myself from the arduous work that is my life's joy and legacy.

My crew, Storm, Frippie, Charleston