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| Saffie, our (one of ours) clinic cat. She is no help, but always a shoulder to lean on and laugh over. |
I sit here surrounded by fodder. Aberrant news clippings, half read magazines, a pile that represents time to do what my heart finds joy in, and not a second to do any of it. My life is a serious of tiny snippets, all left over from a place before, where I had hoped I would find time later. It is all elusive now. I cannot amass the hopeful day to make it a quiet time for me to enjoy. I have given up almost everything to be here. Everything save for the one thing that is the most important; the feeling of being a veterinarian who rises each day to stem the tide that manifests into a tidal wave that just grows, and looms larger with each circadian revolution. I have become the 2022 version of all of those I knew before me. None of them had much of a life outside of their work. All of them made choices of neglect to answer their call of duty. All of them did it silently, with their actions, their blunted birthday celebrations, too tired to make it vacations happen, and holding on to their practice until they were too withered to walk away productively and do anything else. Retirement is a short stay and no vet dies broke at the end of it. It is a calling as much as it, (I’ll admit to more), than it is a sacrifice or a curse. As exhausted as I am, my tattered, disheveled home to prove it, my aching legs and stress fractured feet now abandoning my morning runs, I am meant to be here. It is the place I belong. How fortunate am I to have that? How many others work in factory assembly lines, toll ticket booths, or check out lines with angry faced clients and fell this way? How many walk this journey of life never feeling that they gave more than they received and feel purposeful because of it?
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| Two of the 54 we saved and found homes for. |
How many vets work so devotedly to getting into vet school only to leave a few years later? I saw Karmen, a 3-year-old German Shepherd, yesterday who had become lethargic just the day before. She is the dog of my surgery technicians, Autumn. Karmen was fine one moment and distressed the next. It was early Sunday morning. Within two text messages and a master key to allow access to the clinic 24/7, my tech had her on her way to getting vet help. We got her into the ER with one phone call. Something unheard of these days where waiting to be seen can take days. Days pets die from. Karmen was immediately hospitalized at the ER to have her blood work done, x-rays completed, and barium administered. Less than 24 hours later she came to me, yesterday morning, (a 6 am Monday morning transfer to our vet clinic, the place she had been vaccinated, spayed, our patient coming home to the place her mom works at), and I knew the moment I saw her that she was unlikely to make it through surgery. It is a gut feeling that only comes from decades of being in practice. I just knew. I tried to break it gently, (there is no such thing) to Autumn. She is the kindest, hardest working 22-year-old me, and just like me she feels too much, and devotes her life to her pets. I adore her. I feel like her mom most days, encouraging her to not put limitations on herself, being her support system for all of the adventures and misadventures she attempts. She saves every unwanted critter that steps into our clinic. One year she found homes for 54 cats from a hoarding home. This year she adopted Hamilton, the kitten brought to us after I suspect having been thrown out of a car, who has a broken back yielding him paralyzed from the waist down. Through her Hamilton has amassed a following on social media exceeding 6 million views. She did this. She has no idea how influential and inspiring her actions are. And here we were, me the aging seen too much to not be realistic vet, and her, still trying to save everything, looking at Karmen together. Karmen needed emergency surgery now, probably last night at dinnertime, but we are here and now with decisions to make. We put Karmen on the OR table within minutes of getting to the clinic. The clinic transforms into a quiet vacuum on these occasions. I.v catheters running, monitors beeping too fast and too loud, people shuffling back and forth hyper-focused on the task in front of us. These are many of the too numerous to count clues that things were at disaster status and Karmen was barely holding on. Autumn stood beside us as we opened her up. It is a rare thing to be able to separate yourself enough to let the body be a body.. the soul to be levitated over the shell it is housed within. It is the gift, or curse, I am never sure which, that allows magic and miracles, and quite honestly closure to occur. We spent two hours doing a surgery I had never done before. A surgery I know has horrible chances at a good outcome, and yet it was the only hand we had to play short of euthanasia on the table and waking the dog up to die a day later in still constant intractable pain. We tried. I place so much emphasis on this. These two words govern all my days. All my efforts. I just want to try. How immensely lucky am I to be able to have the freedom to try?
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| Karmen |
Karmen died on the table as I was suturing up the incision that ran the length of her abdomen. Medicine is like this cruel to the place of pondering fate and our futility in considering ourselves influential in its whims. Karmen died from a colonic torsion. I have only seen it one other time in 20 years. The other vets at the practice, four of them, had never seen it before. Karmen was fine one day, Saturday, in the ER Sunday and deceased Monday, and she had the immensely, (not even the right word to describe the magnitude) fortune to have a mom who knew she was in need of immediate care, access to the ER, and a surgeon at the ready. Nothing would have been more advantageous for her. I am quietly whispering to my inner self that I should have just done the surgery immediately on Sunday an not have waited for her to stabilize, rehydrate, get antibiotics. And yet my 20 years tells my aggravated mom self that it doesn’t always fall this way. Forcing the hand, cursing the cards, and dictating the outcomes. She is the third patient I have lost under anesthesia. Shockingly the two others were my sisters feral cat, and my former groomers kitten. Two grey cats with unknown histories and unknown underlying issues. Three in 20 years. I remember their faces. I will always carry them with me. Thousands of successes and the few indelibly scar. Even with this haunting I feel grateful. The glass half full must always be the lens we utilize when the mess around us reminds us of all the work left to do, and all the joys left to be had, someday.
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| Karmen going home after her spay. |
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| Karmen at home |
For more information on Hamilton please follow the Jarrettsville Vet Facebook page.
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