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

Good Commercials Are Sold With A Smile You Never See

 Did you know the secret to selling something with only audio is to be smiling as you record?

Did you know that a smile can be heard?

Have you tried it? That smile is transcendent. It influences. Motivates. Sells.

Don't we all have to pitch ourselves every single day to someone?

Veterinary medicine is no different.

Simba. One of the 54 cats we helped last year from one home.

My job is to understand and translate my mute patient and sell their needs to their parents. Smiling while I sell, albeit the way a ventriloquist does, is the art behind the successful veterinary care sell.

I more appropriately I call it the 'building of trust to the point where the pitch is simplified to a permission versus a negotiation'. 

Basil One of 5 cats we took after the owners were evicted from a motel.,
He is safe with us now, but looking for a home.

I am a terrible salesperson. All that nonsense of fluff, fake veneers, and smoky mirrors is exhausting. I am a failure as a phony. I know this. I have had to rely on my genuine compassion to build a clientele willing to entrust their pets care in my hands. Just be me and try to remember to smile every so often. Not too much teeth or arm twisting. Keep the common goal in mind. We all have to be here with the same agenda and the same endpoint. Not an easy task or small hopeful wish.

It's not just lip service. I back it up with skin in the game. I make deals. If needed I will make deals that the house loses on.

Sadie. The most influential patient in my career.
She was my defining moment. My pivot point.

I give stuff away daily. It's the glitter in my vanilla day. It is the thing I love, take greatest delight in, every single day.

Sound crazy? Counter intuitive? Maybe its the easiest way to sell my genuine belief in always putting the patient first.

Saffie. Clinic cat.
Adopted and returned 3 times.
And still loved.

Here's an example.

Miss Phillips was elderly. Small, demure, crumpled and lacking any color in her dense weighty coat. Grey stringy hair, grey overstuffed winter coat, and grey sweatpants. She was seated on the long wide wooden bench in the exam room. Composed, quiet and clutching her coat sleeves enveloping her oversized market bag I think she used as a purse. She was quiet, withdrawn and weathered. She struggled with the weight of the 7 decades she had been alive. She needed help getting into our building. The staff led her into the exam room as they carried her petite dog-sized cat carrier for her. She was soft spoken and easily overlooked. She was a new client with a cat to be seen for a spay. This is the information I am given as I walk into the exam room. "New client, new patient. Cat needs to be spayed." No other information available. Blank slate. Not my favorite place to begin.

Seraphina.
Queen of everything

I say "hello" and start collecting pieces to finish the canvas. "This is Lilly. She is about a year old. She is not spayed." That's all I have. I look up at Ms Phillips. She has no emotion. She doesn't move an inch on the bench. Nestled into her winter coat seemingly swallowing her in its over abundant quilting.

"So, she has never been to the vet before?" I ask.

"No." Volley and serve and still no emotion to guide me on where this is going to end up.

"She is here to start her vaccines and be spayed. Correct?" I repeat. Ms Phillips is not giving me any information willingly. This is going to be a Q&A discussion. I slow down. Mirror her pace and attitude as much as I am able. 

I take a minute to look at her again. Switch gears from Lilly to her. "Did you drive here?"

"No, I don't drive." 

"Oh," I reply. A sigh of relief washes over me. "Who brought you?"

"My friend drives me."

"Do you have other pets?"

"No."

"No other cats?" Part of my job is sizing people up. Finding common ground whilst understanding the degree to which they invite these pets into their lives. That, and I just had a sense of "cat lady" lingering. Building a relationship to help a pet for their entire life and not this one and done visit. I try to remember to smile inside my inquiries. Add a smile, slow my pace, she seems very nice. I can see myself, someday, in her.

"There is a cat. (long pause).... She is not mine. I let her inside when it is cold. I just had her at the ER over the weekend. She had a respiratory infection. It cost me $300, so now I cannot afford to much for todays exam. I am not allowed to have more than one cat."

And there it was. The shell was cracked. She spilled the beans in just a few sentences and a change of perspective. 

We spoke for a few more minutes. She told me that she was renting her house. She was not allowed pets, but her landlords were going to let her keep Lilly as long as she was spayed and vetted. She was here, at my clinic, because we were the most affordable outside of the rescues and non-profits that had a 6 month plus spay/neuter wait time. 

"You let this other cat into your home where she sleeps at night. You feed her and now you pay for her to go to a vet clinic, and yet she isn't yours?"

All of a sudden one cat that she couldn't afford was two.

"What is going to happen when she has kittens?"

And with this question the look on Ms. Phillips face fell to the ground. It hadn't occurred to her. This reality where her good deeds put her in a predicament she couldn't manage.

We decided together that she would leave Lilly with us at the clinic. Her friend graciously ok'd bringing her back tomorrow with the other cat, Kitty. I would spay both the next day, and she could pay me back as she could. To save financial resources that she truly didn't have we would cut out the optional items like pre-op blood work. The exchange and change of plans had taken almost 20 minutes of our allotted 30. It had included being honest with who we are. It also included asking for help from the driving friend via a flip phone she dialed to her friend parked in the lot outside, too far for Ms. Phillips to walk again.

The next day I met Kitty. Small, slender, matted and peppered with grit in her coat from the flea dirt. Underweight, under muscled, overlooked and discarded like soo many cats in our community. She was gentle, confident, and melted with any small inkling of affection. She was so grateful for a warm place and a kind heart that she surrendered and collapsed into your arms soaking it all in.

Ms Phillips called later in the day checking on how the two cats did with their spay surgeries. "Fine," I replied. I had estimated Kitty to be about 4-6 years old. She was too sweet to be overlooked anymore. I asked her if she would like us to try to find her a home of her own. I never know if I can persuade others to see the kindness in an all black cat who isn't a kitten, but, she was not a feral cat and she needed a break. Ms. Phillips agreed once again that she couldn't have two cats at her home.

Over the phone (no car to drive and sign papers, remember), she authorized Kitty to stay with us as we tried to find her a home.

You know what happened? Another miracle. Seems so crazy the way miracles find us when we give more than we have to, and offer more than the house makes money on. Ms. Phillips got brave! She went to her landlords and put her cards on the table. She told them that she loved these two cats! That with a little help she was going to take care of them and she asked for permission to have TWO!

They said YES!

She called us back. Told us she wanted her Kitty back. 

Turns out happy endings just need a little faith and genuine compassion to make miracles happen.

....and with a smile we made the ending meet the intentions of everyone a reality everyone benefits from.

Wren. Night time ritual.
I tell her she is the most beautiful girl in the world and she reaffirms it.

Related blogs;

Wren: The Sickest Kitten Of Them All

Seraphina; The Futility of it ALL and Meet Seraphina

Sadie; Sadie's Story.

The Hardest Part Of This Job

Give Back. 

Hope. Stealing, Losing and Resurrection. How the fate of veterinary medicine hinges on hope.

Fighter. Maybe not a "prized fighter," but, none the less, fighter. This is my job.

Driving home last night it hit me. I fight. This is what I wake up, diligently-doggedly do all the day long, and then attempt to subdue myself out of each night. And, I do this every-single-day.

It's exhausting, don't get me wrong. I'm sure that there wasn't some detour along my life-path where I made a conscious decision to become this person. Live this life. But, alas, it is the one I recognize as my own now and I wonder if I am alone? I suspect I am not. There is great angst in always being cortisol-intoxicated to fight the next brawl in the next room. Junkie-syringe slasher style. This is the stuff ER doctors, race-car drivers, Navy Seals, and inner Baltimore City high school teachers are cut from.

Many vets are compelled into vet school to be that healer of furred affections. I took it a step further. I started to advocate, demonstrate and change the way I lived my life because of how I saw the world treating, or rather, more aptly, mistreating, animals. I couldn't live to save some of them, the "pets" and eat the rest. Or, wear the others. Ask the moms at my clinic who have chickens, cows, goats, or pigs as "pets" if they can eat them? Resoundingly the answer has become "NO!"

The fighter evolved. She grew. She came from that place where you recognize all living beings are looking for the same things. A place to belong. A family to love them, and a day full of liberty and freedom within the world around them. At our most basic level we all want to be free to live our life as our soul tells us to.

The fighter in me has molded the doctor I became. The person who sees each patient who walks in as an independent life worth saving. An integral part of some persons life that is incomplete, emptier, and less valuable without them.

When I started to fight for more than I was, more than I needed, and more than I had to, I realized that the most important part of that fight was the hope it gave to others. I realized that where I saw a fight they saw a chance. A glimmer that it was not all as hopeless as they feared and they didn't have to surrender in desperation to avoid their companions suffering.

Hope is abundant and yet it isn't shared enough. Why? Why wouldn't we give away the few things we veterinarians have in our over-abundant, yet too often over priced tool box for free? Like confetti? Why aren't we casting it like raindrops? Why isn't every single case started from this place? This mantra;?

I will fight for your pet,
and,
I will not steal, squelch, or dismiss hope, ever!

Why doesn't every healthcare decision start here? Universal investment at ground zero.

Now I know the pessimists out there, the jaded, angry, and lost are going to balk at my over optimistic view. They are going to lash out the defensive, dismissive banter about why this isn't realistic! Or, why it isn't even responsible. God forbid they even throw out some legal crap about liability in the face of unethical moral conduct.

So, to all of them here's my real-life professional advice to this beaten, broken, angry, over abundantly suicidal profession. We aren't God. We have to get off our power tripped judgmental pedestal. For ourselves and our patients sake we have got to stop being so brash and burnt that we spread that pessimism like a plague. We are all the same, each of us is a practitioner. There isn't one person who knows everything. None of us have some magical crystal ball that miraculously tells the future. We cannot spew a diagnosis to our clients who so often come to us with few, if any, resources for the diagnostics they need, like a magic 8 ball. We, more often, and too many more times than we want to admit it, we just don't know. We don't know what's at the core of our patients issues more often than not.. And, if we don't know the diagnosis why are we even speculating the treatment options, never mind their associated costs? Why, because we think we know. We think we know better than the parents who love them. And, erroneously, we think we are liable and/or responsible for these. We aren't. We are supposed to be honest. We are supposed to be advocates for our patients. We would all be better off if we were just verbally and emotionally open, honest, and humble about the depths with which we do not know. We are also supposed to protect the public who shares this community with these patients, but, these are exceptionally rare cases. Stop using fear as bait. Stop telling our clients all the stuff our lack of diagnostics can't rule out. Be honest. Treat people like the loving parents they inherently have to be if they are going to walk in your door and ask for help.

We would also benefit if we all allowed hope back in to live in medicine. If we all fought for it we wouldn't be killing ourselves off in numbers 3 times higher than the next statistic of the next most depressed profession. We wouldn't be emotionally bankrupt and our debts wouldn't be mounting. Our guesses are too often incorrect, assuredly without being medically sound, and these cost lives. It burns souls, and can destroy the lives of those people who call upon us for help.

When my Jekyll-pup was diagnosed with prostate cancer, one of the most deadly types a dog can encounter, I sought and bought hope in bundles. I specifically sought out an oncologist who doesn't carry a medical bag with rationed  portions. I sat down with her on day one of our journey to help my pup with an agenda. I needed to feel like I had  teammate on my wrestling squad. I also knew that I needed a map to start our journey. A place to begin, and a speculative place (or places) to stop. I knew I could, would, and even was ok with visiting crazy-town along the way. Crazy-town for a vet like me is that place where the stuff no one else conjures as 'acceptable for a pets quality of life' resides. I was concocting up novel surgeries to re-route the urethra around that pestiferous prostate. I could rebuild him, make him better, stronger, (not faster? maybe?) then he was before. I had the technology to build the first bionic beagle! I knew I had this fighter in me who wasn't going to surrender my beagle without a knock-down-drag-out fight! I knew I needed help with navigating myself away from crazy-town. My oncologist, Dr Jeglum, helped me stay hopeful while not going all Oscar Goldman and Dr Rudy Wells. We agreed to keep trying as long as Jekyll needed us to. We wouldn't stop at the conventional. We would try every option, every possible combination and therapy. I was hoping for more time, which I got 9 months of, while buying hope in bundles I bought time in months. I needed these to get me through his passing. I needed him to be living while I was fighting and then I needed to be able to go on without him at least feeling as if I had done everything I could for him.

People pay for hope. It is a valuable commodity and a religious tenet. Whole civilizations were started there.

What I see far more often is people who have been dismissed, over looked and cheated of options. Options that have hope intimately anchored to them.

Why???!!! Why would we ever NOT give options? Are we so lazy, so jaded, so indifferent that we can't take the extra time to sit down, look into our patients eyes, see the soul of a fellow being as still fighting for their life and their time in the sun of this planet we call home? They still have a life to live. A soft patch of grass to submit to. A warm purring tune to play on our laps. A day to make better for the human that adores them.

I see the cases that other vets have denied hope for. I see the cases no one else took time or interest in fighting for and in them I found the reason to keep going.

Where it has brought me is to this place, driving home, where I want to exchange the fighting gloves for the surgical gloves. The place where tears of pet parents change from inability to accept fate to hope filled possibility. We all want to face life, our mortality and the lives our days have accumulated into as this, Hope.

Never steal the hope. It is the single greatest gift we can give.


This week brought me two crying clients.

One was Joey's mom. Joey passed away this week. I had been taking care of him, his diabetes, his urinary stones, and his omnipresent smile for a year. He was built of defective parts. They eventually quit on him, but, he never quit being joyful. His mom told me, as we were talking about how far he had progressed into multiple diseases with little hopeful outcome that she trusted me because I was "the first person who spoke to her, not at her." She loved her Joey and I know that as I write this she  is at her home missing him. She has had 5 strokes over the last year and Joey was her only constant companion. She had to let him go and I know it is hurting her immensely right now, and will for the rest of her life.

The second case was Spencer. He is 12 years old. A lab. Most labs are lucky if they see a dozen years. His years had brought him painful joints, diabetes and blindness. He also had a huge ugly, awful death smelling tumor on his wrist. Someone had decided he wasn't worth options. The tumor grew, as tumors will. It got so big it couldn't feed itself, so, it started rupturing and dying. Dead carcass is fetid smelling. You can actually be alive with dead tissue hanging, falling and breaking off of you.. This is what his tumor, on his wrist, was doing as he stumbled his way along.. wagging, lab-fashion the whole way.

His mom was hysterical when I proposed we remove it. "No one ever told me it was possible." She was a new client. New that evening. Spencer was not a good surgical candidate, but,, this was his only hope. We were either going to save him from his tumor, or, euthanize him because of it. She told me that "this was the first time anyone had given her hope for him."

Here are his post op photos;

Here is his story.. in video time.

I cannot save every life, in fact, every life I see, help, embrace, will be lost. We all die. I have to tell every client this. That at some point in our journey the road will end. There is always death. But along the rest of this road there is love and with love there is always  hope.

If you are a pet parent and your companion is struggling there are ALWAYS OPTIONS! ALWAYS! And please never lose hope. You can lose everything else in life... hope is given away. Relinquished, and no one can take it from you unless you surrender it.

If you need pet help please reach out to me at Pawbly.com. It is free for all to use. If you have a pet story you would like to share please add it to our collection.

I am also available at Jarrettsville Vet and YouTube.

"It's Not My Cat Either"

Seems that many people believe that every stray, hurt, or unwanted animal is the vets responsibility. It's as if everyone in the community believes that we have signed some imaginary contract, or make some voluntary pledge upon graduation, to the neighborhood we hang our shingle in that we are the local receptacle for all things four legged in need.

Mystique and Cy.
Both are at the clinic now and in need of a home.

I suppose many would say that I did it to myself. That when we at Jarrettsville Vet began taking on these forlorn creatures who had no other compassionate options elsewhere that we were opening Pandora's box and inviting the perception that we are also a shelter. What else was I supposed to do? If I can help I feel obligated and compelled to do so. And so we do. We try very hard to do as much as we can. But when you crack the gates you should be prepared for the flood to follow.

We are now getting calls from loads and loads of people. It was intended to be a safety net for our patients and clients but has become pleas from friends of "friends", shelters referring anyone and everyone, and even other vets referring their financially strapped clients to us. It becomes unmanageable. We simply do not have room for them all. Worst of all too few people who find pets and say they are "trying to help" really want to make, take, or provide any meaningful help. They want to think and feel like they are "helping", but it can't "cost them anything," and they "can't really do anything." If you don't shoulder the burden of this needy pet and thereby remove the guilt from their eyes they too often become angry/unkind with pointed fingers and blame insinuating that somehow we retracted our obligation to be the safety net for societies furry citizens.

Angus.
Also in need of a home.

"I found this cat near my house. If I didn't take her inside the foxes would have eaten her. (Client then takes out ipad to show me pictures of said fox). She's not my cat. She's a stray. I can't pay for stuff that isn't for my cat. What if the owner comes forward after I spend all this money?"

It's a sales pitch. A way to clean the palate of impending doom. She came prepared with slides and a business plan. I am the skeptical Philanthropist. Between us sits a tabby cat contentedly sleeping.

"OK, let me get this straight?" My first words to the prosecution begin as;

• "She is, or, is not, a stray? You seemed sure that she was 5 minutes ago when you gave me that long winded description of living far away from everyone (hence the circling foxes), and the only place she might have come from was one of the many farms with barn cats? But you don't want to ask the farmers if she is their cat because they won't know?"
• "And you don't think you should have to pay for anything because she is not your cat, although you are willing to give her a home once someone else pays for her vaccines, spay, FeLV/FIV test, fecal exam etc.." 
• "She's too nice to be put back outside as you fear she might become "fox bait" which would be on my conscious because you are the Good Sam kind hearted person and I am the person screwing you out of the money you shouldn't have to pay to fix someone else's cat."

Debate begins about presumed ownership of said nice cat...

"It's not my cat," her.

"It's not my cat," me.

"Well, it's not my cat either."

"She was at your house. She is in your carrier. You want to keep her if I perform everything for free, (or some significant capped fraction of what it might cost), and then you want her to be your cat?"

She volleys back; "It's not my cat."

Eye roll,,, (I don't think she saw it).

I pack up. The verbal arm wrestling will end with a retreat.

Monica.
Looking for a home now.

The dilemma revolves primarily around the fact that this self proclaimed Good Samaritan adopted a cat from us two years ago for $100. At the time of her adoption she was spayed, vaccinated, microchipped, tested and dewormed. She expects the same deal with this cat.

"I'm sorry it doesn't work like that. You can surrender her and we will have one of our rescues find her a home. You can bring her to the Humane Society. We can give you a payment plan to help space out any charges her care might require. Or, we can give you information on low cost spay and vaccine clinics." These are the options I provide her.

"No, I'm leaving,,, (pointed finger in my face, yelling and the "you're screwing me!" statement follow),,, "I'm going to dump her at someone else's house." She grabs the tabby from her slumber and puts her in the carrier. Opens the exam room door and starts walking out the front door. 

"That's horrible and illegal!" I blurt out in shock and incredulity.

She leaves the clinic angrily after making a scene to anyone present in the front office.

Twenty minutes later her very elderly mother calls me to berate me for "making her daughter feel bad. Not giving her any options, and punishing her for being a Good Samaritan." Grandma reminds me that she has "been a long time client who spent thousands of dollars here over the many decades she's been with us. She will not be back."

"Music to my ears." ( I think she hung up on me before she heard me).

.... and now I lose sleep at night with worry that two cats are in peril because I preferred to not feel taken advantage of than help them. 

Joey.
Monica's brother, also in need of a home at JVC

I want to write her a letter that somehow shifts the guilt and blame back on to their shoulders. I want to throw a temper tantrum like a disgruntled two year old in the off chance I feel better afterwards... But, I don't. I let the days go by. I try to see it from their side? But, all that happens is I feel worse and I fear more that the cat is being torn apart by foxes,,, screaming for her life.  I try to hold a tiny bit of faith that the sweet unwanted cat can win over her angry, manipulative, sorry heart. Lord knows I couldn't.

There are some games that you play with some people you cannot win. In these games you try to walk away at a draw. In vet med the pet always pays when you do. The vet always knows this. There is a time when you have to choose who to abandon. Your ability to be profitable, your setting precedence that puts you right back here in the same predicament next week, the pet, the person, or the grief you sleep with every single night. The grief that makes you want to vomit from stress on the drive into work the next day. You have to choose who to walk away from. I promise you that in every single scenario like this every vet wants to chose to walk away from the person. It is never, ever, the patient, and too often instead we chose to walk away from ourselves as the easiest, least publicly visible painful option. 

Another JVC kitten up for adoption

Many Thanks to the people who make JVC such an amazing place. We are surrounded by so many generous people. The people who help adopt, foster, and share the posts of the pets seeking second chances, recovering from disease, illness, accidents, and misfortune. Without you we wouldn't be possible, and these miracles wouldn't happen.

...and please be kind, to your pets and the people who work so hard to keep them safe and healthy.

Related blogs;

Compassion Fatigue

The Holes In The Safety Net

Pieces Of Me

Ethical Fatigue

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Post Script; This blog was taken down after the viral vet video hit the profession. At that time there were a handful of angry vets seeking any kind of fuel for their venomous anger. For reasons I still don't fully comprehend (feel free to not enlighten me if you still feel compelled to be angry at me) this blog proved their point about not feeling obligated to help people in financial need. The truth of the argument is that this person, the subject matter of this blog, was not in financial difficulty. She was given options, the ability to decline service items and goods, to pay over time, and she was even given options to surrender a cat that she stated repeatedly was "not hers." While other vets might see a parallel between standing ground and walking away from an angry client who may always foster anger toward me, I never turned my back from trying to help the cat in this case.

I am reposting this blog as I continue to stand by its real-life basis and the challenges vets face when trying to help a pet in need and a client who is argumentative and difficult. It is my real-life. This is a real case.

Do I ask myself if I could have done more? Yes. I always ask myself what part I played in a scenario I question as remaining unresolved in a satisfactory manner.

Weasely. Being Kind and Being Genuine. How Your Clinic Can DO It ALL. How to correct deformed legs in a kitten.

There are enough sad stories in this world. No one needs, or wants any others....

And yet they still keep coming.

This is Weasely. He arrived in a tiny yellow carrier at the front desk of my veterinary clinic on October 10th 2016 via a chauffeur from the local Humane Society. 

"They want to drop him off?" I heard the receptionist announce rather casually and open-endedly toward no one. 

The clinic at this time of day is a bustling, chaotic mass of dogs, cats, children, parents and vet staff. We more closely resemble a subway station turned MASH unit then a small town veterinary clinic.

Like any seasoned parent I knew better than to blindly and dismissively shout out, "OK!" go on with my day to only be shell shocked by the sad case who needed my attention hours ago, that I had overlooked at intake.

I walked out of my busy backlog of waiting patients to peek into the carrier to see the hidden content. 

There sat a tiny speck of  orange fluff. Eyes small slivers of recognition. It was immediately apparent that he was sick, depressed, insignificant and crippled. He was mercy in a box.

These introductions take all of 10 seconds. He had some speckled sad story of misfortune and if I sent him back to try to survive in a shelter the odds were slim and already certainly against him. He simply needed too much and they had too many.

"Do you know anything about him?" I asked the driver.

"No." Short, oblivious, absent.

"OK, leave him here."

I went back to the pace of the sprint that is our normal over busy, over crazy, mildly chaotic veterinary life.

I scribbled a few notes of instructions and passed his carrier and his first treatment plan to the able kitten savior technicians JVC employs.

Laura met me in the treatment area a few minutes later. Without needing to explain she had taken charge. She had been through a case like this before. Her own dog, Bella, landed her second chance with us almost a decade ago. This is her dog's story. Bella's New Legs blog.

Weasely wasn't a mystery to us. I knew he would need a week or two to get over his upper respiratory infection. He also needed a month or two to get his deformed front legs back in straight working order.

Here is how a vet thinks about these cases; Triage. Immediate life saving care is directed to the infection and disease. Legs, well, legs are accessories. We will start to train them now, worry about their form and function later.

• Respiratory infection plan for a 1/2 pound kitten;
• Amoxicillin drops, a tenth of an ml every 12 hours. The most important part of this plan and the single reason sick kittens need a vet.
• Erythromycin ophthalmic. A small strip over each eye twice a day. Save the eyes, the eyesight and treat immediately.
• Deworm. Kittens come with worms. Please use a veterinary prescribed product. The over the counter stuff is dangerous and too often also deadly.
• Feed! If they are eating on their own leave out food 24/7. Change it every 4 hours.
• Keep warm! A heating pad on low under the towel or blanket. And keep them inside draft free and safe.
• Remove all fleas! Immediately. See my videos on how to do this.
• LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! 

Here is how we treated his legs;

• Day 1-3 was tiny pieces of a tongue depressor wrapped in soft vetrap. One small circumferential piece of tape held the tongue depressor in place. Essentially Weasely needs something with some soft rigidity to help support his relaxed and bent wrists. 

By day 4 Weasely's eyes and respiratory infection have markedly improved. He also has a nice big round belly! He is gaining weight, muscle mass and becoming a healthy kitten!

• Day 4-14. Laura made plastic braces by cutting a syringe cover in to two halves. She smoothed the plastic edges and then applied elastic tape to cover the edges.

He still has lots of laxity in his wrists but he is walking on his feet and not the side of his forearm.

It is vital to remember that we have to heal Weasely's body and spirit! Socialization is as important to his overall health and long term prognosis as his splints are.

That's a lot of toes! 22 in all!

With any type of splint, brace or cast, you are going to get pressure sores and wounds. For this reason and for the ever changing evolution of a tiny sick kitten growing so fast you cannot blink I wanted Weasely to stick close to the clinic.

We changed his bandages and splints daily. By about day 5 he started to have sores where the splints were touching his skin. This required daily antibiotic soaks and changing the splints, and/or, adding more padding.

By about day 8 we changed to soft padded splints.

He went into a foster home within a week. Because every pet heals on their own time we wanted him to be socialized, loved, and encouraged to get up and use his new legs. A foster home is a much better place than a busy clinic for this.

This is Weasely with his foster family.

Where he was LOVED.

And spoiled...

And discovered he was a cat..

Who loves people.

And slaying defenseless toys..

It has been a month of treating his legs.. and now they are perfect. 

He is back with us learning how to be a friend and looking for his forever home with his new friend Thor.

Miracles come in all sorts of obscure packages. You don't have to look far for them. You just have to accept them as a tiny opportunity to be bigger than the often overlooked. And, you have to remember to love.

Weasely happened because Jarrettsville Vet does a few things;
1. We advertise that we are here to help the pets of our community.
2. The local shelters and rescues know that they can swing by and drop off a little soul in need in a little carrier.. even on our busy days. We don't dismiss or disregard there is need even when there isn't a paying client.
3. We utilize all of our resources to make happy endings. There is a small army of people who help at every step. Our clients, families, friends and supporters make this happen.
4. We have staff who provide pro bono care generously and unselfishly.
5. We have a box at the front desk to collect donations. We call it the Good Samaritan Fund. It helps  cover the cost of these cases.

We never walk away and we don't give up. It is our credo and it is all you need to allow little miracles to happen.

Related blogs;

Bella's New Legs.

Borrowing Battery Juice.

If Wealth Were Measured In Good Deeds.

Open Admission Shelters Are NOT Safe Houses.

Leave Them Here.

If you are an animal expert, or pet lover, or have a question about your pets care please join me on Pawbly.com. We are a place for exchanging information to benefit pets lives globally.

I can also be found  at the clinic, Jarrettsville Veterinary Center in Jarrettsville Maryland, on Twitter @ FreePetAdvice, or on YouTube.