Diary of a Real-Life Veterinarian

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

My Veterinary Want Ad

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Idle Hands and a Place Under the Moon

It's all oddly outwardly imperceptible, and yet to me, its perfectly congruous.

My life, it's little steps, the irony that is never lost,, and me,, well, my place inside of it.

Today is housecleaning day. The lunar calendar marked bi-weekly as the tidal flow of hair bunnies lollygagging their cotton candy dances on the fringes of every corner within this old house. I shuffle a vacuum in our customary cadence, the Charleston footwork and Lady Liberty extension wand. The movement of wreckage that once held such necessary value. A place of me belonging to it, and fixed in a place I felt a feeling of belonging within,, (you know simply because familiar is ensconced around me). The cement to the broken pieces that would fly out of alignment, the centripetal force of me spinning around within a planet that I evolved from, but do not feel belonging to. A home is supposed to do that for you. Give you a defined, owned place under the moons glow.

I pick up the towels at the front door. Their terry cloth fingers, anemone-papilla that collect and store the muddy feet traversing from countryside to domestic domains. A quick wave to disperse all back out the front door back into their places in the free universe. The dog hair floats uninhibited by gravity, and yet the mud does not. I shake them outside furiously, a force of a blow against itself reminding the fabric it has a purpose, and a master and it finds its greatest pains back up and against itself. Hitting hard as it folds in two, and smacks the life both out of and back into itself.

My front doors are ancient mahogany. Worn, faded, hand ironed finger holds to remain steadfast to the Pennsylvania weather whims of snow, ice, wind, rain and varied onslaught of generations of inhabitants. Old, like everything else within this house, she is a single door to a large front stone and a brick path to the yard in front. As I open the door the wind blows in burnt leaves, desiccated and crisp, lighter than the mud landing on the hallways dance floor as they billow into warmth. They crunch under foot as I crackle them to confetti pieces and make more work for myself. I should have put a storm door up many years ago, saved myself the extra effort of having to clean up as I clean up.. and yet I never have time for such time saving tasks.

The dogs rush underfoot and scurry to stay close. Keep my company as I clean up their weeks worth of toys, and detritus. They are no help but great company. I serve their needs and they more profoundly have taken residence to serve as my place within the world.

This house, the housework is the one small piece of my home life I hold dear. I would never imagine letting it go onto another's hands. it reminds me that I have built a legacy while I cluttered myself around a nucleus of a home that reminds me I have been, I was and I still am.

While I am growing up, and old, learning that the jewels of life exist in the experiences much more so than the accumulated paraphernalia, it isn't lost on me that these days of housecleaning remind me to take stock and place immeasurable inherent value in just the being here. The being here with my family, the pets I call my most treasured companions and the moments they make for my time here more valuable than anything this house holds. I am constantly reminded to take great stock in the wealth this lifetime has afforded me, and that they have given me. It will never be an equal exchange rate, the gift they give me of belonging and the care I repay them in return.

It is my little life within a greater place under the moon.

The larger looming admission is to never forget how much my clients companions mean to them, and to never grow old, indifferent and callous to their needs and rights.

For more on my old stone house please see my other blog Stone House Beautiful on Blogger

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Kittens and Rabies, My N=2.

Raffles, 4 months old

Twice in one career. Ok, let's put it all out there, twice in under 5 years. It shouldn’t happen. The odds are staggeringly not in my favor, well, at least for anything else. Perhaps in the very high density, over-crowded, collection bins of the shelters, it might happen, but, me, little home town vet me, well, surely it couldn’t happen to me?

And here I am. Just notified that one of the kittens I was taking care of, the second kitten I have ever taken home to spend the weekend in my bathroom, is positive for rabies.

The staff had named him Scrapple. One of three we had been given custody of to try to find homes for. The finder of the litter is a wonderful long time client of ours had humanely trapped, vaccinated and spayed their mom. She had also decided to keep the other little tortoise shell kitten sibling named Kali.

Scrapple

We do a lot of this. We do a lot of helping out when a client finds themselves with a stray pet (or four) on their property. While I recognize most other vets would simply point to the local shelter for the answer to their "not my problem" dilemma, the shelters are burgeoning with too many unwanted animals already. Further these little ones would be at great risk of euthanasia due to space constraints or acquire a respiratory infection from stress, overcrowding and inability to be vaccinated fully before their arrival. This is a client we have known for decades. If she is willing to step up and help these cats I am happy to assist her. It works like that, a compromise for the sake of the animals involved. Jump in, be compassionate. Make a difference. Live your purpose, all of the things we veterinarians came into vet med to do,, and then conveniently dismiss as "no good deed" comes along.

Scrapples story began as a simple kind gesture for the sake of need and ability. He needed us and we are more than best equipped to help. So we do. Period.

But, Scrapple had a past that preceded us. That past is what the "no good deed" and it's "punishment" brought.

He had been with us at the clinic for about 2 weeks. He and his two bouncing, bigger, buoyantly bubbly calico sisters. The little black Scrapple was always smaller, more subdued and quiet. On Wednesday (2 weeks into his stay with us) he started limping. By Thursday we took an x-ray. He had an old fracture of his femur. It was healing (as all kittens do), but why was he limping now? The fracture must have happened many weeks ago. He was about 2 pounds,, so at around 1 month old? Why would a kitten have an old fractured leg? Probably fell? There were no wounds ever evident on him.

There are patients who step into our clinic that are so sick, debilitated and distressed that they require 24 hour care. Within a few days of his arrival Scrapple started to look, and act sick. He was too quiet, too small, and not looking like his thriving sisters. In vetmed he would be called "a kitten failing to thrive." In reality he is a kitten with a mysterious disease that would have gone undiagnosed had he not landed here with us. When it became obvious that he was still declining in spite of our sq fluids, antibiotics and TLC we needed to make some decisions. For Scrapple to go to the ER for the degree of care that he needs would be about $1,000 to $2,000 a day. I estimated that if he was going to survive he needed at least 5-10 days of this. So, I took him home for the few days I hoped he would need to get better. He did after all look like this;

Scrapple and his sisters had been dewormed and microchipped at their arrival to us. They had also gotten their first feline FVRCP vaccine. They were too young to have been vaccinated for rabies. Their mom was spayed, dewormed, microchipped and vaccinated for her FVRCP and rabies.

Within two days Scrapple was just lying around. Barely walking, barely eating, and he was separated from his sisters. By Thursday night I was very worried about him. Based on his unknown outside history and rapidly declining status I was worried about him dying, and I was worried about rabies. I took him home to minimize the exposure to the rest of the staff if he declined like the last rabid kitten I took care of did.

The last rabid kitten was Mauna. She had become an angry, exorcist-needy demon over 4 days. It was a Hyde from Jekyll. It was a change so intense and awful that I wish I had captured it on video. In the last two days of her life she only did two things; slept and attacked. When you woke her she used every tiny minutia of energy to kill you. She was a piranha possessed demon just alive to bite you. She was a virus nestled in her brain to pass on her disease. It was almost impossible to kill her. There was no way to euthanize her. There was no kindness or compassion or ethics in what I had to do. I was not able to hold her, restrain her, or be what I inherently am. She bit me twice in the last moments of her life. I had to stand in the room with her watching her violently attack me and ask myself how I was going to be able to euthanize 2 pounds of terror trying to kill me? I had to put her in a pillow case, tie it tight around her, wear thick leather gloves and inject a monumental amount of barbiturate's into whatever part of her lay under the case. I had to repeat it 4 times. I got my second round of post exposure rabies vaccines a few days later when the lab called me to say that she had been positive for rabies. This is a clear example of the "furious" form of rabies. Scrapple, turns out, had the "dumb" form.

Scrapple declined to a comatose state. He was still eating his syringe fed meals like a monster. Turns out that rabies virus is just that.. very convincing to the host to keep it alive, even when the host can no longer carry to its next victim.

It has been over 2 months since Scrapple died. It took a lot out of me to have to put him down. I will tell you that as a veterinarian you often have to separate yourself from your emotions and do rally hard things. You have to have some pretty excruciating internal dialogues about reality, civic duty, compassion and allowing death to be a part of a life you live even when it is absolutely unwelcome. Putting a kitten to sleep that weighs less than 1 pound via a needle into the heart so that you aren't going to be bitten and further jeopardize your own life, and then go to the ER for post exposure rabies injections to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, is a stark reminder as to why the saying still sticks. No good deed can be punished.

When the health department called to notify us that Scrapple was positive they required that the remaining kittens, and their mom all had to be placed in quarantine also. Mom was sentenced to 2 months, and the kittens four months. Our client decided that she wanted to keep her bunch and has them quarantined together in a spare bedroom. The calico kittens had an adopter who decided that they didn't want them, nor to wait four months, so they adopted elsewhere. When the Health Department asked me what we were going to do with the calico's we had I told them I would keep them for as long as they needed me. They were shocked. They had never had another vet do anything other than euthanize and move on. Learn their lesson and let the future kittens in need be someone else's problem.

Birdie and Raffles

They have names, Birdie and Raffles. They live in my spare bedroom at my home. And I love them to pieces. For whatever time we have together there is love, there is kindness, bustling thundering playing above my kitchen, and a reminder that life isn't supposed to be easy, it is supposed to remind you that you have choices to remind yourself who you are, and what you will be remembered by. It is about acta non verba.

Thursday, December 29, 2022

The Train Wreck and the Captain

The cops came by for a visit last night.

The example in real-life of how to handle an unmanageable escalating crisis when words have failed you.

People are so much like the pets we take care of. You can tell the ones that are going to be the problems, heck even the ones who are outright dangerous, if you stick around long enough and use your Spidey-sense acutely enough times.

We have a few pets who just aren't their best selves when they get stressed or overwhelmed. In the people world I can use the recent example I had on a commuter train from NYC to my hometown station of Lancaster Pa. Just outside of Philadelphia at about 5 pm the train came to a stop. Shortly thereafter the announcement came over that there was "a trespasser struck on the tracks" and the train would be stopped until further notice. Oddly, (although this is my life so I dare not say coincidentally) this had happened to me a few months before. The train had stayed paralyzed for 3 hours. I was with two friends, we were all seated together, and I passed this along to them. We commented and giggled about how smart we had been to pack goodies from our weekend trip and settled in with our books, tarts and trashy Netflix series. The hours passed. No news of relief came.

Sometime after about 8 the announcement notified us that another train would meet us and we would switch over to them. It was dark and trains are trains. Visions of cowboys, Indians, and stowaway-runaways started to swirl. It was a new adventure for the story book of the life and so we kept on idly seated. Mutterings of a train parked next to us began to pass through the car. It was so dark outside that you had to be seated at the window seat and press your head against the glass to make out the dark silhouette. No announcements came so we all stayed seated lost in our own distractions. Half an hour passed and the door to the car in front of us opened. A small young business suited woman walked in. She was holding her phone and announced too loudly that her friend was also on this train, many cars back and the train had already been evacuated. Had any of us been alerted? Her voice was too loud and too panic stricken to process without scrutiny. She didn't understand why we all looked at her blankly and so within seconds she said, "If you all don't get up and start running I am," to which the nerve of panic hit the passengers. Two of us in the car of what must have been about 80 seats stood up and told her to calm down. The staff would come get us and we weren't going to start a stampede to get off a train that was parked god only knows where.

She didn't like the answer she got. She demanded again that people start heading aft and swiftly.

Again the two of us took charge and this time challenged her with restraint. She was impatient and lacked authority. She is the patient zero of mobs where people are crushed and die. She is not the person you want directing life rafts.

A few minutes later we were directed to start moving and the night was long and a bit harrowing, but we made it home safely.

My two traveling companions this trip were my two surgery technicians. The two girls I rely on more than anyone else to help the patients at my clinic at their absolute most vulnerable and most needy. Many of the patient I take to surgery are scared, stressed, debilitated, and some are even dying. If I don't have a team that can listen, follow, and still be ready to jump into action when they see danger looming our patients will suffer and perhaps expire. We are a team with clear objectives and unique talents, but, we are also aware of each others responsibilities and protect the team as much as we protect the individual. You cannot teach this without living it to reinforce it.

I do see my role, my profession and my life in this light. I am the leader, the fall guy, and the example.

Last night at the clinic I was called to come and help diffuse an angry client. He was refusing to pay his bill because it was over the estimate provided. To summarize as I have to defend others whose prices are often seen as being exorbitant for vet care, this was a dog who could not be safely handled with a dog bite wound three days old who the owner also wanted to have neutered while under anesthesia to repair the bit wounds. The cost of his invoice was $660. We fit him in as an emergency within hours of his phone call. We kept the dog for half of the day to manage his care safely for everyone involved. We performed an hour long surgery to clean and repair the wound that was half of the dogs back leg, which included a drain and multiple suture packs, and we neutered him (in the hopes it might help avoid another dog fight down the road).

The estimate provided was too low for the degree of the infection we found when we could safely examine it under anesthesia. He was here at 730 pm (we close at 8 pm) stating it was "our error and therefore he shouldn't have to pay for it." To add fuel to this he was driving a Cadillac that was about the same size as the train car I refer to above that was brand new, and stated that he's a lawyer. He was so rude that the techs had to call me after he "excused" them for talking to him about our mistake.

I met him in the reception area with the itemized invoice in hand. I attempted to discuss the definition of estimate and the degree of unknown findings that every surgery can bring. He interrupted every sentence two words in with lawyer tactics meant to intimidate, bully, and prohibit answers that weren't going in his favor. When I stated that I would not continue until he was willing to let me finish a sentence he began to name call. In the course of our 10 minutes he called me "stupid" "arrogant" "Karen" "liar" "irritating" "annoying" and "holding his dog hostage for payment." I had at least 5 employees behind me listening. After it was apparent things were just going to keep escalating, and I was absolutely intolerant of the name calling, I directed the receptionist 5 feet behind me to dial 911. She looked at me frozen. I guess she thought I was bluffing?

There have been dozens of staff meetings where we have run through this fire drill before. I wasn't bluffing, and she wasn't dialing. So I picked up the phone and dialed it myself.

Here is my advice for situations like this;

1. You cannot diffuse a bomb, but it is super helpful to recognize that it is ticking in front of you before it goes off.

2. Train your staff to use the chain of command and make sure whoever sits at the top does it willingly and is capable. Vetmed needs more fire drills for these situations..

3. Have witnesses if you think it is safe to do so. I have to admit that when the dispatcher asked me if "I thought he was carrying a weapon?" I had to pause. I replied "I don't know?"

4. The dispatcher asked me if I wanted her to stay on the line until the police arrived. I paused again. The all too empower woman in me never wants to ask for help in holding my hand,, but the inability to foresee the future and the potential train wreck that might happen because of this left me answering very humbly, heart pounding in my throat, "yes, please" in a voice that cracked as the words came out.

5. The "caution" pets have treatment options. Short and long term behavior modification tools that the profession has long been addressing. We can refer to behaviorists and trainers. If we can intervene early enough we can save the victims of bites, attacks and surrenders and euthanasias. People,, yeah,, I think the cops have to deal with too much mental instability outside of their wheelhouse. I am empathetic beyond measure for the situations they are asked to intervene upon. And to the Sherriff last night who was also treated so disrespectfully (and of unknown relevance, was the Black officer, if you can hear this I am sorry for how you were treated, and I applaud (grateful) you kept yourself together. I could see you wanted to pound his face into pudding also).

There are inherent strengths a woman (yes, I am going to go here because I exist here) has. We are super good at keeping our place. I hate this about myself at times. I am just as capable (likely more so in the case of an emergency) and yet I stood there quietly and took his abuse. I have never in my life allowed another person to verbally berate me like this. It is the single part of last night that is not to be forgotten. For this I am glad I had 5-7 women who I take responsibility for watching.

The police arrived and he made sure to intercept them first to give his side of the story only to end up treating them (almost) as poorly as he treated me. I gave him enough rope to hang himself and he took the bait. He told the Sherriff he "needed conflict resolution" training multiple times, and as he was being escorted out of the building, to "stay in his lane" as he ordered him to leave. The girls erupted in stifled giggles to that one. They turned their backs to the door to cheer together.

The night ended at after 9 pm with him paying the low end of the estimate only, (you know to "teach me a lesson)." And me telling him that he was no longer permitted on any of the private property that Jarrettsville Veterinary Center owns and a police report to document it.

I am home this morning reminding my blood pressure that worse things in life will come and I have girls to raise, and, a clinic full of pets to protect so I better get my shit back together before I step foot back at work and try to lead a Calvary again.

P.S. Of the many threats this former client made to me last night they included; social media, YouTube, and community page smear campaigns, along with word of mouth public humiliation. Good Luck to you,, I am sharpening my pen as I drink my coffee and type away.

P.S.S. This is my personal blog, It is entitled appropriately. I often write raw, unedited posts in an effort to shed the burden this life and the difficulties I struggle with airing out. For the horrific statistics vetmed suicide has shed light upon, we really all are struggling to stay alive.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Death Of A Lobster

It's said that the lobster sitting in the pot as the water gets hotter around him doesn’t recognize his own imminent impending demise. The gradual boiling of the lifeblood giving rise to a peaceful slumber, pain free. Whilst the brown pincher-ed self screams as it meets the inferno being drowned in the cauldron boiling to his final crimson curtain. I, like most veterinarians, spend a disturbing amount of time obsessing, questioning, and seeking peaceful death. We are the worlds pre-eminent experts of dying peacefully. We have more experience than any other earth bound shepherds. You, me, all of us in the companion animal side of vet med get no dress rehearsals, no free pass, no second chances at the delivering death if we cannot make it pretty. It's really a twisted request when you think about it. A conversation I have had to have too many times. How to make this passing peaceful and welcomed. Truth is the body, any and all, do not want to surrender. We have to use inordinate amounts of seriously concentrated narcotics to trick the heart, lungs and mastermind of it all; brain, into letting their primitive and archaic, hard-wired and determined to preserve at all other costs self to take pause and trip up just long enough that it cannot restart or resume. Our organs are prehistorically programmed to keep on beating, breathing, and firing even under the most intense of insults. Death isn’t supposed to be quick, easy, or pretty, no matter how much you desire it to be. Accept that. It is what has kept you alive through all of the accidents, injuries, diseases and disasters a lifetime endures.

But let's get back to my lobster.

Does anyone plan for their blushing oblivion? What about the life we live in between the here and the thereafter? Surely lots of us veterinarians do. Right? I mean how else can we euthanize one, two, or even three or four patients a day and not get smacked in the face so repeatedly that we don’t start asking ourselves if we are living the life we chose, or just living the life outside of the cauldron.

This morning I stood in the shower long enough to turn my own fleshy peach Crayola exoskeleton into a blushing burnt umber. Winter is here and I remained frozen between the day I had to face and the numbness of turning the hot water a little at a time toward scalding. There is the ocean and the fire and chasm of indecision between the two.

If you don’t know vet med in its own current state of matter it's a hellish inferno. A secret kept so dark that it is reduced to a statistic instead of a biography. That shower for me each morning is my threshold between the two worlds. The world I sit quietly and creatively trying to exist within and the black hole vortex of the clinic which I am both immensely proud of, inherently petrified for. Because of these I am unable to break free from it. It’s a glue trap of purpose wrapped in good intentions. It is as consuming as the soaking sauna that lobster marinates within. Unless you live it it is hard to fathom. We all love what we do and hate what it does to us. We all came here with such fierce conviction to become a veterinarian that it captured us within its hopeful dreaming. And yet we all wish for the day we are independently wealthy enough to walk away, bags packed, scalpels silent, and yet knowing as we look back from our recliners that the notches in our belts had meaning and value.

Today I leave my sanctuary home to drive into work to check in on Harper, the Dalmatian who arrived so down trodden I feared for her ability to survive another few days. The dog who was so charming she smiles. Her dad was a tough nut to crack. The lobster debating his own destiny. He was intent on managing this mysterious ailment, the one who had her not eating for 5 days, on a scrawny budget. I begged to run diagnostics. They came back over 24 hours, not the 1 hour his timeframe based on budgetary constraints was based upon. I had an ultrasound and xray telling me that her gut was at an all stop. She was 2 years old. She may need an emergency surgery if my guess was obstruction. That starts at about $800. I asked him to go to the ER for overnight care. He couldn’t afford that. I asked him if she could come back to us first thing the next day. He said he wasn’t going to be able to do that. I took a long pregnant dare-I-step-here pause,, and,,, these words came out of my mouth. “What do I have to do to try to save her life?” I had already offered a payment plan. When that was refused I offered to take care of her pro bono. That was refused too.

Why did I do all of this? It was that smile. That Harper grin that I had only known for a few hours, and this gut feeling that there was a mystery to solve and a patient I could save. That nagging, gnawing knowing that this patient was not to be let go back into the ocean.

We agreed to leave her overnight. She settled into her cage as I walked out the door at 9 pm. I was fairly certain she would look much the same 11 hours later when I could start her on i.v. fluids and wait for her blood work to return from the lab.

The next morning the fluids ran. She perked up just a little bit. Her blood work arrived from the lab mid morning. And there it was,, my answer,, Addison's disease! Of course!

TREATABLE!! Wishes of little girls dreaming to be their own James Herriott take up the bugles!

I called to report that I was fairly certain I had her diagnosis. I gave him the budget for managing this under best case scenario. We agreed to try the injection for the treatment. I told him that if we were correct on our diagnosis she would look like her old self in the next few hours. He ok’d the $200 injection of DOCP.

He came to pick her up at the end of the day. When he came in to see her she smiled, wagged and bolted toward him. We all cried. We were all so grateful for two lobsters who wouldn’t let the tide carry us into the cauldron.

This is a profession of emotional turmoil so intoxicating it can kill you. It is a minefield of emotional decay that breeds indifference for your own survival. There are lives in the balance at every 30 minute appointment slot. It is not for the meek, or the dreamers, or the lobsters with the rubber banded pinchers outstretched.

Its been 5 days. She is back to being her happy, energetic, adorably endearing self. I, well, I am out of the shower and headed back to the frying pan clinic. Another notch in my belt.

Harper

P.S. Harper is about 40 days into her Addison's disease and doing very well. Her story has a happy ending because there is courage, determination, and an emotional investment in everyone involved with her care. We are going to save her on a tight budget. Although it is never ideal, it is exactly what her case requires. We all come to the vet with a heartful of pain, burden and extenuating circumstances. Harpers family needs Harper and I am here to help.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

We All Pick Sides

At 24 years old I was a First Officer assinged to the Cable Ship Global Mariner docked and home ported in the great bluw color city of Baltimore Maryland. I worked the midnight to 8 am shift. I loved it for all of the reasons the rest of the deck offiers disliked. I was on my own and didn't have to put up with the frontal and not so obvious displacement of my sexual status and the marimtime inducstries disgruntled attitude towards it.

There was never a moment that I felt appreciated, needed, wanted or safe.

I slept from 3 pm to 11 pm, woke up, put on my khaki uniform and wished the world a sleepy few hours as I mae sure the stumblers made it up the gangway safely. There were rounds to be made every hour. Fires to be kept absent, and kitchen songs to sing me midway through the shift into the dawn

I had discovered running at the Academy. The only way to get off the Academy grounds was to use your own two legs. It was an escape as much as it was a freedom.

Running got me acquainted with the edges, periphery and genuine life of Baltimores less touristy spots. I ran every day before lunchtime for the rest of you. Hours of weaving down back streets, front streets and main streets. I watched the seals dance in their circular pool as the fish defrosted behind the scenes. They were my good morning colleagues. They reminded me that I had a calling elsewhere and a job to do to help propel me to pastures later. On one of these days I ran by a little bar on Fort Avenue. It was a sailors bar. Raw, unadulterated by fresh paint, and a feminine touch. Dark, quiet in the daylight, a parlor for spilling sea stories and alter egos after dark. This particular morning the clean up was underway. The doors were open, the interior was dark, and a small black and white ball of fluff was launched out the door onto my traveling sneakers. A meow erupted. A scant piece of fur had vocal cords and a preference for kinder foregivings. I abruptly stopped, scooped and back tracked. To this day I have an impossible time seeing cruelty unfold in front of me. I cradled that kitten like he was Faberge glass. I pleaded for the only home he had ever known to consider offering him a short reprieve. Seems he had made a friend or two there. A hand out as his affirmation of acceptance. And the management wouldn't have freeloaders.

My life at this time was four months aboard the Mariner and four months in Blacksburg awaiting a slot to open in vet school, or a call back to sea.

I had a decision to make. I could leave this tuxedo on the streets on Fort Avenue, a busy raucous place, or, I could find him a happier ending than his head smashed under a tire, or by some angered bar keep. There was a local shelter. I knew it well. It was a place I had volunteered at for years. The current daily kill numbers were above 70. This kitten had three days to find his owner or he was sent to the freezer to be picked up and disposed of as land fill.

These are the moments that make the WOman.

This one moment was where I had to decide who I really was and how I was going to answer harder questions down the road.

I don't remember how I secured that kitten into my running clothes and made it the mile back to the ship, but I did.

I kept him in my room for the two months it took to get my discharge papers,, until the last day aboard. I was called to Capt Kelly's office and had my ass handed to me. He was so angry at me, and looking back for very good reason. I headed home with my kitten, who by then I had named Boots, and left for vet school 6 years later.

There are always sides to pick. That day I chose his. I chose to be kind over being right.

In the many years that have passed between my first day with Socks and my last case at my veterinary clinic just the other day, it has occurred to me that there is a degree of courage that being a vet for the patients requires.