As me and my (non-vet) partner sat down for a rare mid-week breakfast together, I made an offhand comment about “having” to vaccinate 15 puppies that day.
“What do you mean ‘have to’?” was his response. “Most people would love that, and you get paid for it.”
I considered this – and, while I’m more of a kitten person than a puppy person, who doesn’t love puppies? It‘s the little things like this we, perhaps, take for granted.
Sharing the joy
All too often, as vets, we focus on the negatives: the long hours, on call, the stress of trying to keep to time when everything goes belly up, the emotional strain, the difficult clients, surgical complications, mystery cases with unanswered questions… the list goes on.
In the midst of it all, while we‘re able to show enthusiasm during the puppy or kitten vaccine consult, sharing the owners’ joy is soon forgotten when it is swiftly followed by a few challenging consults or clients.
At the end of a couple of stressful working weeks (for a number of reasons), I found some peace having formulated a plan for a couple of complicated medical cases and finally convincing a difficult client to get on board with a particular treatment.
Living the life
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the vet lifestyle – researching cases when you get home at night (and even when you don’t), not being able to sleep because, subconsciously, you’re trying to work out the best course of action for one of your patients.
Rattling off the list of procedures or appointments for the day will just seem the norm to other vets, but take a step back and remove the “vet blinkers” and actually think for moment about what we do.
If you talk to any non-vet friend or family member about your working day, they often show seemingly exaggerated enthusiasm or squeamishness. It’s tempting to brush this off, but it’s usually genuine. From their perspective, our “normal” work can be fascinating.
Everyday heroes
We may not be saving lives in a dramatic fashion every day (or maybe you do), but, as vets, we get to help a number of animals on a daily basis and, as a result, their owners.
This can be done in what feels like the smallest of gestures sometimes; as much as we may resent the notorious anal gland appointment, what that actually involves is giving a poor dog (or cat) almost instantaneous pain relief.
While I don’t think any vet will particularly enjoy an anal gland appointment, my point is to look at the bigger picture: what may be mundane to us does actually make a difference to the individual – our day-to-day routine work is far more interesting than a lot of other jobs.
Let it go
Being a vet is mentally and physically draining at times, but no day is the same and we will always have stories to tell.
So, if you’ve had a bit of a crap week (or haven’t), take a moment to think about what you’ve actually done in the past few days and enjoy the good moments – whether that’s the puppy vaccination or draining the really satisfying cat (or, in my case, cow) abscess. Then think of the clients who have been thankful for your help (even those who don’t show it) and let go of the bad moments in between.
