Buckle up.

This is my job.

I like being a veterinarian. And sometimes I even like working emergency, as nuts as it can get. It can be rewarding, and frustrating, and heartbreaking, but rarely boring. It removes me from the monotony of diaper changes and the endless circuit of washing dishes, doing laundry and wiping noses to something that is exhilarating at its best and infinitely exhausting at its worst.

A wide variety of things can encompass an emergency in the eyes of the owner, and since we charge the cheapest emergency fee in town we get the clientele that fall in the “interesting” category. Or “cheap”. Or “broke”. Sometimes the emergency is an ear infection that has been percolating for a month, or you think it is that, but it turns out to be a metastasized squamous cell carcinoma that is bleeding out into the brain. Life in the ER balances on a razor edge, and you never know walking in the door if today is going to be the day of boring or the day everyone calls you “Dr. Death”.

The last couple weekends have been particularly insane. Something about the holidays brings out the worst in people, and everyone decides on Christmas Eve that the limp or rash or partially extruding eyeball they’ve been “watching” for a week needs to be taken care of, now. I knew as soon as I put on my labcoat and my first room was a woman putting her 14 year old beagle in heart failure to sleep, that it was going to be one of those days. To add insult to injury, he did the thing that animals may do upon passing and emptied his bladder and bowels, which I can’t fault him for, but it was problematic that this happened all over my clothing. When you realize this while the owner is still sitting there crying, there really isn’t a whole lot one can do while it seeps into your shoe and down your sleeve except pat their hand and hope they don’t notice. They never do.

A lot of animals died that day. Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t my fault. I did my best to have that not be the case, but some days the reaper is hungrier than others. The techs brought one dog immediately to the back, and my first words were, “Is that dog alive?” Which is never good. He was a 5 month old puppy, limp, barely conscious. Cold, about 96 degrees. In shock. The owners were gone for *several days* and found him like that, and who knows how long he had been like that. Do whatever, they said, whatever it takes for our Tonka.

And when I asked them for a deposit, letting them know the likely price, they said they only had 3 dollars. This is what we call a “low” in our day. I told them if they couldn’t commit to the full course of treatment- not sure yet what the problem was- that we might have to consider putting him to sleep, since he was extremely ill and I didn’t know if he was going to make it. They left with reassurances they would find the money somehow. We were all dubious about this promise, but I work for good owners who let us do basic emergency treatment while payment is still up in the air.

In the meantime, I was running around tending to all the other near death animals in my care, trying to stay one step ahead, diagnosing multiple animals with cancer in the process. There is nothing like looking an elderly person in the face after they tell you, “My husband died earlier this year, and this dog is my life. Can you treat this abscess today?” And you have to respond, “I’m sorry, but that mass is a bone tumor.” Merry Christmas. Tonka was on shock doses of fluids and warming therapy. I looked in every few minutes expecting him to crash, but he was tenacious. The coin spun on its edge.

The owners show up with a check, not theirs; there was no blood on it and it seemed to be good so we didn’t ask any questions and took it. Tonka was starting to look around. By the time my shift was over, he was sitting up in his cage and looking quite good. He was my little Christmas miracle, one of those cute little scruffy puppies that in a sea of cute animals somehow manages to be the one that really touches you. I called in the next day, hesitant but needing to know sometimes the odds turn in our favor and the ones you don’t think will live, sometimes do. And he was doing great. These are the things that keep you going. I told everyone in my family about how he redeemed my day.

New Year’s Eve proved just as eventful, thanks to ridiculously poor planning on the scheduler’s part and not nearly enough staff. Tis the season for blocked cats, who were howling left and right and trying to kill us all with angry claws and teeth. Someone dropped a couch on their kitten and was getting pissy with us because we needed to keep her on oxygen until the bleeding into her lungs stabilized. Less somber, this day; no one had to call me Dr Death; more like “Dr Morbidity”. It’s easier to get annoyed with the owners when the pets are going to make it, truth be told, and easier to be patient with their long explanations of their life stories and why, although no credit card company would comfortably extend their trust and credit, they are good for it and we should let them make $20 a month payments on a $5000 bill.

The other doctor, Dr R, was having her own “Dr Death” day with a multitude of cases presenting like mine the week before. Dogs barely conscious, collapsing suddenly with no explanation. She was mulling over one dog with hemorrhagic diarrhea and saying how there might be some weird virus going around, given the spate of weird GI cases she has seen this week. “There was a terrible case earlier this week,” she said, “this poor dog recovering from HGE intussuscepted most of his small intestine and his colon prolapsed, and he crashed while they were prepping him for surgery. Very sad.”

Pause, for one heartbeat.

“You saw him, I think…Tonka.”

The world spins, and this is my job, and on this roller coaster you are blindfolded and don’t know when the floor is going to drop out from under you. And sometimes you think you won, and you go home crying anyway.

jesvet