Inappropriate

Taken out of context, nearly every conversation that I have at work makes me sound like a psychopath or totally unhinged. Either way, when added to the general funk that hangs about my person on most necropsy days, I am now mostly unfit for normal adult society.

During our first night in Archie's agility class, I was asked by the teenaged daughter of one of the women if I saw mostly dogs. She thought I was a small animal clinician. I told her, "Oh, no, I work with all species, as long as they are dead." Which in the nanosecond between thought and words leaving my mouth seemed like a funny joke. In reality, neither the girl nor her mother spoke to me again that night. (I've since mended things with the mother.)

The director of the lab mentioned the fancy photography table out on the necropsy floor. He wanted to know if I wanted to use it. I told him, "I have indeed been stepping up our game on photographs but I've been having quite a bit of success with rinsing the tissues and posing them on a clean cutting board." And he just nodded like this was a normal thing to say.

A woman brought in a gecko for a necropsy around 3pm on Friday. That's kind of late in the day--everyone is thinking about heading home, what they will make for dinner, what they will be doing for the weekend. But in my limited experience with reptiles and amphibians, I know they autolyse extremely quickly. The gecko would have melted into a puddle of gecko goo if I left it until Monday. So I grabbed it from Receiving and went skipping down to necropsy to get set up. One of the lab techs from bacteriology saw me and said, "Wow, so much energy for Friday afternoon." And I replied with considerable enthusiasm while brandishing the small, already rather smelly box at her, "I get to necropsy this gecko!" She nodded slowly, eyes widening, and said, "Oh" while walking away more quickly than necessary.

I've had considerable success at arriving at some sort of diagnosis for most of my cases to date. But I had a case with a cat last week that completely stumped me. The director asked me about my conclusions for the cat, and I said, "Well, the only problem I could find is that she's dead." He's starting to get used to me, but that reply even stopped him for a couple of seconds.

To a much greater degree than most human medicine practitioners (with the exception of certain specialists), veterinarians directly confront death on a daily basis. Compassion fatigue is a very real problem in vet med. Suicide rates for veterinarians exceed those of human medicine doctors. Clinicians have to euthanize animals every single day. Every. Single. Day. In a busy emergency clinic, they will be performing several euthanasias per day. They have to deal with grieving owners, who may be in shock, may be enraged, may be distraught with grief. It's a heavy burden. Finding the middle path between becoming emotionally upset yourself and not having any emotional reaction at all is very hard.

I am somewhat shielded from that. I do not have to euthanize animals, but I do deal with upset and grieving owners and with upset and grieving fellow veterinarians who had to euthanize the animal they are submitting to the lab. And my own job is to then perform very invasive actions on the remains of the animals. It is always jarring to me to see someone's beloved pet lying on the metal table, still with an IV catheter in place covered with vet wrap.

The way I deal with my personal emotions is to take a couple of minutes and carefully examine the exterior of every animal. I run my hands over every inch of them. Of course that is just good pathology practice, but it also gives me time to think about the life each animal had. Was it cared for? Was it loved? It's a way for me to honor that animal, and thank them for letting us try to learn what happened to them. Nobody I work with knows that I do this.

My inappropriate comments are a release valve that let me blow off emotional steam. But they are not intentionally disrespectful. Vet school is so immersive that it is hard to remember that the black humor so common in our profession is usually not appropriate outside of those settings. Now that I'm out in the real world more often, it's hard to be mindful of how others perceive my job.