Our small animal necropsy submissions usually arrive at the lab in coolers or cardboard boxes. This means that the folks in Receiving don't deal with actual animal remains, only with containers.
When I walked into the Receiving area after I returned from lunch on Tuesday, I found our bacteriology supervisor standing there paralyzed in place with eyes the size of dinner plates. We've had some staff turnover in Receiving, and she was covering the phones for the lunch hour. There was a young couple, who looked to be in their mid- to late twenties, both crying. The guy was holding a dead cat in his arms. No box or bags in sight. To be fair, he had a towel but he was holding the kitten on it as if it was lying in state. The bacteriology supervisor was in no way going to touch the dead cat. Clearly the submission part of the process had ground to a halt.
I immediately thought, hey, I've been trained for this. I went to school for four years to learn about things like this. I think I can help out here. I set my things down, and told the bacteriology supervisor that everything was okay. I went over to the couple and talked with them for several minutes. Their kitten had died suddenly after a night of seizures. They were terrified it was because he ate a plant from their yard, or got into some household cleaner or poison. They had several baggies with samples of all of the suspected items--seeds, a mothball, leaves. I asked them questions about what they wanted us to help them with, and I helped them understand what a necropsy could and could not do (it's not magic, in short). I told them that Amy would help them finish the paperwork. Then I gently took the kitten in my arms, and asked them if they were sure they had said goodbye to their beloved pet. They started sobbing while petting him for the last time. The bacteriology supervisor started sobbing. I was tearing up too. I carried kitten back to the necropsy floor, startling my tech when I came in carrying a dead cat in my arms along with a handful of baggies full of plants. I set him down on the table and told her, it's all okay, I will change into scrubs and be right back.
Besides this poor kitten, I've had a couple of really emotionally challenging cases recently, and decided to call a classmate that night to blow off some steam. She is a GP in a small animal clinic in Oregon. She loves her job, and some clients are even starting to request her as the doctor they want to see. We talked about the millions of different ways that compassion is a part of our daily work. Dark humor is never far away, always bubbling along, but it is more than offset by the moments when we are totally in the moment with our clients and patients.
