At 2:30 am it finally hits me why my left thumb is so sore. Â Nine and a half hours earlier, I failed to revive a dog with emergency treatment and CPR. Â I also failed to save him with aggressive surgical, medical and supportive care during the preceeding several days. Â The chest compressions of my final attempt to save Dog must have hyperextended my thumb. Â My only two comforts are that Dog no longer hurts and my thumb does. Â I fall into a troubled sleep.
Very recently, I had given two talks, one to grade schoolers and one to middle schoolers about how great it is to be a vet. Â At the time, I had just started Dog’s treatment, his prognosis still had a sliver of hope in it, and if I had read about his case in a journal article, it really would have made a great story. Â I feel like a big liar, and to children no less. Â Right now, I hate my career.
I wake up wondering how Dog’s family is doing.
I stay awake a second night going over and over every detail of Dog’s case, deciding at every remembered step that I would not have made different decisions on Dog’s behalf. Â I would not have wanted the family to make different decisions. Â We needed to give Dog every possible chance. Â Every time my husband asks why I am crying/scowling/staring off (and at one point freaking out when I am in the sun, not the shade, at an outdoor concert), I say “I need to have been able to save him.” Â I am pretty sure that is not even a valid sentence structure.
Sometimes, being a vet sucks.
It is not as if I have a choice. Â I could have no easier chosen a different career than I could have chosen to be right handed. Â I mean, I could have forced myself, but I hear that messes people up pretty badly.
And really, even now, I do not want to be anywhere else than in the middle of grief for a dog I just met and who is technically a “patient” but is really a friend I fell for hard and fought for hard, and a family that is technically a “client” but really a team of fellow pet lovers who also loved Dog – but as a family member, and for years and years, not days. Â If this week is rough for me, it sucks many times over for them and will for a long time.
I don’t know why this has stuck with me for all this time, but another veterinarian once told me that unless I could rein in my “personality weakness” of letting sad cases hit me so hard,
“You will never be a successful veterinarian.”
It was a great little pep talk (ha!) but honestly, I believe the opposite is true. Â I can no more let go of my empathy than I could have chosen a different career. Â If I did not feel such rage and despair and hopelessness at not being able to save a Dog I really, really, really wanted to save, THEN I would concede his point, and truly, I would not be a successful veterinarian.
As it is, my career is a part of me I cannot separate from myself. Â Good or bad, I cannot care less than I do, or give myself a “healthy emotional distance,” even if I did want to, which I do not. Â This week sucks, and I do not know when I will be able to say I love being a vet again, but I will. Â And if I did not hate it now, that would be a serious red flag to me, and I would do everything I could to reconnect emotionally.
There are wonderful veterinarians who are much more emotionally even keeled than I. Â It is not a requirement of the profession to be a big cry baby sap. Â In fact, I do need to check myself when families need my support; they do not need me pushing them out of the way for the Kleenex box. Â It is just that empathy is such a big part of MY veterinary career, that if losing patients were to “get easier” as some older veterinarians promise, trying to be comforting, I would know that I had lost a part of myself, and would hang up my jacket and stethoscope.
I have normal range of motion in my thumb and just a small, persistent ache.  I really hope next week is better than this week – how could it not be?  I hope the hearts of Dog’s family members heal over time.  I know that though it will be a long road, their hearts will heal, almost completely.  I really hope that my thumb does not heal, but it is already feeling better.  Dang it.