Idiocy...

People never fail to amaze me. Picture this: I am handed an appointment at work yesterday, and am greeted by a 7 yr old cat. This cat (who will remain unnamed to protect the innocent) is normally brought in and sedated in order to shave the matted fur on its back...so you can imagine I was getting into battle mode as I went into the exam room. Keep in mind, I had never seen this patient before. So I took the cat out of the carrier and put it on the scale. It was 12.6 lbs. Looking back at the card, the last time it was weighed (in 2003), it was 25 lbs . OK, so this cat has lost half of its weight. This is abnormal. The cat also is drinking and peeing like an elephant. Also abnormal. Diabetes was on the top of my list, because of the cat's age. Checked a blood sample, and indeed the kitty is diabetic. The owner was informed of this fact, and were told that this was probably the best of all possible outcomes, because diabetes can be treated fairly easily and cheaply.

The owner then declined treatment.....basically opting to let the cat die.

Now all I have to ask is...why bring your cat to the vet and spend a bunch of money if you are unwilling to follow through with our medical advice?? Why? WHY???

Like I said, people never fail to amaze me.

But then, for every case like this, I get 2-3 cases of people who will do anything I suggest in order to give their pets the best care possible. This makes me happy, and does give me some renewed faith in people's love for their animals.

I sometimes get into these funks where I wonder what the hell made me want to be a vet. I am not currently in one of these funks, I am actually very pleased with everything right now....but the funk can hit at any time. When I get funkdafied, I often think back to vet school and get happy. I suppose those days truly were the time of my life. Of course I am happy now, married and looking forward to married and family life, but things will never be the same as the RVC days. Those days were different, they were, at the risk of sounding super cheesy, magical. Reminiscing about them makes me happy, and the knowledge that I could call any of the 118 people in my year and talk with them about anything, picking up right where we left off at graduation (in 2003) is just an amazing thing. So, basically, to sum it up, my vet school classmates serve as an inspiration to me in many aspects of my life. I can only hope that they all know this to be true.

I was looking through some more of my old articles I wrote for my vet school website again, and I thought the first one I ever wrote was quite funny. Perhaps tomorrow I shall post it for everyone's perusal and enjoyment. It discusses the first day of rotations, the naivety we all had, and how we came crashing down to earth very shortly after starting. Its a good laugh for all of us vets, and hopefully entertaining for the non-vet.
This post has rambled on long enough, so I won't post it today, but unless something really interesting happens tomorrow (or some epiphany strikes me which I feel compelled to rant about), it will be posted.

Bedtime!

-B