I'm going to be a VET. This is why. (Gruesome story below.)
I've been afraid of college. I didn't want to attend without knowing where I wanted it to take me. I didn't want to rack up debt that might be pointless if I get a degree I don't use. I didn't want to burn myself out going for a degree, and then changing my mind two years in and having to take more schooling after that in a different direction. Plainly, I didn't want to waste my time. But this week, I'm doing all the things necessary for me to begin college in the spring. And you know why? Because I'm going to school to be a veterinarian.
Back in June, a cat came into the vet clinic I worked for at around 10:00 in the morning with a fully necrotic leg. The owners said that she'd been lost outside for several days, and they had found her the night before and brought her to us. They had very little money, but asked us to do what we could.
The cat had most likely been attacked by a dog or coyote. She was in shock. Her rear right leg was obviously broken and fully necrotic. There were multiple puncture wounds, and most of the skin had been removed. The smell was terrible. There were thousands of maggots. The muscle tissue was black and green. She was barely awake, barely alive, and her temperature was at about 94*. A healthy cat's temperature is around 101*. We hooked her up to fluids, wrapped her in hot water bottles, and wrapped the IV line and bag in hot towels to heat up the fluids running into her. And then...she was left alone.
From 10:00 till almost 4:30, nothing happened for her. No pain medication, no treatment, no real notice from the doctors. Myself and another tech, Jared, took care of her periodically, reheating the hot water bottles and towels.
Come about 4:00, and one of the two doctors leaves for the end of her shift. The other doctor is in a room with a client for a few minutes. Having taken care of the needs of the other patients, myself and Jared pulled the cat out and began to flush her leg, trying to remove as much of the filth and maggots as we could. It's at this point that I realize that she's very likely in septic shock. I find puncture wounds further up her abdomen that also have maggots in them. She needs immediate risky surgery or a merciful euthanization.
The doctor on staff comes to the back. It's about 4:30 now, and we close at five. Typically we'll stay open later if other clients are still waiting, but with no other clients waiting, he could have left at five. However, our little cat is here.
He looks at the cat, and looks at the clock, and looks at the cat, and looks at the clock, and sighs, and looks at the cat...
He continues hemming and hawing, and finally he says “Well, we can leave her for tomorrow, can't we?”
This man has no wife, no kids. It's not even Friday night. He has no pressing reason to leave the clinic at five. And he has an animal suffering and close to death in front of him. And he doesn't want to do anything, because it'll mean he has to stay late.
We talked to him and made suggestions (politely of course, because if you piss off a doc, you probably lose your job). But it finally took another vet tech calling the owners and shoving the phone in his face for him to talk to them and get permission to euthanize her.
We had already drawn the euthanasia solution, and the second we heard him get the okay, we injected it. She died almost the instant it touched her veins.
I was absolutely furious. I hated this doctor, this asshole who couldn't be buggered to take action to save an animal's life or release it from unfathomable pain. He wanted to shrug off the responsibility, and make it someone else's problem.
That night after work I realized I was going to be a vet. It was more than just a want. I have the passion, and the ability, and the drive to become one, and I have a responsibility to the animals to become one. If not me, then who else? I would be guilty of the loss of lives and the pain of hundreds of the animals that I would never have gotten to treat if I didn't become a vet. I had nothing else getting in the way, no reason NOT to. I had an obligation to put myself in that field, because bad seeds like that doctor need to be outweighed by doctors who are ethical, moral, loving, driven, passionate about life and living and health and the true happiness of those animals.
At that point, money for school became a non-issue. I would go millions of dollars into debt to be able to help those that were helpless. If I had a DVM after my name, I could have saved that cat's life, or put her out of her misery as soon as I knew it was the right thing to do. But because I don't have that degree, those little initials after my signature, I had to watch her suffer. I never want to see that again. So I'm going to school, and I'm going to become a vet. And I'm going to be able to do something about it.