Resilience: the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
As I was putting my daughter to bed, I was looking out the window where a large tree is visible. There was a very bad storm tonight and the tree was blowing back and forth and the
rain was pelting down. The tree’s toughness and ability to bend without breaking reminded me of when I was in vet school in the Caribbean. They used to describe the students as resilient. The students who went to school in the Caribbean were subjected to third world country issues while attempting to stay focused on their studies. It is one of the reasons why students from Ross University were looked highly upon when coming back to finish their schooling with the US students. I had forgotten about that term for many years and this tree brought it all back.
It made me start to think about the resilience within the entire veterinary community. I do not think any veterinarian realizes the amount of resilience we have to practice everyday. Do clients who come to see a veterinarian realize the resilience that it may have taken to walk into the exam room with a smile? The patience it can take to listen to all of their concerns, while worrying about a sick animal in the back of their minds. We walk from puppies and kittens to failing geriatrics and back again.
Today was a relatively easy day for me, I had a very advanced dentistry where the dog ended up have most of his teeth extracted. Afterwards I had many intense phone calls to make. One of them was to a very dedicated parent to geriatric dog who has been in my care for about a month. She has been progressively failing despite all our treatment attempts and a definitive diagnosis has been hard despite extensive testing. Today was the day that her blood values confirmed we are not going to save her. I walked the owner through different options and in the end today was not the day she would need to be euthanized. She will continue to fail and I will likely see her within the next few days for her final moments.
After that call I spoke with an owner of a very adorable young dog that has been aggressively attacking people her whole life. We have gotten to the point where there may be nothing more that we can do to change her behaviors and putting her down may be the best option. It is a very hard situation as she is a small dog we tend to accept her aggressive behavior. If we put her bite record on a 50 pound pit bull, the dog would have been euthanized a while ago.
Being in the veterinarian profession requires extensive resilience. I hope all you veterinarians and veterinary technicians/assistants stop occasionally to praise yourself at everything that you accomplish on a daily basis. I hope the clients out there give their vets patience and understanding. We are there to help your pets and often lose sleep about them when they are not doing well. We chose this life because we love it and our resilience gets us through the tough days.
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