The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell by Coston Bruce R

Author:Coston, Bruce R. [Coston, Bruce R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-08-07T04:00:00+00:00

The Complacency of Routine

In the course of my practice, some things are done so frequently that they become routine. This is true, no doubt, in all professions. I suppose it is routine, for instance, for Tiger Woods to nonchalantly flip a golf ball out of a deep sand trap to within a few inches of the hole, or for Michael Jordan to fake a drive and instead put up a jump shot that hits nothing but net just at the buzzer. It is routine for Michael Phelps to slice with such speed through the water, pushing his body to shave off that extra hundredth of a second and set a new world record. For world-class athletes, their feats are routine because they have done them countless times before. For me, surgical sterilization is a routine task. I suppose I have performed many thousands of spays over the years. I could probably spay a dog or a cat in my sleep.

But the truth is that there is really no such thing as a routine medical procedure. Each time I make a spay incision, I remind myself that, for this patient, it will probably be the most dramatic event of her life so far. What is routine for me is definitely not routine for my patients—or for their owners. The challenge with routine surgeries is to remember that at any moment it may become a complicated, life-threatening emergency. Consequently, I, must maintain meticulous attention to detail and strict adherence to correct protocol. Muffin was an example of just how quickly things can change.

Muffin was a twelve-year-old Yorkshire terrier owned by the Ardens, who doted on her altogether too much, though neither Muffin nor her owners would have admitted it. Mr. and Mrs. Arden were the quintessential American retirees. He was perhaps in his eighties when I first met him, of medium height, with puffy eyes and hair fixed into position with Brylcreem. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and polyester slacks. Generally, he was pleasant to deal with. His wife, a short, worried woman with bluish hair and a thin face, was a few years younger than her husband and had clearly left the details of life to him for decades. The pair had, unfortunately, lost a bit of their sharpness with age, usually breezing into the office with Muffin tucked into the crook of an arm. They seldom had an appointment, though they always distinctly remembered having made one.

Their befuddled approach extended to Muffin’s health as well, making her preventive care a bit haphazard and their office visits challenging. I learned, for instance, that trying to garner a history from them was an impossible task, as they would invariably veer sharply away from my question to subjects far afield from the topic at hand. To their confusion was added a significant degree of hearing loss—his worse than hers—which was accentuated by the shrill whistled duet of their hearing aids. Until I figured these things out, conversations with them about Muffin’s issues toggled between confusing and downright amusing.

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