I have been a Veterinary Technician now for 2 years. While I find my job incredibly rewarding, there are some things I wish my friends, family, and the general public would understand about my career choice.
The largest misconception about most veterinary professionals is that we play with puppies and kittens all day. While I do enjoy and try to never miss an opportunity to cuddle all the cuteness that is baby animals, it is far from what I spend my time doing. A brief run through of a surgery day is this: admit patients for surgery (assuring clients that their pet is in the best care), drawing blood for pre-anesthetic blood panels, calculating drug doses, drawing up those drugs, waiting for the doctor to give me the go ahead to pre-med the pet, administering pre-medications, placing an intravenous catheter. Inducing the patient with the injectable anesthesia, placing an endotracheal tube, prepping for surgery, monitoring vitals during the surgery, recovering that patient, and repeat!
We also may have emergencies come in and are always triaging to ensure pets receive the best care. Anyone in the Veterinary industry knows that days in a Veterinary Hospital are not always predictable but that’s a whole other blog!
When we have hospitalized patients due to sickness, it is our job to keep them comfortable, and help get them to feel better. Sometimes these patients are hospitalized because they’ve had a big and risky surgery such as a foreign body surgery or a GDV (a life-threatening condition in which the stomach fills with air and/or twists upon itself). It is our job to give the appropriate medications at the proper times, take the animals out to pee and keep them clean if they can’t make it outside, encourage eating, or assist with feeding if necessary. We give them love that we know their owners would give if they could. During these days you spend with a patient, you become incredibly close with them. It is the best feeling ever when you’re the one who gets a patient to take those first bites of food after days of refusing to eat. The look they give you says it all, you can often see the appreciation in their eyes, or their kisses. You are a part of the reason they are feeling better. Sometimes they don’t always pull through like you and the Doctor had anticipated. With risky surgeries, the recovery period can be touch and go. Sometimes, even when you’ve done all you could, the patient doesn’t pull through, and you have to say goodbye one final time to an animal you’ve grown so close with.
This is the most heart breaking of all the things I go through in my career. But I would not change my career choice for any other in the world because more often times than not, I see animals come in sick and leave happy and healthy, and my role in this is huge. I have a rewarding job. I want everyone to know: it’s not always puppies and kitties, sometimes its foreign body surgeries and GDV’s.
By: Kristy MacDonald
