Quite
often, I'm asked why I decided to stop being a vet tech... which is
always surprising to me. Most people don't know this is a very high
turn-over rate for techs and it's rare to meet a career tech. It's a
stressful, highly demanding job with such hazards as animal bites,
bruises, cat scratches and it's share of xray exposure. Many people
don't understand that techs are the equivilent to nurses, every type of
nurse combined. Techs are your exam room nurse, your pharmacy
technician, your anesthesiologist, your radiology technician, your
phlebotomist, your recovery room nurse, your ER nurse, your dental
hygeniest, your pediatric nurse, your hospice caretaker .. and so on and
so on. Techs are taught to do it ALL. Then throw in a workforce of
typically 95% women, 5 seconds to eat lunch, and crossing your legs
because you're too busy for a bathroom break. While a tech is taking
care of a cat in kidney failure, they're wondering about the health of
their own kidneys, counting the hours since the last time they were able
to use the bathroom.
After
leaving my position at my second hospital - where I was in charge of the
nursing team, I decided I wasn't going to go back to being a tech. I
took my internship at the zoo, then became a hydrotherapy associate. It
was when I was planning my move to Arizona that I needed a job to pay
the bills, so I took another position being in charge of my new
hospital's medical team again. I left that job when I was offered a job
at a hospital where hour lunches were relatively mandatory, there was a
couch in the break room and the hospital was decorated in relaxing
earth tones :) A year later, I got married and moved to Cochise county.
It was time to be my own boss and start to focus on preventing illness
and disease .. thus Panting Pooches was born. But I want to shine some
light on the stresses of being a vet tech and some of the animals that
will forever be in my memory ...
Vet
techs get the unpleasant duty of going over an estimate ... and the
higher the amount, the more nervous they are. People see dollar signs
without understanding the medical care their pet would be receiving.
When we took Butkus to the doggy ER for his snake bite, the tech
breathed a sigh of relief when I instantly signed the $1,700-$2,700 bill
without so much as a complaint. I explained to her "I teched for 7
years... I understand". Techs often receive the brunt of everything ..
client woes and painful patients..
The
only dog bite I ever received was from the sweetest dog who was in and
out of seizures all day long despite medications. I was trying to give
him his medication rolled in a ball of canned food, when he seizured up
and clamped down on my finger, slicing the tissues down the middle. His
name was Bruno, some kind of St Bernard mix and the poor guy moaned
through out the day, as he didn't understand why his body was failing
him. His family painfully decided to end his pain the next day.
One
day in Tucson, a woman brought her GSD puppy in for humane euthanasia.
The puppy was born disformed with an incomplete spine. The woman was
afraid that her husband was going to find his own way to get rid of the
puppy due to the inconvenience. I'm not a crying person but we shed
tears together in that exam room over a 4 week old puppy.
A
geriatric doberman found itself in one of my hospitals on a saturday
morning ... he was severely ill with an enlarged abdomen .. upon
ultrasound we found his abdomen was full of fluid and his bloodwork
levels were all over the charts. The owner could not make up his mind
whether he wanted to transport to the ER (as our hospital was supposed
to close at 1pm), run more tests, or euthanize. He paced back and forth
and even left the hospital for a few hours when we advised him not to.
As he was gone, I lay on the floor of our radiology suite with this
dogs head in my lap. The moment the owner stepped back into the
hosptal, I watched this dog take it's last breath. The doctor and I
immediately started CPR all while trying to inform the client what was
happening. The doberman died in my arms because his owner couldn't make
a decision one way or another. I couldn't look at that owner another
minute .. and had to cool off outside.
Vet
Teching is very emotionally demanding and incredibly difficult when you
become attached to patients, in the way I was. I hated to see them
suffer and often times having to explain to clients that they are often
the reason their pet is now in the hospital, due to negligence or mere
irresponsibility. The hours are long, the pay is so-so and the anxiety
can be too much to bear sometimes. While I owe so much to my years of
experience, I know that my specialty is in prevention. Healthy pets
live longer lives! I take my pet nutrition very very seriously and to
Zoey's dismay, I'm constantly telling my pooches 'no fatties in this
house!'
So the next time you're at your animal hospital, thank a tech. They deserve it.
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