Jessica Vogelsang DVM

If you want to get everyone that works at your veterinary hospital to roll their eyes and get irritated with you fast, try this: tell them that you have a very rich/famous/influential client that needs to be seen ASAP and please give them the “VIP treatment”. This upsets people for several reasons. 1. Most veterinarians and veterinary staff bend over backwards for their clients and in fact, treat everyone like they are VIPs. 2. The people who call in to get this treatment and cut the real or perceived line are generally demanding and irritating and 3. It does not appeal to the sense of fairsy-sharesy, which is a core value to many veterinary professionals.

This happens on many levels. My email is part of the public domain, so many people feel that the best way to get an appointment with me is to email me directly. Often these emails are accompanied by several blurry photographs of a dog with a mass. This is actually the worst way to get an appointment with me. My inbox is a wasteland. The best way to get an appointment? Call the hospital and ask to book an appointment. BAM! You are in! It is that simple. Exclusive insider information right here in this blog.

Recently, I received an email from people who had been clients and donors in the past. The email had a lot of superfluous personal details about themselves and how they would be coming into town and that they would like an appointment for me to assess their dog that has a skin mass that “might be cancer”. They were still waiting for the cytology to come back from their family veterinarian. I got back to them through our service email (rather than my personal email) that I would be very happy to see them and I really appreciated their support and to give our office a call to book an appointment. Unfortunately, as it turns out, they wanted the appointment next week and they were only in town for 2 days, Thursday and Friday. We did not have appointments available because we book up 2 weeks in advance for non-urgent cases, and because we don’t see appointments on Thursdays (surgery day) and Fridays (emergency day).

I then received another long email, again on my personal account, this time from the husband. After two passive aggressive paragraphs, he went on to mansplain that he thought that I had “misunderstood his needs” because he wanted to be seen on one of the two specified dates. He then signed off with all of his credentials and some sort of fancy business seal for extra menacing effect.

I responded, again through our service email, and explained again how our schedule works (in case he misunderstood my needs). I thanked them again for their support and said that I hoped that they could find a way to come and see me on days when we saw appointments, and that I would be very happy to talk to their family veterinarian when they received the results of the cytology. I didn’t hear back. I am guessing the test results came back benign and they decided that they did not need to contact the Dean or President of the University to demand an ambush emergency appointment with a veterinary surgical oncologist to assess their dog’s benign skin mass.

Observation 1: the more someone pushes for VIP treatment and to be “squeezed in” when there are no appointments, the lower the chance that the dog actually has cancer or requires any sort of medical attention.

This is partly because we will always get animals in when their medical situation is urgent. We call these appointments urgent evaluations or emergencies. These evaluations are for dogs with broken legs or ones that can’t pee or poo, not for the clients who yell the loudest or are the most connected. Being a VIP is not an emergency.

Observation 2: The super famous people often don’t demand VIP treatment, they just act like regular people. (Tangential Observation 3: If you want to drive your mother crazy, tell her that you took care of a movie star’s dog but then refuse to tell her who due to client-patient confidentiality.)

So here is the thing: most veterinarians are already maxed out. We are already doing our professional best. At my practice, we have 10-20 dogs and cats on our waiting list at any given time. These animals have a confirmed cancer diagnosis and their owners will come to us on a moments notice if we have a cancellation. We also have a triage system for animals that are too sick to wait. This is all based solely on medical need.

When a VIP demands that we do things differently, create appointments that don’t exist, or bump other patients, they are either asking for more of me or more of my patients. Asking more of me is asking for part of my personal self or my personal time. We don’t have a lot of that. We don’t clock out. We stay until the work is done. Asking more of my patients is appropriating some of the professional time that I had set aside for the sick pets that waited their turn. Either way, you are taking from someone when you cut the line. There is only so much of us to go around.

I know that it’s complicated. The balance between a business and a medical institution is tricky, especially at a teaching hospital with the business-medical-teaching-donor-research-community-specialist center mandates all competing with one other. But for me, VIP stands for Very Important Patients or Very Important Pets. The People in VIP become important because of their pets, and every one of our patients deserves the star treatment.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Boston is a veterinary surgical oncologist and public speaker. Sarah is also a cancer survivor and author of the best-selling, hilarious memoir, Lucky Dog: How Being a Veterinarian Saved my Life. Follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.

A while back, we saw a post online with one of the most wonderful letters we’ve seen in a long, long time. With the permission of all involved, we reprinted it here in the hopes it would lighten your heart as well. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the veterinarian who shared it, and the wonderful client who took the time to write something so amazing for all of us:

After posting an article about veterinarians and suicide risk, an old friend of mine from college sent me this letter. I had to share it with all of you. May her perspective help you on those tough days, and in those moments of feeling like you aren’t making a difference. You are. Constantly. For so many people and animals…you just don’t realize it. 

“So I’ve been thinking about your posts about vet stress for days, and I laid awake last night for hours, turning over and over the things I want to say to you and the rest of your amazing professional cohorts.

Our 9 month old puppy died of hydrocephalus when I was 8 weeks pregnant (he was a rescue from the pound and missed his early shots because he was found homeless). I think I thanked the vet, but the whole incident was tinged with so much shock and grief and horrible bureaucracy that required the removal of his head for rabies testing and then the lab accidentally destroyed it although they told us it would be returned for burial…what a sad, sad mess. Amidst all that, I didn’t convey all the gratitude I meant, and I feel terrible about it still.

Now my daughter is 2.5, and last evening out in our yard she heard a kid laughing out on a walk and said, “Somebody is having fun without me! ” I told her, without thinking, that at any given moment that is happening all over the world. Upon reflection, that sounded a little sad. Then I thought about you, and put it into a different perspective.

At any given moment, some pet is frolicking around because of you. Because you gave them their early vaccination. Because you saved them after an accident. Because you caught their kidney failure in time. Because of a thousand things you and other vets did. Hard things that tugged your heart and worried you and scared you, you did them anyway because you’re a hero.

Maybe an unsung hero, because people forget to tell you to your beautiful face how much you impact their lives, but certainly your work resonates down the months and years we all enjoy with our beloved animal buddies. I love you, across all the time and distance that separates us. I think of you all the time and wish you well and never tell you. I think maybe being a vet is a little bit like being a mom, in that your work is so crucial it becomes taken for granted that you’ll just give and give of yourself, always. That’s not fair.

I hope you can find some time to replenish your inspiring, amazing spirit after all your tough days making this a better world. Truly this planet would not be as sunny a place without you, specifically, and also without vets in general. Thank you so much. For every client you have who doesn’t acknowledge your worth and your guts and your hard hard work, I want to apologize.

I hope it gives you a tiny slice of gratification to think that at any given moment, your work is the reason why some happy animal gets to make their person laugh, and even if you can’t hear it, it’s a form of joy that sprung directly from you and your wonderful, passionate, heartfelt existence. Feel free to share this with your coworkers. You all freakin’ rock.”

I cannot imagine being anything other than a veterinary oncologist. But I did not always know this was what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I failed miserably a few times getting here.

I did always want to be a veterinarian. My parents like to remind me of the picture I drew in kindergarten of me as a veterinarian. During high school and college, I volunteered in the summers at our local veterinary hospital. I was accepted into my veterinary school of choice. All was going according to my plan.

At Cornell, I developed an interest in small animal surgery. The current surgery resident was so enthusiastic, contagiously so. Each year, he hand selected a few students and took us under his wing. We worked on call, coming in after hours, on the overnights and weekends for emergency surgeries. It was our job to set up the OR, break it down after, and we had the chance to be in the OR during all these surgeries with the residents and often head staff surgeons. I thought: I am going to be a surgeon.

“I’m Going To Be a Surgeon.”

When I matched for my internship at the Animal Medical Center in NYC, my area of interest was noted so I could get surgery rotations early during the year in preparation of applying for the residency match. My first three 6-week rotations were Surgery, Oncology, and Surgery. Oncology, I thought, could be interesting since Cornell did not have a formal oncology service during my vet school years. My limited exposure to actual cancer cases was during small animal medicine rotation, and students were not assigned to the chemotherapy cases. The technicians took care of those cases. But all I really cared about was surgery and applying for the residency match.

I quickly learned during my surgery rotation it was not as appealing as I thought it would be. And I had a secret I tried not to share. I got scared when I had to do surgeries alone. My love of learning about surgical techniques never could override my fear that something fatal could happen in the OR because of me.

My first spay was a six year old overweight pit bull that had just had her third litter. The dogs that came in through the healthy spay/neuter program were supposed to be under four years old but my resident approved this dog. During the surgery, there was increased bleeding deep down by the ovaries. And there was a lot of fat too, making it harder to find a source of bleeding. My resident scrubbed in to double check my ligatures, gave me the okay, and I sutured her closed. I was relieved to get out of the OR, take off my mask, gloves and gowns, and for her to be extubated uneventfully. I checked on her before I went home and was thankful that stressful day was over.

The next morning, my patient could barely stand. The other dogs that were spayed the day before my intern mates were getting an exam, breakfast, and prepped for discharge. We determined my patient was weak, tachycardic, and anemic.  A quick ultrasound determined free fluid in her abdomen. My first solo spay was now a hemoabdomen!

As the head surgeon and criticalist debated whether we take the dog back into the OR, I crumbled inside. I wondered how I could ever do a lung lobectomy if I could not spay a dog.  My patient received a transfusion, and we did not take her back into surgery. She recovered and went home the following day. I was not sure I would recover. Maybe I cannot be a surgeon, I feared.

Then I had my oncology rotation. Like my clients, I was surprised how happy and healthy the cancer patients were. Chemotherapy side effects were rare. And while I loved the science behind cancer down to the cellular level, but I loved the relationships I developed with my weekly to every other week patients and their owners. How could I incorporate this into my career choice, I thought? I will be a surgical oncologist! All that required was a fellowship after my residency. No problem, I naively thought. I was used to hard work and success.

“Sorry Ettinger.”

So I went through all the steps to become a resident. I volunteered for on call emergency surgeries, started to write a paper with an orthopedic surgeon to get published, and applied for the match.  On Match Day, the results were not yet online (old school!) We waited while one of the staff clinicians walked around with the list with our futures on it. He looked at me, the sheet, and looked back at me. “Sorry Ettinger.” If he said something nice after that, I did not hear it.

“Sorry Ettinger” was all I heard.

Most of my intern-mates matched, including my boyfriend (now husband.) I was devastated. It was the first time I ever truly failed something academically. After I got the news I hid in the locker room and cried. But I had to get back to my service. There were patients to SOAP and appointments to see.

Looking back it was the best day of my professional career. It changed my career path. In the next weeks, I admitted to myself and my mentors that I did not want to be a surgeon. I decided I would pursue medical oncology. I was warned that it would not be easy. The veterinary profession does not take kindly to people who change specialties. I would have to prove myself.

I was offered a cancer research position at Duke University investigating hyperthermia and radiation in dogs with soft tissue sarcomas. So I moved down south and starting preparing my application for the following match in medical oncology. Again, I did all the necessary steps. I went to the annual veterinary cancer meeting and interviewed with every program, and I even flew to a few places all over the country to interview. It got costly and emotionally exhausting.

On Match Day, I met failure again. It was not easier the second time. Again I was devastated. Now I went back to Cornell to work directly with the new oncology service and also assist in the first- year veterinary student curriculum for the oncology basic science courses.  Again, I interviewed, I wrote essays, I prayed. And I finally matched.

I could not wait for my residency to start. Some people still doubted my loyalty to oncology. But I knew this was where I belonged.

Once you are a boarded specialist, people you meet do not know the struggles, the failures, you went through to get there. Sometimes I wonder what if I matched for surgery. Would I be a surgeon today? Would I be this happy and passionate about my job? For me, failure led me to my passion. Failure was not enjoyable, but I am grateful for it.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Sue Ettinger, ACVIM (Oncology), is a boarded veterinary medical cancer specialist. She attended Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. As a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (Oncology), and she is 1 of approximately 300 board-certified veterinary specialists in medical oncology in North America. Dr. Ettinger is currently the head of the Oncology Department at the Animal Specialty Center in Yonkers NY.

Also known as Dr Sue Cancer Vet, she is a book author, radio co-host, and Certified Veterinary Journalist. Dr. Sue is the co-author of the Second Edition of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide, and she co-hosts The Pet Cancer Vet, an internet radio show on radiopetlady.com. From 2011 to 2014, Dr. Sue was a regular contributor to the blog, www.dogcancerblog.com. She lives in Westchester NY with her husband, a veterinary internist, their two sons, their goofy black Labrador, Matilda, and their dog-loving orange cat, Jeter.

Dr. Sue is passionate about raising cancer awareness, and she has developed See Something, Do SomethingTM to promote early cancer detection and diagnosis. The sooner we determine whether a mass is cancerous and should be removed, the better for our pets. Most skin and subcutaneous tumors can be cured if diagnosed early when masses are small. Early detection saves lives.

She can be found on social media at www.facebook.com/DrSueCancerVet and @DrSueCancerVet on Twitter.

I have been lucky enough to have survived this field for 14 years. Not only have I survived it, I have been able to keep my passion alive. I wake up every morning knowing I am doing what I love. It wasn’t always this way. There have been several points in my career that I did not enjoy what I was doing, the life I was living, or who I was as a person. Ultimately, I was the person responsible for my own unhappiness. It was all my doing, no matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise.

To describe it best, I was a total ass to some of my coworkers. You know that angry technician who protects her career by pointing out others’ failures? That was me. The coworker who complains daily, but doesn’t have a solution? I totally did that. I would walk into a room and it was instantly a quieter and darker place due to my presence. The tension was palpable.

I don’t have a true reason for why I behaved in that manner. I’m sure I could evoke empathy by saying I was burned out, not feeling supported by my team, or that I had low self esteem and was trying to make myself feel important. Those very well may have played a part in me being a rather despicable and unlikable person. But ultimately, I was an ass. They were my actions and though I am not proud of them, I cannot deny their existence or downplay my behavior.

I oozed toxicity. My outlook was negative and complaints fell from my mouth daily. I talked crap about coworkers. If I detected a
weakness in a coworker, I reminded them of it. Our clinic had a newer technician join our team. She was green but very book smart. Instead of guiding her and being patient, I rushed her and showed her how I could do it better or faster. I publicly pointed out her mistakes and mentioned her name during water cooler gossip. She ended up leaving the practice and I remember thinking, good riddance. She went off to continue her career and get amazing opportunities. I however, was still just miserable.

I am not sure what was the defining moment that showed me the error of my ways. There was no bright light or existential epiphany. I think I just got tired: Tired of being nasty to people. Tired of starting drama. Tired of playing games with others. It took so much energy from me to be so damn miserable. Finding my happiness and sharing it with others is a continuous work in progress. I’ve had to resign my former self and really focus on the positive in my life, other people, and myself. I’ve come a long way from that nasty person I had become. I still have a long way to go. But I am trying!

I am so, so sorry. I am sorry that I chased away a fellow technician instead of supporting her and maybe, just maybe, getting some support from her. I am sorry to anyone who I belittled or hurt. I am sorry that I failed. There will never be a way I can undo those wounds I inflicted on others. That, however, was the old me. I don’t know her anymore. I’ve outgrown her. Encouragement, kindness and patience with each other and ourselves can be the key to happiness. Happiness with our job, coworkers and ourselves.  None of us are perfect. I certainly am not. But I can try to be just a little bit kinder than I was yesterday.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

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About the Author

Jade is a licensed technician of 9 years who lives in Port Orchard, Washington. She enjoys emergency and critical cases, dentistry and creating a bond with her clients and team. During her off time she is busy keeping up with her two crazy Basenjis!

Like many animal people, I’ve always felt way more comfortable in a pile of puppies than a pile of kids. They made so much more sense to me. It didn’t stop me from having (and adoring) two kids of my own, but the truth is that sense of unease never went entirely away.

I was thinking about this recently when I was looking over some pictures from February. In my neck of the woods, the kids get the entire President’s Week off- fancifully called “Ski Week” instead of “How am I supposed to get anything done this Week.” The entire neighborhood takes the name to heart and decamps for the mountains, and for the first time since moving in three years ago, I joined them. I thought it would be a good time to get away from it all and get a little writing done in the solitude of winter. Just me and two other families in a snowed-in condo. (I know, laugh away. I got nothing done.)

If you think vet school is intimidating, I humbly submit that board exams were a good sight less stressful than caravaning with two other cars on an eight hour car ride punctuated by potty stops, fights over where to get food, and four loops of Frozen. And NO DOGS for emergency cuddles, not one.

When we arrived at the slopes, I discovered that Los Angeles also had the week off. Basically every child in Southern California was congregated at the ski lodge. While this did absolutely nothing to improve my sense of zen, it was actually quite a good opportunity to do a little observing about the anthropology of American parenthood these days. I learned something that surprised me: I raise my kids a lot like I raise my dogs, and that, it turns out, is a good thing.

1 – We Set Consistent Boundaries.

I saw lots and lots of this:

“Joey, put that ski pole down. Seriously. Joey, I mean it. Stop jamming that ski pole at that nice old man. Joey! 1,…..2….don’t make me get to three Joey.” *sigh* *grabs ski pole, then Joey has a temper tantrum and gets it back*   Two minutes later: “Joey, put it DOWN! I mean it!”

If there’s never a consequence, there’s never a reason to stop.

2 – We Stick to Routine.

Nine pm is our bedtime. It just is. Breakfast is as soon as I have my coffee. We make exceptions here and there, but generally speaking, everyone knows what to expect on any given day, and that seems to make everyone a lot less stressed. Especially me, because I love my coffee.

3 –  We Use Positive Reinforcement.

Seeing someone give a smack to either animal or human is thankfully much less common now than it was twenty years ago, but it still happens. I’m really happy that praise, love, and- yes- food- seems to work equally well on my Golden and kids (especially my son, who was a labrador in an earlier life.)

Trust me, I saw some super squirrely kids out there, and not one of them was on a prong collar or a bark collar. A couple on a long backpack leash, yes, but I happen to think that’s a pretty great alternative to falling off an icy cliff.

4 – We Use the Nothing In Life is Free Approach.

I’m not saying I run an Industrial Era sweatshop in my house, but I think age-appropriate chores are a fair expectation of being in a family. It started with teaching my dog to sit before being let outside and went from there (thanks Dr. Yin! <3 )

Everyone has to help, from little things like setting the table to packing their own clothes. If the kiddos want to ski, they get to schlep their gear around just like everyone else. I saw more than one harried adult carrying multiple piles of ski equipment while their bored looking tween tapped on their iPhone and waited for their skis to magically appear at their feet. Forget that!

5 –  We Enjoy Each Other’s Company.

For a long time, I fell into the hamster wheel trap of thinking every spare moment needed to be spent in educational, constructive activity- theater, sports, karate, going to museums. Then I got exhausted. Then I got real.
I actually, genuinely, truly took a page from my dog and realized what my kids wanted more than anything was just a little downtime to hang out, just like the rest of us. So we dialed all of that way back, and I think we’re all the happier for it. We do less team sports and more long walks. It’s a good way to live.

Look, I know for a fact I’m not a super special parent and I struggle just like everyone else from day to day, so please don’t take this as some sort of smug diatribe about my parental excellence. Au contraire, I question myself every day and seem to screw up plenty. On the other hand, it is nice to know that the self described ‘parenting pros’ have the same problems as the rest of us, and even though I had nothing to go on in this parenting gig other than living with two retrievers and an elderly coonhound, I think we turned out OK.

So there is something to be said for being a dog person.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.