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Jessica Vogelsang DVM

An Open Letter to Perfection

November 5, 2015 by Jessica Vogelsang DVM

Hello, Perfection. We’re old adversaries, you and me. You’re what I was supposed to be, remember? You bastard. You were what they expected out of me for over thirty years, and I realized eventually that I couldn’t deliver.

 

bigstock-Doctor-writing-patient-notes-o-16554509

 

Lord knows I tried, of course – even as a young child, I wanted to measure up and be everything they wanted me to be. I never could be you, even if I wanted to be; and after a while, I stopped wanting to be you. Sad, isn’t it? Especially because that little voice inside me kept reminding me that I needed to be you. The external voices never asked me to be Perfection, but I always knew what they were asking me to be.

 

[tweetthis]No one ever asked me to be Perfection but I knew what they were asking me to be.[/tweetthis]

 

I was never as good as they said I was, because I knew they wanted me to be more than I was. Yes, I know that makes no sense. If it made sense, they wouldn’t call me crazy. I got into vet school, and it got worse; I went from being one of the smart kids to being below average. Do you have any idea how much that hurts, Perfection? Do you have any idea what that does to a guy’s self worth?

 

Do you want to know the worst bit? I emotionally knew that I needed to be you, but intellectually I knew I couldn’t be. So I had an enormous problem doing stuff, because I knew that somewhere, someone would judge my efforts, and find me wanting. So I didn’t do it for as long as I could. Think that’s crazy? It totally is.

 

Cute Cat Poses On An Old Chair

 

Fear of judgment is one of the driving things behind humanity, and veterinarians especially. It’s a strange logic – if you don’t do it, they can’t judge your work, right?

 

Listen, I know that doesn’t make sense – deal with it.

 

I still like to make jokes about how my wife’s only flaw is that she has no taste in men. Of course it’s a joke – except that on some level, there’s truth there; if I didn’t feel it, I wouldn’t say it.

 

You’ve got a lot to answer for, Perfection. Andy Roark asked me to write something for his website months ago, and I got hugely excited about that. I have massive respect for who he is and what he’s done, and I had half a dozen ideas about what to write for him. Then I saw the first few articles on his website that other vets have written for him at his request, and holy smoke. They were sensational articles. Perceptive, emotional, and heartrending insights into someone’s soul. So I fell right back into my old habits, and ran away. I agonized about what I could write to measure up – sound familiar?

 

I’m worse than Ged the Sparrowhawk in that respect – running away never works. I moved to Hungary for vet school; you were there waiting for me. I qualified and moved to Saudi Arabia to work in private practice, you followed me. Funny how you seemed to get a visa easier than I did; you were there waiting for me when I got there. I had a perfectionist boss there, which didn’t help.

 

I ran away to England after 3 years, and found a job in private practice there. You get around, Perfection – or maybe you just have an English cousin that you phoned up to have waiting for me at the airport. I held out another 2 years and moved out of vet practice because I needed a break, full stop.

 

[tweetthis]Fear of judgment is one of the driving things behind humanity, veterinarians especially.[/tweetthis]

 

Boy, you really laid it on thick, then – there’s quite a guilt trip about leaving vet practice when you’ve worked for years to get there! But it was worth it; I had kids that needed me. I finally got professional help like I should have gotten 15 years before, but who likes admitting they have a problem? Remember me, the guy who doesn’t like to get judged? I didn’t want anyone judging me. Yes, now I know that therapists don’t judge you; it would have been nice to know this 15 years ago.

 

You know what happened? A lot of emotions I thought I’d walled up next to a cask of Amontillado broke out and messed with me a lot. (Look, I had English teachers for parents, not scientists. I grew up with languages and literature, not science!)

 

Grey Great Dane

 

I’m better now, thankfully. My wife is the mast that keeps my sails from flying off into the breeze, and my kids seem to like me, which means I’m still fooling them – nice, eh?

 

I’m glad I got the help I needed, but I’m still out for revenge; you messed my life up and I know you’re messing with the lives of millions of other people.

 

So I’m serving notice on you, Perfection. I’m not running anymore. I’m hunting.

 

And when I catch you…

 

…you’re gonna get what you deserve.

 

[tweetthis]So I’m serving notice on you, Perfection. I’m not running anymore. I’m hunting.[/tweetthis]

 


headshotMBHDr Mark Hedberg is a veterinarian, speaker, and author. Born in the USA, he qualified as a vet in Europe, and worked as a veterinarian in the Middle East and the United Kingdom. So he’s seen the veterinary profession on at least three different continents, which is one of the reasons he’s involved in new graduate support and helping colleagues through tough times. His website is at www.expatvet.com.

Filed Under: Blog

Tugs at My Heart Strings

November 2, 2015 by Jessica Vogelsang DVM

 

Mid section of young male veterinarian doctor carrying a rabbit

by Robin Dettman, DVM

 

Each day I come to work I think
I truly have been blessed
To work with dogs and cats and more
A joy I have confessed.
And though I love my job its true
to see God’s creatures well
There are those who touch my heart in ways
that hurts me I must tell…
The alley cat untouched by love
half starved in many ways
The abandoned pup left on the steps
no doubt sick for many days.
Who could forget the dear old man
whose life did seem to end
the day I put his dog to sleep
when its heart I could not mend.
Then there are those who cannot pay
for the pets they love despite
Still they ask for help from me
to make it all seem right.
I see it all in this my job
the flaws in many things-
After all I’m a D.V.M.
and these are tugs at my heart strings.

 

[tweetthis]I’m a D.V.M. and these are tugs at my heart strings.[/tweetthis]

 


379915_2728931741944_765353198_n

Dr.  Robin Dettman is a small animal veterinarian in El Paso, Tx in her 24th year of practice. She graduated from Texas A&M in 1992. For 23 of those 24 years Robin was an associate but her wonderful boss for her entire career committed suicide in 2014 (he suffered from bipolar depression) which completely changed her life. She is now one of three who own the practices he built, employing over 60 employees. Together they strive to carry on his legacy for he was a kind, gentle, caring, giving man.  Robin wrote this poem a few years ago after a particularly bad and heart wrenching week. It was a good outlet to express her feelings and she encourages others to consider writing things down, not necessarily in a poem form but perhaps in a journal to express themselves. Don’t hold it in! In her spare time Robin competes with her Australian shepherds and smooth coated collies in agility, conformation and obedience. She has 7 dogs and 4 cats

Filed Under: Blog

Why ‘Fake It ‘Till You Make it’ Is Terrible Advice

October 29, 2015 by Jessica Vogelsang DVM

My senior year of veterinary school, an oncology resident I respected a great deal sat us all down and told us his number one piece of advice: “No matter what you tell a client,” he said, “Make sure you say it with utter conviction- even if you’re not sure you’re right.” We all nodded, wide-eyed and desperate for anything to make us seem more knowledgable than we were.

Fluffy Kitten

It worked for certain people. You know the type. They already had authoritative personalities and could easily tell a client, “YES. This is 100% what you should do.” Clients, besotted with their certainty, complied. And when it failed utterly and completely to do as it should, they shrugged it off and went to the next thing.

That never worked for me.

[tweetthis]If I suggested something I had the merest hint of doubt about, they could read it in my face [/tweetthis]

If I suggested something I had the merest hint of doubt about, they could read it in my face, that moment of hesitation, the way my eyes darted to the side. And if it fell apart, even if that’s the way medicine works and sometimes doody happens, I would go home and rend my scrubs and beat myself up for being human. It felt wrong, and we all knew it. It didn’t make me stronger, it made me feel like even more of an imposter.

Owning Your Doubt

Veterinary Caring Of A Cute CatA few months after graduation, I found myself flying solo at a new corporate practice. I was terrified. Who would I ask about that pedicle that wouldn’t stop oozing, or that strange shadow in the vomiting dog’s duodenum? Staring in uncertainty, I felt the paternal ghost-hand of that resident resting on my shoulder as he whispered, “Just go with it. Own it.”

I ignored him, kind of.

I looked my clients in the eye, took a deep breath, and said with utter conviction, “I don’t know what that is. Could be this, or this. I’m going to call a director and get another opinion.”

Or, “I have never done one of these procedures before. I can take it on, or you can go to the referral center.”

I owned it. It wasn’t an embarrassing admission but a fact. I didn’t apologize for it, I wasn’t embarrassed by it, because we all knew I was new and my lack of experience was a temporary condition that righted itself very quickly. I was confident in who I was at that moment, and that conveyed itself in everything I did.

Sure, I lost out on some opportunities to ‘practice’, but my clients always knew where we stood, and I never had to beat myself up for subterfuge. In short, I traded the short term pretending to know more than I did for the long term trust.

[tweetthis]I traded the short term confidence for the long term trust.[/tweetthis]

A year later, a funny thing happened. We got a letter in the mail- out of all the 400 members of the corporate practice, my dinky little Newbie Clinic in the sticks had the highest score in the nation for customer loyalty.

My supervisors were confounded. No one could believe it. “But you’re not even a year out,” they said. “Are you some sort of surgical wizard? Are you a vet savant?”

Far from it. I was new, inexperienced, and still had oodles to learn. I got things wrong and made plenty of newbie mistakes. And I never apologized for my newness, just as I still never apologize for who I am today. It just is.

Cute dog sitting up in a field

Never fake who you are. And never apologize for it, either. The confidence you must own is not in what you know, but who you are. And it works.

[tweetthis]Never fake who you are. And never apologize for it, either.[/tweetthis]


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.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Perspective

The First (but not the last) Time a Client Told Me I Sucked

July 14, 2015 by Jessica Vogelsang DVM

As anyone who’s worked in the clinic more than a day or two knows, client communication often plays out like a game of telephone, conversations warping and bending over each retelling into a final version that bears little to no resemblance to what we actually told the owner in the first place. In this excerpt from my book All Dogs Go to Kevin, I share the outcome of one such conversation that involved not only two owners, but an RDVM all too happy to believe everything they shared with him.

I have long held the opinion that crummy medicine is most often a by‑product of crummy communication. While some veterinarians may simply be poor at the task of diagnosing disease, the vast majority of veterinarians I’ve known are excellent clinicians, regardless of their personality. More often than not we are failing not in our medicine but in relaying to our clients, in clear and concise terms, the benefit of what it is we are recommending. Or even what we are recommending, period. Muffy was a patient I hadn’t seen before, a one-​year-​old Shih Tzu who presented to the clinic for sneezing spasms. They had started suddenly, according to the client, Mrs. Townsend.

“So he doesn’t have a history of these episodes?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m just dog-​sitting for my daughter.”

As we spoke, Muffy began sneezing again— achoo achoo aCHOO! Seven times in a row. She paused, shaking her fuzzy little white head, and pawed at her snout.

“Was she outside before this happened?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mrs. Townsend said. “She was out with me for a couple of hours this morning while I was weeding the garden.”

Foxtail close up


Immediately my mind jumped to foxtails, a particularly pervasive type of grass awn found in our region. During the summer months, they have a nasty habit of embedding themselves in all sorts of locations on a dog: ears, feet, eyelids, gums, and yes, up the nose. Working like a one-​way spearhead, these barbed plant materials are known for puncturing skin and wreaking havoc inside the body. It’s best to get them out as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the little barbs on the seed, foxtails don’t fall out on their own—you have to remove them. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can pull one out of the ear canal while a pet is awake, but noses are a different story. Unsurprisingly, the average dog has no interest in holding still while you slide a well-​lubricated pair of alligator forceps up his or her nose to go fishing for foxtails in their sensitive sinuses. And it’s dangerous— if they jerk at the wrong moment, you are holding a piece of sharp metal one layer of bone away from their brain. The standard nose treasure hunt in our clinic involved general anesthesia, an otoscope cone functioning as a speculum to hold the nares open, and a smidgen of prayer.

I explained all of this as best I could to Mrs. Townsend, who eyed me distrustfully from behind her cat-​eye glasses, blinking as I told her about the anesthesia.

“Can’t you just try without the anesthesia?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” I said. “It would be impossible to get this long piece of metal up her nose safely without it. Her nostrils are very small and it would be very uncomfortable for her, so she wouldn’t hold still.”

“I need to talk to my daughter before we do that,” she said.

“I understand. Before we anesthetize her, we do need your daughter’s consent.”

Muffy left with Mrs. Townsend and a copy of the estimate. I was hoping to have them back in that afternoon so we could help the dog as quickly as possible, but they didn’t return.

The next day, Mary-​Kate scurried into the back and came trotting toward me, loud voices pouring into the treatment area as the door swung shut behind her.

“Muffy’s owner is here,” she said. “And she’s MAAAAAD.”

I sighed. “Put her in Room 2.”

Like a game of telephone, trying to communicate what’s going on with a dog who can’t talk to owners who weren’t there via a pet-sitter who misheard you is bound to cause one or two misunderstandings. When Mrs. Townsend relayed her interpretation of my diagnosis to her daughter, the daughter rushed home from work and took Muffy to her regular veterinarian, who promptly anesthetized the dog and removed the foxtail.

“My vet said you are terrible,” said Muffy’s owner without preamble. “Didn’t you know foxtails can go into the brain? You nearly killed her!” Her voice reached a crescendo.

“I think there might be a misunderstanding here. I wanted to remove it,” I told her.

“The pet-​sitter—it was your mother, correct? She said she needed to talk to you before approving the estimate.”

“That’s not what she said,” replied the owner. “She said that you said there was no way a foxtail would fit up there and we should put her to sleep. Well there was one up there! You were wrong and you almost put her to sleep because of it!”

I took a slow inhale and reminded myself not to sigh. “What I told your mother,” I said, “was that I thought Muffy had a foxtail, but there was no way I was going to be able to remove it without anesthesia. So I gave her an estimate for all of that.”

“Are you calling my mother a liar?” she demanded. This was not going well.

“No,” I said, “I just think that she may have misheard me.”

“OK, so now you’re saying she’s stupid.” I silently prayed for a fire alarm to go off, or an earthquake to rumble though. The waves of indignant anger pulsing from this woman were pressing me farther and farther into the corner and there was no escape.

“No, absolutely not,” I said. “I think maybe I just didn’t explain myself well enough.” I pulled the record up on the computer and showed her. “See? She declined the anesthesia.”

She thought about it for a minute and decided she still wanted to be mad. “You suck and I want a refund for the visit.” We provided it gladly.


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.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Life With Clients

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