A dog's life

I have a pretty cool job, but not many people even know it exists, or understand the seriousness of it.

I am a certified vet tech. An ICU/ER vet tech.

I get to run around a hospital (literally run on some days; I had a friend use a pedometer during a SLOW day one time, to discover she had walked 5 miles in a day) during a 12 hour shift (sometimes up to 14 hours...) triaging emergencies, performing CPR, doing involved ICU-type treatments (anything you can imagine doing to a person in an ICU, we do to dogs and cats in an ICU), taking radiographs, running all kinds of labwork (and sometimes fixing the machines we use to run said labwork), looking at blood smears, fluid, fecal and urine samples under the microscope to identify cells and organisms, assisting with surgeries (this includes anesthetic monitoring), assisting the doctors with appointments and emergencies in the exam rooms, restraining aggressive animals (this includes animals that are lunging at you, trying to bite you as hard as they can. Not exaggerating. Police dogs and dogs trained to fight are not fun to treat in the ER), performing physical therapy on cats and dogs that are not always cooperative (see previous example), walking patients outside (including some patients that are unable to walk. This is especially interesting when the patient is something like a 135 lb Great Dane that weighs more than you do and the walk is extremely important to aid in blood flow and keep the patient's muscles working. A down dog can begin to lose muscle in as little as 24 hours. You MUST get them moving asap), cleaning up endless amounts of poop, urine and vomit from cages, floors, table surfaces and sometimes yourself and/or your coworkers, keeping the ICU impeccably clean & disinfected and the laundry caught up (the amount of dirty laundry a full veterinary ICU generates can be astounding). I am grief counselor to clients whose pet is critical and going downhill, or the client who has decided to euthanize their companion of 16 years. I deal with distraught, angry and sometimes borderline violent clients, and often have to go over treatment plans (also known as estimates) so that they know in advance the cost of their pet's care. This is something not often done in human medicine-you just get a $30,000 bill in the mail 3 weeks later that makes you pass out- but it always astounds me how most people view this so negatively. It is the only part of my job that I truly dislike-going over estimates with people that I know can't afford it. I answer phones to respond to client questions about hospitalized patients in our care, or to help them determine if their pet at home needs to come in to be seen (the answer is: if you're concerned enough to be calling, you should probably have the pet seen by a doctor. Not all clients like to hear this). I do medical billing-keeping all the invoices caught up for all the patients treated during my shift. This is especially interesting when you have 15 patients and at least 3 super-critical ones that you have been performing treatments on every other hour-almost every treatment is accounted for in the bill. This gets even more interesting when you barely have time to sit down to do these bills BECAUSE you have to do these treatments on time every other hour and make sure that these patients don't take a turn for the worse while you're sitting at the computer across the room. But above all, and this is my favorite part: I am the voice of those who cannot speak. I am the eyes and ears of my patient's doctor, and have to know when to alert the doctor when there is any change in the patient's condition, be it positive or negative. This involves knowing all normal vital signs for 2 different species, what blood results mean, what the sudden change of the color of their serum can imply, why the smell of a patient's urine can become extremely foul or the odor of their breath change. I must be able to notify immediately of a change in mentation (patient's mental state-this ranges from bright and alert to dull and unresponsive). I have to know different types of breathing patterns and know that I must alert the doctor immediately if I see them (paradoxical breathing and Kusmaul breathing, to name two), I should be able to identify a heart murmur or an arrythmia with my stethoscope, and be able to recognize abnormalities on an EKG; I need to know body temperature normals and when to alert the doctor when the temperature changes, and have an idea of what that temperature change implies. I need to know how to identify pain. Patients have numerous ways of telling you they are in pain, be it by being aggressive (especially true in cats), guarding the area that hurts, reluctance to move, a change in posture or behavior, or simply a change in their vital signs-a faster heart rate, panting, a spiked temperature, even a change in mucous membrane (gum) color. A special vet tech skill is being able to look at a blood smear under the microscope-it will give you endless information on what is going on inside the patient's body-a simple change in a red blood cell's shape can tell you if that patient is having liver issues; a change in a white cell can indicate sepsis; a drop in the number of platelets can indicate that this patient is in danger of bleeding out at any time; a little mark on a blood cell can alert you to the presence of life-threatening blood parasites. Not all doctors can do this (criticalists, however, must know how to read a blood smear), not all technicians know how to do this, but I was trained on how to do it and I am good at it.

This only begins to scratch the surface of what I do. One good vet tech alone can do the jobs of what would require at least 7 different medical specialties in the human field. And we can do it better! If I had the choice, I would go to the veterinarian instead of the human doctor. Veterinary school takes longer than human medicine, it involves studying all animal species that can be kept by humans, from mice to lions to cattle. The veterinarian must know everything about all of these species, and how to heal them, by the time they get out of school, whereas the human doctor only needs to know everything about 1 species. People complain about the cost of veterinary medicine for their pets, but the truth of the matter is that while veterinary medicine has advanced TREMENDOUSLY in the last 10 years (MRI for your dog or chemotherapy for your cat, anyone?), the pay rate has not. My husband, an RN, will eventually make more money than the average general practice veterinarian. A veterinary specialist, who went to school for another x-amount of years and is boarded in their specialty (on top of the extra schooling, including a residency, they often have to do a study, write a series of papers and take a written and practical exam for their specialty), who is not a practice owner, is lucky if she can get up to $100,000/year. You don't want to know how much a "mere" vet tech makes in comparison. The vet tech who must do the job of 7 different medical technicians. I often work over an average of 45 hours a week. My supervisor, also a tech, puts in 60 hour-weeks. The veterinarians at work often come back to work after only 3 hours of sleep between 2 19-hour shifts, and are commonly seen at the hospital on days when they were supposed to be off. Veterinarians and their techs are most definetely overworked and underpaid.

But you know what? That 18 year old dog that went to surgery, then refused to stand and was on nasal oxygen and a constant EKG for a week post-op, and 5 days later WALKED out of the hospital with his owner makes it worthwhile. That cat that was trying to attack anyone that attempted to touch it, that you are able to win her trust and get her to purr while hospitalized-that makes it worthwhile. The patient that comes in for a recheck and wags his tail at you because he remembers you, he remembers the times you fed him and loved him and not the times you had to poke him with a needle, that makes it worthwhile. The animal that YOU saved because YOU were able to catch a downhill turn on time and alert your doctor when something could still be done to fix it-that makes it worthwhile. The special bond that you create with the rest of the ICU team-your coworkers, your doctors, where everyone works together like both a family and a synchronized dance-that makes it worthwhile. Having to have a healthy sense of humor, sometimes a little morbid, to get through your day-that makes it worthwhile. The fact that my job is never, ever boring-that makes it worthwhile. Seeing a board-certified specialist, a resident and an intern on hands and knees to closely study a puddle of urine on the floor to try to identify the weird sediment in it-this is something you only see at my job! Also, the fact that I can stay fit just by performing my job (*lol!* You have no idea the amount of heavy lifting I can do in a day. Just this week we had 4 down patients that all weighed over 50 lbs and needed to be taken outside for walks, some as often as every 4 hours...my shoulders, biceps, triceps, pecs and abs are all still as defined as when I was hitting the gym with a personal trainer 5 days a week almost 2 years ago!) that too, makes it worthwhile.

But this is why Lily gets days off when I work. Because by the end of the day, just mucking her stall and setting up her feed has become an interesting task to complete!