I was talking to my wife’s grandmother when for no apparent reason she asked me if anybody ever brings snakes to the vet. I told her they did and that we can treat a lot of different conditions in snakes. She was mesmerized. The idea of treating a snake was so exotic to her. She started naming animals: rabbits, ferrets, turtles, camels, lions. I told her that I typically don’t do zoo-type animals, but zoos do have vets who take care of them.
My wife is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator so I’ve also treated squirrels, opossums, copperheads, snapping turtles, owls, hummingbirds, rabbits, and on and on. Just talking about it lifted my spirits. Doing the things that I do every day seemed kinda mundane, but during the conversation she said, “Oh the wonderful things you must see every day.”
When I really thought about it, we do see wonderful things everyday: whether it’s a tiny kitten or a giant Great Dane, sick or healthy, young or old, they are all wonderful and amazing things that we are blessed to take care of. Even the sad things are worthy of amazement–not sure that I would call them wonderful, but they are something to wonder at.
It’s something noteworthy that we can draw blood on a ferret or repair the broken shell of a turtle or remove a splenic tumor or fix a fracture. A veterinarian recently spent a few hours observing at my hospital for a possible job opening. She was a new graduate and seemed to marvel at how smoothly the PetNurses could place catheters or hit jugular veins or talk to the clients about their medical conditions or hook up the EKGs and set the fluid pump during surgery. We all, every one of us in this profession – veterinarian, receptionist, vet tech, all of us – whatever your role or title is in the hospital – we all do wonderful things every day and should take some time to marvel at the amazing things that we see and do and not think of them as mundane.