As Much Fun as a Root Canal

After a couple weeks of pain, which moved around the entirety of my mouth and varied in intensity from slighly annoying to crying at 3 a.m., I finally made it into a dentist and then an endodontist. No longer am I a root canal virgin. This week, I endured the first of two...out-of-pocket. No one becomes a vet tech for the insurance benefits, believe me. Or for the paycheck.

Having asked everyone in my acquaintence whether they'd had one, and how bad it was, I entered the endodontist's office only somewhat anxious. It was fast. Exactly one hour after the start, I found myself back in the car, pulling out of the parking lot with a numb mouth and a heavy sigh. It really wasn't bad, except for a couple seconds...and having to write so many digits on a check. Apparently, some people, once in a while, sport a "hot tooth." That's one that doesn't get blocked completely by the novocaine as it should. Happens once a month or so, they said. Lucky me...Miss July. There was a second when I felt the drill inside my tooth. It was as though someone dropped an atomic bomb in my jaw. Fat Man and Little Boy both. At once. I held still, but the physical response was intense...heart racing, muscles quaking, throat whimpering and eyes flooding. All at once I was 4 years old and I needed my mommy. Thankfully after a couple minutes and a couple more blocks, I felt nothing. And it was shortly done, after a whole lot of unsettling shoving of implements up my face.

It was not pleasant.

But you know what was more torturous than the root canal itself?

There I was, mouth open, laying back, rubber dam clamped in place over the victim tooth and covering my gaping maw....unable to speak. Gagged, essentially.
And there sat my friendly, nice endodontist and her nurse, one on each side...handing things and poking things and handing things back. And they were chatting up a storm, right over my head about how much "fun" my job must be. They'd asked me where I worked in that getting-to-know-you, pre-shoving-things-in-your-mouth phase of the appointment. I told them. Then, after the panic of that pain moment, the needles and the drilling....just wanting it to be over...they then started talking about how great it must be, how much fun, how much the nurse would probably love to have my job. What torture to be unable to clarify. To be unable to garble..."Euthanasia! Neglect! Cruelty! Cat Hoardings! Boomerang Adoptions! URI! Short-staffing! Stupidity! Abandonment!"

Lord. Isn't that terrible, to be at that point (which I have been for quite a while now), to be SO hot to rain on people's parade when they surmise that sheltering... that horribly underpaid and emotionally traumatic animal welfare work, is all about playing with puppies and kittens all day? Selfish, perhaps....to resent the "animal loving" public for not having to see what is in my face Monday through Friday and even in my dreams Saturday and Sunday. I can't tolerate people having the wrong idea either way...and I am not quite sure which is worse, over a tray of cheese and crackers at a party..."What do you do?"..."I work at the SPCA."
a.) "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!! (pitch always rising at end, images of frolicking kittens in person's head) That must be SOOOO much fun!!!"
b.) "Ohhhhh. That sucks. Do you have to....you know...put them to...sleep?"(person edging away as if I am wearing a tattered executioner's hood right then)
I just can't let people keep either view, and I get pretty defensive either way.*
Neither is right. Except...also, both are right.
One is demeaning and one is insulting.
It's an important conversation.

Which can't be had in the middle of a root canal.

Mind you...generally, I don't bring it up. If it comes up, and I can't skirt around it, then I might get into it. My preference, out of context, is to avoid the topic of what I do alltogether. I'm no soapboxer...do not think so for a minute. Had I not gone to the root canal after work, wearing my logoed scrubs and badge, perhaps it all could've been avoided.

It's just been a long, hard week, I suppose.


*PSA: please, whatever you do, when you are out some sunny Saturday running errands and decide to swing by your local shelter or pound to engage in indiscriminate, dirty fingerpokery into each and every kitten cage, do NOT go up to any staff members and say the following:
"I could never do what you do! I love animals too much!!"
You are trying to sound friendly and whatever, and we can totally dig that...thanks. really. But that statement is the biggest, steel-toed kick in the nuts to all of us who show up day after day like the gluttons for punishment we are. No offense, but you with your pampered pets and Animal Planet habit (god bless you, seriously...there should be more people like you, and then maybe there would be less need for people like us) don't have the same concept of "love." To "do what we do" is for the sort of love that chews you up and spits you out...that takes you higher than you will ever be in your life...and that takes you to rock bottom more often than most people have to endure. Thanks for the sentiment....but if you get a shelter staffer or ACO on the wrong day with that statement, you may be sorry. Instead, a sincere "I appreciate what you are doing for the community...it must be so hard sometimes. Hey...who's your favorite dog/cat here right now?" will make someone's day.

Also, try to refrain from the other standby insensitive but well-meaning remark: "I couldn't work here. I'd take everything home."
a.) Does that mean that I'm an asshole for "only" having one dog and three cats?
b.) Come tag along on a hoarding bust... Vick's Vaporub stinging the skin under your nose within your mask, shit-skating through a puke-inducingly filthy house full of dozens of decrepit, dying and/or dead cats. Then remind me what you said about "taking them all home."

Thank you, good night. It's just Friday. It's nothing personal. We can talk about cutewittle baby kittens some other time, 'k?

And I really am not this much of a sourpuss. Honest.

Positions to Be Put In

Just last month, there was an article in Veterinary Practice News about "convenience euthanasia". It actually mentioned that as a private practice vet, if you are uncomfortable with the reasons for a euthanasia given by a client, you should refer them to a local SPCA or humane organization. Hi. That's me.

Thankfully, even we have standards and will not put animals down just for shits 'n' giggles or out and out "convenience." I have to sleep at night. It's nothing taken lightly. But I suppose I have done, or participated in doing, plenty of them that a private vet may not have done. For example, our "clientele" tends to be that of the lowest income bracket. People who cannot afford extensive supportive care for a degenerative disease. People who are not capable of proper treatment for something as manageable as, say, diabetes. People who cannot afford possibly pointless chemotherapy for cancer...or even expensive NSAIDs for advanced ortho problems. In the scheme of things, having come from private practice, it does bother me. But, this is their pet...their family member. Suffering is directly around the bend. I feel okay with having a hand in preventing that suffering by euthanasia.

Same with aggression. I respect the courage it takes to undertake the responsibility of deciding such a thing when human safety is at risk. Lesser people dump it on a shelter and let us be the "bad guys." These cases are hard and sad. But in the scheme of things, it, too is preventing suffering.

Then there are the nebulous ones. Case in point: a couple owns two teenaged cats. Neither is in ill health, particularly. Foreclosure, going into assisted living, whatever...but cannot keep the cats. What are the possibilities? Put them in the shelter where they will be overlooked and miserable, ripped from their known lives of over a decade to be put into a cage to compete with kittens? To be put in the path of the upper respiratory infection that we are never free of, the catching of which is directly related to stress? Will some miracle person fall out of heaven and come into our shelter wanting not a kitten, not a young cat, not a pretty cat, but coincidentally two nondescript, teenaged cats possibly on the brink of costly degenerative health issues? Is it fair, for them, to force them to endure a hellish existence on the off chance that monkeys might fly out of my butt? Add onto that the fact that we are full, and in order to undertake this doubleforcing of hell onto two older cats, some others will have to go? These are the sticky, judgement call situations that happen in every shelter. It sucks. And I am the one who has to carry it out and go home at night. I know, I feel, I did the right thing. It was gentle and peaceful and dignified and number one, it was the choice, the responsible choice, in the given circumstances, of the legal owner of the cats. It was the best that could be done for them. Until you are willing to go to your local shelter and adopt two teenaged, un-special, nondecsript cats yourself, then you shouldn't say a thing. It was the best thing for them in the circumstances. They would've been stressed and confused and frightened and lonely otherwise. Death cannot be worse than that. Yet, it tore me up. Know that should it come to this in your life and with your animals...that there will be someone aching at the task they must perform for your convenience. I do it because someone must...someone who cares. Someone must be gentle and apologize to them for you...must tell them they are beautiful and special and that things will be better for them on the other side. But it sucks. And it eats my soul. I can only hope that upon my own death, I am not met with a mob of angry animals.





There I am, right in the dead eye. She was a pretty cat, to me.