Pawcurious: With Veterinarian and Author Dr. V

Celebrating the truth that pets make people better.

You are here: Home / Be The Change / Blogathon / Hour 22: Onto the maudlin

Hour 22: Onto the maudlin

by

This is the part where I lay down on Brody and start feeling sorry for myself. Not really. I’m just running out of brain cells to remember things and direct my fingers to type them.

I was looking through the files of my old journal and came upon this little gem from last Christmas. Last Christmas was rough. Mulan was very sick (she was euthanized on New Year’s Eve) and every death was a reminder of what was coming.

I read it today and actually laughed at myself. Boy was I bitter. This year will be better, though.

“Christmas at the veterinary hospital always means death and destruction. Seriously. Those in the field will back me up. It was worse in the emergency hospital, but even in my boring old day clinic there has been a rapid parade of serious unresponsive viral pneumonias, cancers, parvo, and the like.

I said I needed a Christmas miracle, and the next room was a 12 year old Pomeranian who had lost half his body weight in a month. The woman adopted him a month ago and had $30 to spare since she has 6 kids at home. The tech brought the dog back and told me she wanted to euthanize her but couldn’t afford to cremate him, even, so she needed to take him home. And did we have a box to put his body in. I said, “This is NOT WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!” and burst into tears. I think the techs were a little scared at that point since I’ve never actually done that before.

So… we euthanized him and we sent the dog home in a box. What, you were expecting some sort of happy ending?

OK, I went to my car after work- the parking lot was flooded and it was raining up a storm- and I had a flat tire.

Ho ho ho!”

This was her very first Christmas at my house: note the healing pyoderma and acral lick granulomas she arrived with.

mu3

mu2

Boy, I haven’t seen these pictures in ages. 2002, her first Christmas as a V. I still can’t look at the pictures- any of them- from this last Christmas.

I promise to be merrier this holiday season!

*dedicating my home stretch to Mulan, because for all her fluff she was a heck of a fighter too

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. Dr V. I’m gonna donate another $50 in honour of those we have loved and lost. Today is a year since my beloved uncle Ashok died so I would like to dedicate it him

      • Thank you, I appreciate it. Ashok died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting at the age of 53. He adored animals and I know he would have really appreciated your efforts today 🙂

  4. Last Christmas was rough for us too. It was 5 days before Christmas when we found Chase’s Hemangiosarcoma, and little did we realize, that it would be his last holiday season with us. Ironic this post comes up now, as I was going through old emails about two hours ago and came across this picture…

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/GoldEyes/0105091850a.jpg

    It is Chase and my husband. (that’s crazy me next to them out of the picture, lol) My husband took it with his cell phone, I didn’t even realize he did it. We are in the waiting room of the Holistic Vet we found, after Chase had his surgery. It was our first visit…. we were hoping for lots more visits with the Holistic Vet but only had four total, and two of them were emergencies. (one of them being two days before euthanasia when his belly started to swell and one being euthanasia). It made me horribly sad to look at the picture, those eyes just stare you down. I held back tears as I didn’t want to tell my Husband what I had found and was looking at. I am hoping that Christmas won’t be too hard for me this year.

      • It is, indeed! I had to hold back tears last weekend too. I took an 8×10 picture of Chase down off of the wall, to dust it, and about lost it. His collar hangs on the corner of that picture, so that started it all. I had to have the husband put it back on the wall for me, because I just couldn’t do it.