Highs and Lows in Veterinary Medicine

What an Animal Doctor Reveals (Third of Three Parts)

TIN HAU, Hong Kong – Victories and setbacks, with the accompanying emotional fluctuations, punctuate the working lives of animal doctors. The pendulum swings fast, often within the same day, especially in situations demanding the dreaded final solution -- euthanasia.

“When you receive praise, even tiny praise, from a client, then maybe you feel happy for an entire day,” said veterinarian Dr Grace Li at Hong Kong's Tin Hau Pet Hospital. “But if you get mean comments from a client, then you feel down for at least a week.”

Seeing dramatic results that greatly improve health, enhance happiness and extend the lives of furry patients triggers euphoria. That's when veterinary medicine turns into exhilarating work.

“That's why I'm such a workaholic,” Grace said. “For years, I never took a day off. I really love what I do. It can be addictive.”

Grappling with life-and-death issues -- often winning and feeling joy with each triumph -- “means that it's non-stop. You get such a good feeling that you don't want to stop. You won't stop. Usually, I feel so happy doing what I do that it motivates me to do more and more.”

At the other extreme, cats, dogs and other pets age and may arrive for veterinary care with their problems too far advanced. Despite a veterinarian's best advice, treatments and medicines, the pets face either suffering or a looming date with death.

“For an animal near death, there's often little you can do,” Grace said. Then veterinarians, unlike the doctors who treat humans, must stand ready to participate in a timely way to end lives, putting their patients permanently “to sleep”.

Like most people in her profession, Grace dislikes giving lethal injections, but if done at the appropriate moment, it's entirely justified as a final way to ease suffering. “Euthanasia is a very controversial thing, but I think it's such a blessing that vets can do this,” Grace said. “Of course, you can't abuse it.

“Instead of persuading clients (in favor of euthanasia), I'd rather give them all the information and respect them to make a final choice for their pets. Sometimes you have known a client for years. You know that he or she tried hard for a long time to manage the animal's kidney or heart failure and extended the pet's life. Then you also know that when the end nears, the last thing you can do for the pet is to help with the final transit to a better place. It beats getting them all-tubed-up and letting them die slowly in a hospital.”

A veterinarian may choose to make a final house call. “It's best if pets can die in their own homes with friends or family surrounding them,” Grace said.

Veterinarians try to keep a professional detachment. But they wouldn't choose such jobs without loving animals. Despite valid reasons to insert a deadly needle, it's always difficult to do. Emotions surge.

“Yes, I have weepy eyes at some moments,” Grace said. “The clients affect you a lot, and the veterinary nurses do too. If the nurses start to cry, then everyone in the room will be crying.

“Once you have a long relationship with a person and a pet, then it's difficult for you, as a vet, to let the pet go at the end. Often it's a blessing to have multiple vets in a clinic. Sometimes another vet will help me by euthanizing my long-time patients, and I'll do the same for her. Then in a way, it's easier for us to let go. In some cases, a client may request the same vet who always treated the pet to follow through to the end, but that's not so common.”

How do the animals react just before euthanasia? Usually they're much too ill to resist.

“On certain cases, we work with animal communicators,” Grace said. “Clients struggling to decide if the time is right to let go for their pets will ask the animal communicator. A lot of the feedback reflects that pets are loving and pure. They know that they're sick and feel ready to go if that's what the guardian decides, if the guardian can let go. We rarely get an answer from communicators that the pet says, ‘I want to go. Just let me go.’ Usually, it's more like: ‘If my mom or dad, my humans, can let me go, then I'm ready to go.’ ”

One of Grace's most arduous tasks involved the euthanasia of Lui Lui, her own 17-year-old and seriously ill dog, a cocker-spaniel. Ultimately, she called on a colleague for the deed.

More stress for veterinarians comes from needing “to talk so much”, even at emotional moments. “As a vet, you must be a people person before you can be an animal person,” Grace said. “If I can't communicate with the clients, then I really can't help the animals.

“Some students may become veterinarians because they want to deal with animals, not people, but that's such a wrong notion. Maybe I was a little like that too. I was a quiet kid who didn't like talking. Now when I do consultations, if I have no surgery, then I'm talking to people from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Years ago, I never could have imagined that.”

Seeking greater gains to assist animals, Grace has started to change her approach. “Instead of always helping one-on-one, I'm moving on, trying to do more on a multiple-scale at one go. For example, I'm happy to teach other veterinarians interested in herbs or acupuncture.”

Born in Hong Kong, Grace moved to Vancouver at age 12. As a teenager and beyond, she loved pets, but also held other interests, like ballet dancing. “I was a semi-professional ballerina, but I over-bent my back. Now I've had a back problem for 20 years. That's one reason that I really love to help little dogs with back problems. I completely understand how they feel.”

No childhood certainty dictated that Grace would become a vet. “If I had to summarize in one word, I'd say the decision was ‘destiny’,” she said. “It resulted from a slow progression.

“As a little kid growing up in Hong Kong, I was fortunate to have a garden at my home in Jardine's Lookout. I read books about pets and spent time in the garden, just picking up rocks, looking at worms and playing with my pet rabbit – being with nature. It wasn't a typical experience. Most Hong Kong children seldom have chances even to touch trees.

“Even so, I didn't think about being a vet. After moving to Canada, I had many pets, but still no inkling. My experience with vets then was terrible. They usually couldn't help my pets enough, which led to the ‘last injections’. I always feared seeing vets.”

After studying biology at the University of Western Ontario, Grace liked the notion of design work and so applied to architectural schools. She struggled to choose a career, but during a crucial summer, “many things happened, little things that acted like signs to make me think that maybe I should be a vet. For example, three different birds crashed into our windows at home, so I had to revive them, help them and then let them go. Then one day, I found a wild rabbit in the middle of Vancouver. He just showed up as I walked along a side-road. I really love rabbits, so I grabbed him and gave him a home in my backyard.

“So it wasn't that I wanted to be a vet since I was a little kid. It wasn't like that at all.”

Yet now the job “just makes sense. It feels natural and right” – despite how much she dislikes those euthanasia moments.

For more information: www.thph.com.hk

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