Happy New Year!

There's not going to be to be much of a blogpost today as I'm holed up in bed with a stomach bug.

I thought to myself ironically, well, this is one way to ring in the New Year with weight loss.

All kidding aside, I'll try to do an extra post next week but will just do my best now to try to recover and hopefully enjoy my family...

Too much Christmas?

Well,  I thought we started out ok when my son immediately responded on Christmas Eve whose birthday we would be celebrating, "Jesus".  He did very well at Mass for 2 hours.  While the adorable grade-schoolers were acting out the nativity scene, the angels were raising their hands in an Alleluia.  My son stood on my lap with his hands raised in the air as well with a smile on his face.  He seemed to know what we were celebrating!

Everything was going pretty smooth.  He was excited to put out cookies and pickles (for Santa's reindeer, he's convinced they eat pickles).  He even wrote a nice note to Santa.  We hoped that we would dodge a bullet as he had decided 2 days before Christmas he wanted a fife and drum for Christmas (when for over a month prior to Christmas he had been declaring he wanted a little golf putter, with a hole and a little flag and a little white ball).

Christmas morning came and even though we re-allocated some Christmas gifts to his birthday, he was still overwhelmed by all of the stuff.  I think my husband and I were too.  We have a very generous family and I think everyone got pretty much everything they wanted and then some.

We still tried to re-enforce that it was Jesus' birthday and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.  My son at this point didn't really want much of Christmas dinner.  I think the whole day was rather overwhelming for him.

By dinner that night, I think he was pretty spent.  The next morning, the day after Christmas, the most amazing thing happened.  He woke up at 7 AM but sat quietly in bed until 7:45.  Forty-five minutes of being quiet and still in bed.  Although my husband and I should have gone back and enjoyed this opportunity to sleep a little longer, we didn't know when this "spell" would be broken.  My husband later remarked that he may have just sat there processing what all had happened the day before...

He's had fun playing with all his toys, but I think next year especially I will try to rein in the amount of gifts that he gets.  First of all, our townhouse just doesn't have the room for more.  Second of all, I think there's a point where you can have too much stuff you just don't enjoy it.  Third, I am determined that I raise a son who has an awareness that stuff is not everything and there are many people who we need to bless with our presence, rather than expect presents from them.  We'll see how my objective goes.  For now, I think my family will just try to relax and take a small break before the New Year comes in at full speed.

Merry Christmas

Taking a little break from blogging on this day for God, Family and Peace.

I will share with you a little Christmas "miracle" that we were able to take part in.  We are coming upon the 4th anniversary of living in this house.  When we first moved in, my husband and I did a thorough cleaning of the place and found that Santa had left a gift in the upper cabinets in the kitchen for one of the family's children.  We contacted the previous owners and found out they were just as intrigued as to what Santa had left.

Fast forward 3 3/4 years.  I'm cleaning out my closet, looking for any straggler Christmas presents (as I'm coming to the realization my son is getting way too many presents for Christmas).

My hand comes upon something on a shelf I can't see.  A small container.  I pick it up and look at it, trying to place it.  My grandma and my husband's grandma had died in the last couple of years and the jewelry kind of looked like grandma jewelry and heirloom.  I talk with my husband and mom and they confirmed they had never seen it before.  I dug for the emails of the previous owners of the house and sent them a message.  

I almost immediately received a response.  The wife had lost some of her coveted (sentimental) jewelry and had thought the movers may have taken it or it had gotten lost in the move.  They were  excited!

They came Christmas Eve to pick it up.  They were so happy we had contacted them.  I told them I was happy their email still worked.  The wife gave me a hug and explained her mother's engagement ring was in there, as well as the first jewelry her husband had given her and basically all of her jewelry of sentimental value.  She told me she had been praying every night since she lost it that it would be found.  I apologized for being short and not finding it sooner on that high shelf.  They were very grateful, and the timing of finding it at Christmas was special too.  They were so grateful they even brought us a gift of wine.  Just thought I would share that story, especially extraordinary that she had been praying for almost 4 years.

God never gives up and neither should we.  Merry Christmas.

Why Christmas is not a vet's favorite time of year....

Let's maybe do this to the tune of the 12 Days of Christmas....

On the 1st Day of Christmas....
my clients gave to me...

One emergency vaccine visit (because they decided to board last visit, so it's a good reason to double book the vet)

On the 2nd Day of Christmas my clients gave to me....

Two emergency Health Certificates (because they didn't realize you needed one to take your Chihuahua to Mexico

On the 3rd Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Three cats who ingested tinsel...

On the 4th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me....

Four Foreign Bodies (dogs that ate beer skewers, underwear, the angel and an unknown Christmas present)

On the 5th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Five Dogs with Chocolate toxicity....

On the 6th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Six clients who come in late (without an excuse) and make the vet late...


On the 7th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Seven wonderful goodies (clients bring in really tasty treats that go straight to our hips)

On the 8th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me....

Eight cases of Pancreatitis....(This is a disease that happens when dogs eat fatty foods, I once had a patient who was a chihuahua/beagle mix eat AN ENTIRE FRIED TURKEY... The dog wasn't even as big as the fried turkey... Sick for a week...)

On the 9th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Nine Christmas puppies

and Ten Christmas kittens! (Great gifts as discussed previously...)

On the 11th Day of Christmas my clients gave to me...

Eleven cats in the tree (and one of them ate an ornament hook)


On the 12th Day of Christmas (and this is really accurate, because this is generally the whole week after Christmas)...

Twelve dogs with diarrhea/soft stool from all of their treats and Christmas goodies and a few extra things they snuck from the humans...


On a less cheerful note..

I did not include the holiday euthanasias on this song because it just doesn't seem appropriate.  We do a disproportionate amount of euthanasia's this time of year.  Either everyone's home for Christmas and the pet has been hanging on for the college student to get home or they don't want the animal dying on Christmas day, so they do it before it gets to that point or they don't want to be embarrassed when their guests come over.  The same thing goes with skin diseases.  This is the time of year that severe diseases of the skin get noticed and people want emergency fixes...

What a day...

I had quite a day this week...

The day before I had hoped that the surgery I had scheduled for the next day would cancel.  I just got the sense that the owner was going to be high maintenance.

I started the day thinking that patient and client were going to be a problem.  The dog was older and the owners were seen outside "praying" before surgery.  No pressure.  The dog did fine.   It was actually the routine procedure that had a complication.

I got my first surgery done and it was a little difficult with anesthesia, as the dog was not as we say, "a cheap date".  She required lots of drugs to keep her asleep, and careful monitoring.  Then, the next surgery, the routine one happened.  I had finished the procedure no problem and then the complication occurred.  There's more to it than that but we will leave it with it was a bad moment.  The patient is doing fine.  I however, have a few more grey hairs and I think my technician does as well.

I still had that last patient to do surgery on, the one I had been fearing the most.  I had almost gotten out of it because I had been told the owners had refused bloodwork.  Uh, yeah, I said, "not happening."  A older dog who the owner already expressed fears over anesthesia, there is no way I'm going to do an elective procedure without bloodwork.  That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Somehow, in the day that was going stinky, this patient, the one I most "feared" was no problem.  Go figure.

I did have a refreshing next appointment, a puppy visit.  As I got ready to go into the exam room, I heard the technician say, "her littermate had parvo and now she has diarrhea."  Those words are feared words.  I changed out of my lab coat to look for an extra one because parvovirus is HIGHLY contagious.  It is so contagious that once you see a dog in an exam room, the room should be bleached and closed down for 48 hours.  It's a virus that can travel on clothes, backpacks, shoes, etc..  When my dog was a puppy and hadn't had all of his vaccines, I used to come home from work and strip down and change before I touched him.  The only lab coat I could find without someone elses's name on it must have belonged to Goliath.  It was so large it went down to my ankles and I think my body could have fit through the sleeves.  Great, I thought, even the puppy visit has to be difficult...  Turned out the puppy hadn't been with her littermates in 6 weeks, making parvovirus a lot less likely...  Could nothing be easy?

I recognized the client at the front desk as I walked by reception.  She was a client I had seen with her older dog with a cough about 6 months ago.  Her dog was about 16 and had a horrible smoker/emphysema-like cough.  He was able to breathe on steroids but they kind of made him crazy.  I had talked to the owner 6 months ago about trying an inhaler.  My colleague had again talked to her about an inhaler.  I talked to her again last week, and offered to bring in my cat's inhaler to demonstrate (that was fun, a 16 year old blind dog with a cat-size inhaler).  Not only had she listened to my instructions about the inhaler; she went out and got it for her dog; she told me excitedly that her dog had slept through the night (6 hours) for the first time she could remember without waking up and coughing!  I needed that pick me up because the day was just not going our way.  (Even little things were breaking/not working etc.)

As the day was ending, the toilet backed up.  Yes.  I actually had to mop up the bathroom.  As one of the techs said, icing on the cake.

Then, both of my clients arrived late and I got a late start home.  I was ready for a nice relaxing evening with my family.

I then came home to inconsolable toddler who had been crying for 15 minutes since the dog had knocked him down, and a husband who also had a rough day.

I tried to focus on the 16 year old dog who yes, was better with my care and the fact that yes, my son became consolable with mommy's hugs and a little bit of pizza.  I fell asleep on the couch at 9pm.  What a day!  I'm not trying to whine, but just share how an ordinary day can become extraordinarily trying and those things that you think would be difficult could be quite easy and vice versa.