Veterinary – Page 2 – the Dig and Flow

The Things With Feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

~ Emily Dickinson

Dawn drifted across the lower field with tufts of mist. Cool air made the ninety-degree forecast seem impossible, even though it was true. Our Cornish cross chickens had fasted overnight, as in preparation for a sacred ritual. We ate our five a.m. breakfast, but did not eat again until all was finished, late in the afternoon.

I hoisted the picnic table to an ideal spot, where the cedar limbs draped over it, and propped it level with scrap boards. Our largest enamel canner full of water heated on the stove. Andrew carted the new-to-us chicken plucker—a stainless steel drum lined with black rubber fingers—into position not far from the table. This contraption would pluck three chickens in less than ten seconds, vast improvement from plucking one chicken in over ten minutes.

We scooted the chicken tractor, a moveable shelter with an open bottom, onto fresh grass for the birds’ last morning. All day I found crisp green blades poking from an esophagus or a gizzard, evidence of how these chickens spent their final minutes.

Two metal cones, pointing downward, hung from our black locust clothesline post, with buckets below them. Each chicken squawked once or twice as Andrew snagged them from the grassy pen, making their typical “hey, you grabbed me” sound, not a panicked chicken yell. They traveled down the yard quietly, tucked under his arm. He slid them, headfirst, into the cone, swiftly, without fuss. They rested there, swaddled upside-down, strangely calm in this position.

Throughout the day I took a few photos, I told our friend that evening, who seemed surprised. “Will you be making a horror show?” he asked, half joking. I paused. It was true that the work had been messy, with blood and guts. There was killing. There were dead bodies. There was no horror.

At one point, mid-morning, Stella sat near me on our tree swing, swaying gently. She watched Andrew approaching the killing cones with a chicken and started crying, “Get me down, Mom!” I rushed over to release her, to allow her to run away. As soon as her kicking feet hit the ground, she made a beeline for Andrew.

I watched her stand firm beside him, the chicken’s head at her eye level. She had been sad earlier, wanting to keep the chickens “the way they are.” Now she faced the moment head-on, teaching me again about courage and wonder. Then she turned, dance-running back towards me, chanting, “It’s gonna be yum yum yum yum yummy!”

Does it feel strange, our friend wondered, that your job is to help animals? Absolutely. As a veterinarian, I pour my energies into piecing animals back together, keeping them alive. But this work, too—raising birds from chicks to meat without small cages or long highway rides—fulfills my veterinary oath: the protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering. In this work, too, I find hope.

All day, a breeze blew through the cedar canopy where I stood, taking apart chickens. Their now-bald skin, soft and cool under my fingers, yielded to my knife. I reached into their still-warm interiors to tease out the tubes and pieces of life, understanding each tender tissue and its job. I saved their hearts, like grapes, and their noble livers, smooth and dense, the color of passion. Sometimes in our work we get the chance to indulge in reverence.

2015-07-27 19.24.42 — Supervising this process is exhausting.

And a Dog

Someday there will be words for how we loved our dog Mesa across the first thirteen years of our marriage, five different states, and two children. Someday I will write how we parted ways in Georgia, our hands running over and over her familiar spots, releasing her. Meantime, I’ve had a dog-shaped hole in me.

It took me a year to be ready to fill that hole. Then, this summer, I found myself combing the rescue groups, impressed that mutt adoptions in New York require screening so rigorous that even after dedicating my career to dogs, I barely seemed to qualify. In other places we’ve lived—especially Arizona and Alabama—the puppy surplus allowed you to adopt a dog just by showing up. Several local rescue groups here actually import puppies from the Deep South to loving, carefully screened, homes in the Northeast.

We (okay, I) eventually found a litter of mixed breed puppies, born to a lovely mutt—rescued while heavily pregnant—who seemed Australian Shepherd-ish and some kind of spaniel-ish. Faced with her litter of twelve puppy internet photos, I picked one.

“Sam, we’ll need to think about what we want to name the puppy,” I said, the day before we got her.

He gazed into the distance, then announced, “Skip.”

I congratulated his idea as one for the list of ideas, then we consulted Stella, who echoed that Skip was a great name. They quickly became a united front on this issue. “You got to name our other pets,” they argued, which was true, since our other pets were a decade older than our kids.

So Skip, our now 8 week-old little girl puppy, has joined the family. She seems not only smart, but wise for her age. Skip has good intuitions about playing right with kids, ducks, and other dogs. She’s house training quickly, shadows us everywhere around the farm, and sleeps upside-down with her soft belly exposed.

I will never truly understand why we keep opening our hearts to these creatures who will inevitably shatter us with their death. I do know that some part of me requires occupation by a dog. I know that nothing can replace those ears flying backwards as a furry body bounds towards me, those eyes meeting mine and understanding something about me, that warm puppy sleeping trustingly across my arms.

The Edges of Things

Fog suited me two weekends ago, lying on Saturday morning as clouds in the hollows, then hugging the car on Sunday morning. I welcomed it especially on Sunday. Maybe I craved that embrace, halfway through a long weekend at the emergency clinic.

Fog isn’t ideal for driving, but that morning it felt strangely protective. I didn’t need to worry about what lay beyond my immediate path. Scenic Route 20 rose and fell ahead of me like a breathing chest. I could trust its next breaths without seeing them very far in advance.

Fog relieved me of scenery, muting the view rushing past. It focused me inward. I had already spent early waking hours mulling over yesterday’s patients, stuck on the ones I didn’t fully understand. Why his symptoms? Why her death? Now, while on low volume, BBC radio speculated in understatements about why we like to eat capsaicin—food that burns—I lingered on death.

Fog sharpened my eyes for the edges of things—the edges of deer poised at the edge of the road. So much could change in one leap. Before that singular event, there would be quiet, like prayer. I imagined the edge of a small group in Charleston, their prayers. Then: one man with a gun, one church full of pain. One nation’s attention called, again, to its non-healing wounds.

Fog usually lingers over the farm ponds and rivers, low places, like it did on Saturday. But on Sunday, it shrouded the entire road, from high up near home to the bridge over Schoharie Creek. Then, it cleared as I emerged through the little town—Esperance: Hope.

Fog, during the same commute the next weekend, seemed distant. Lifting, spreading sunlight illuminated the whole road, making each field vibrant. The radio news beamed with what felt like big gestures towards respect for each other. Confederate flags reeled inward, folding into private places. Rainbow banners waved across social media.

I carried the news and voices with me all the way to work. It was the same work as last weekend, with crises of broken bodies and sick hearts and upset guts. It was the same work, with the potential to heal—or at least to attend—to stand beside the hurting. This weekend, I traveled to that work without the fog, feeling ready for the day’s possibilities.

Life, Winning

There are tears. There is trying too hard. There is caring too much about small, broken lives. There is the perfume gushing in the open car window, from black locust trees dripping with blossoms along the highway on my way home. There is an evening glow across tree-covered hills and partly-mowed fields.

A few hours ago, a young woman gasped and slid down the exam room wall to the floor, curled her knees to her chest and sobbed under the bench. Her dog was critical, I explained. Bleeding internally. He might survive if we gather ourselves and act.

I pull into the driveway. Beside our red barn, ostrich ferns curl fiddleheads, thick and unbidden, inside a disheveled stone-bordered bed. Next year we will eat them; they will always taste like spring. Unfurled, they invite our kids into imaginary worlds. They are the color of hope.

Caught in a car engine fan belt, the cat’s front paw dangled by a thread, bone jagged. Her wide lovely eyes, slim six-month-old shoulders, and softest long black hair contrast her grotesque injury. I bargain for her life, knowing prompt surgery costs the owners too much and costs the emergency hospital staff time that we don’t seem to have on this busy holiday weekend.

Two days before Memorial Day, frost singed our seventy tomato plants, which we’d planted with an eye on weather and too much optimism. I walked between their bruised-looking leaves, wishing them green. Regret tempted me to lie there among them in the dirt, feeling defeated. Within a week, though, fresh growth pushed from their shriveled tops—life, winning.

Two hours past my shift’s end, I have just made the last phone call. The overnight doctor, with her jaw set against her overwhelming task, has taken notes on all my hospitalized patients. As I’m leaving, a patient codes. I turn my back on the capable CPR team and walk out.

For our anniversary, we intended to buy a fruit tree, or maybe two to pollinate each other. I find myself digging seven holes—three cherries, two plums, two apricots—into hard, rocky soil behind the house. Together, we line the holes with black, composted manure from beside the barn. As the sun drops, we hold each young tree straight, tucking it into our lives. Relaxed in this work, we talk about how good it is to watch things grow, and how, someday, there will be fruit.

We Are Not Alone: A Cell-Based Model

My dad hangs up from our morning conversation to make a necessary business call. We’ve been rambling about the brave and terrifying endeavor of farming, and how Andrew and I will be insulated by our jobs from the raw risks that my dad and mom faced, farming. After he signs off, I forget myself for a minute and keep the phone pressed to my ear, not ready to disconnect. In the silence, I hear my pulse.

Our bodies keep a fine balance between allowing blood to flow and stopping blood from flowing; it’s called hemostasis. I used to think financial stability was linear, like medicine’s older models of hemostasis. In veterinary school, we charted how blood clots as two pathways, separate until they join at the end, neatly. Until recently, I’ve viewed keeping money in our accounts as a similarly straightforward process.

Put in money from our paychecks. Pay sensible bills. Refrain from spending extravagantly. Draw some arrows, add some Roman numerals for effect, and you arrive at the bottom of the chart with a magical balance that prevents uncontrolled hemorrhage of money.

The past year or so, however, blew up my chart. We followed the formula, with paychecks and sensible bills, but unexpected variables appeared. The cat, the car, and I all required surgery. We lost money on a house we owned, then finally sold. We moved for the second time in two years, then planned to move again. Our bank account looked anemic.

This fall, I took a veterinary continuing education seminar on hemostasis, “My Patient is Bleeding and Won’t Stop.” It was a prelude to transfusion medicine. Some patients just won’t survive without transfusion. “The ideal donor,” the critical care specialist said in his British accent, “is healthy with a good temperament—placid and sensible—and very food motivated.” My parents, who kept us from crashing this year, were ideal donors.

Not every bleeding bank account gets the support it needs and survives. We are beyond lucky. I have whole new definitions for stability, humility, and gratitude.

Having a frugal temperament and minimalist tastes, I’ve enjoyed modest financial stability since my first real job at age sixteen. I don’t recognize myself in critical financial condition. New arrows and factors clutter my tidy chart for stable finances. My emerging understanding of managing money as an adult has shifted from, “Why does this seem so hard for some people,” to “This is more complicated than I thought,” to “How does anyone stay afloat in this real, real world?”

Medical experts have recently had more complex insights into our bodies’ processes for hemostasis. Stepping back from tidy, separate cascades, they’ve begun drawing messier pictures with more circles and arrows weaving around each other. It’s called a “cell-based model,” which tells me that its okay to look at things in context, to consider the complications, and that the tangles are just what happens when your heart keeps pushing your blood through your messy body. It tells me that the processes of living don’t happen neatly, in a void, and that we are not alone in trying to figure them out.