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Sometimes I hate being a doctor. There are days when it's good, I admit, and everything is lively and exciting and fun, and your coworkers sing with you in the back of the clinic as you prance around trying to teach the office cat how to dance the Macarena and binge on chocolates that grateful clients brought you after you heroically saved their puppy.
Today was not one of those days. Today wasn't even one of those days that I survive by telling myself that it'll make a witty and amusing story at the end. It was one of the days where I realize that I would have a much calmer, less tragic life if I had pursued a career in a less life-and-death field, perhaps as a data-enterer, or an alphabetizer, or a pencil sharpener.
Bad news is bad. I'm sure this comes as a blinding revelation to noone. But there are gradations of bad - giving someone bad news when they come in expecting to hear bad news, or at least vaguely aware that their pet is sick, is difficult but ultimately tolerable. They're prepared for it in some corner of their mind, and they believe you, and even if their world falls apart they're at least able to see the pieces and know that they're there to be put back together. Giving someone bad news, especially of the imminently fatal sort, when they thought they were bringing a healthy baby in for routine puppy/kitten vaccines.
I can't imagine what it must feel like from the client's side. They can't see what I see, so they have no proof other than my word, and it must feel like some horrible mistake or prank. And I hate myself for having to say it, and I search for ways that I might be wrong, or that it might be fixable, and I wish more than anything that I could just tell them that I was kidding. And instead I need to prove to them that I'm right, and they're wrong, and this critter they love and have just spent the past month shaping their life around is going to be gone in a matter of days. I know it's not my fault, and that I didn't make the animal sick, but it sure feels like I did at the time.
I spent my whole life wanting to be a doctor. Today, just for a little while, I want to take it back and exchange it for a fix-everything-stick.
Today was not one of those days. Today wasn't even one of those days that I survive by telling myself that it'll make a witty and amusing story at the end. It was one of the days where I realize that I would have a much calmer, less tragic life if I had pursued a career in a less life-and-death field, perhaps as a data-enterer, or an alphabetizer, or a pencil sharpener.
Bad news is bad. I'm sure this comes as a blinding revelation to noone. But there are gradations of bad - giving someone bad news when they come in expecting to hear bad news, or at least vaguely aware that their pet is sick, is difficult but ultimately tolerable. They're prepared for it in some corner of their mind, and they believe you, and even if their world falls apart they're at least able to see the pieces and know that they're there to be put back together. Giving someone bad news, especially of the imminently fatal sort, when they thought they were bringing a healthy baby in for routine puppy/kitten vaccines.
I can't imagine what it must feel like from the client's side. They can't see what I see, so they have no proof other than my word, and it must feel like some horrible mistake or prank. And I hate myself for having to say it, and I search for ways that I might be wrong, or that it might be fixable, and I wish more than anything that I could just tell them that I was kidding. And instead I need to prove to them that I'm right, and they're wrong, and this critter they love and have just spent the past month shaping their life around is going to be gone in a matter of days. I know it's not my fault, and that I didn't make the animal sick, but it sure feels like I did at the time.
I spent my whole life wanting to be a doctor. Today, just for a little while, I want to take it back and exchange it for a fix-everything-stick.
