Left, left, left right left...

Learning left from right is something that children do pretty young. I'm not sure exactly at what age but I'm sure that by the age of 10, most kids have that down pat. Kids are also pretty clear on the concept of mirror images. They look in the mirror and raise their right hand and they see their mirror image raise its left hand. Pretty simple. My six-year-old demonstrated this for me last year at a school event.

So, what's the deal with the people who insist that their dog is limping on the left front leg, and then after a lot of back and forth and arguing and namecalling, finally admit that they mean THEIR left, and the dog's right?

I have a patient who came in about six weeks ago and saw a colleague. The appointment was booked over the phone as "check right leg - limping." On physical exam, the dog was found to be limping on the right foreleg. Rest & Rimadyl was prescribed after radiographs were declined and the exam did not reveal a specific cause. The dog went home and recovered uneventfully.

Two weeks later, the owner called again and told the receptionist that the problem was back. The receptionist said "his right leg again?" and the owner said "no, left," and the receptionist remarked that this must be a new problem. The owner then got irate and screamed that the doctor must have written it down wrong, because it was the same leg, and it was the left leg, because she was looking at him right now and could see it was the left leg etc. She eventually came in and saw another one of my colleagues. The dog was not limping on any of his legs at that time. Again, radiographs were declined. She argued with my colleague about which leg it was. She pointed at the dog's right leg and said "now, this is definitely the leg he's been limping on. The left one." My colleague explained that that was in fact the dog's right leg. The owner argued about it. There's really no need to describe the argument I'm sure. You've been there, right?

So anyway she called me today & told me the dog was limping on the left leg "again." I said her left or the dog's left? She said "they're the same left. Left is left." I reminded her that the past two times she'd pointed to the right leg. So she said "oh right. You guys go by HIS sides, not mine." And it made me wonder - why do people do this? I don't take my kid to the pediatrician and say his left leg hurts and point to his right leg because that is what I see in my left visual field. Why do people do this with their pets???

2 Live Crew: A lesson in female anatomy.

This is not a veterinary story in any way, though it does reference an alternative word for cat and well as the word “vagina.” I wish I could tell the story in person, because the pronunciation is key.

I used to work for a very funny man…. He often said wildly inappropriate things and I think he even made a joke and rubbed his nipples at my job interview. But as he reminded me of Baloo the bear and when he said “I love you” to his staff (and meant it), I never took offense.

His recounting of stories was amazing, often including spot on imitations as well as bursting out into operatic song. This is one of his stories.

While he was in vet school, his wife was a teacher at an inner city school in the late 1980’s. This was about the time the group 2 Live Crew was pumping out songs destined to be banned. If you know 2 Live Crew, you know where this story is heading.

A kindergartener was skipping along the halls of the school singing, “Hey, hey, we want some puuussssy….” (click for full lyrics)

Said kindergartener was promptly tagged and bagged by his teacher and he was taken into the principal’s office. There the principal demanded if he knew what “a pussy is.”

The kid looked down and shuffled his feet, “I dunno, something you eat?”

Fo rizzal, to quote someone slightly more contemporary Luther Campbell. He said that. Well, at least he was getting some sexual education.

The icing on the cake was when the principal, a rather buttoned up woman shouted, “It’s not pussy, the word is VAG-in- A, VAG-in-A.”

Life, it is real and it is weird.

Racer X keeps his speed in a little glass jar....

Now, hospitals and their staff definitely get the award for the most drug seekers, but veterinarians are movin' on up the chain. It is a little harder to for me to deny an animal with an injury pain medication when their owners look a little shady. Hell, on any given day, I may look a little shady too. But there are some cases where I am going to recommend me giving the animal an injection for pain rather than sending you with an Rx for a controlled substance.

Instance #1: You have a such a serious case of meth mouth that I mistake the smell for your cat's abscess.

Instance #2: You ask for percocet for your cat, only you truncate the name and call them "percs." I would make an exception if you just didn't understand that tylenol is deadly to cats....but "percs?" Honestly!

Instance #3: You tell me that your dog tolerates methadone: he drinks it out of your mouth.

Instance #4: I regret meeting you with your hit by car dog at the clinic late one night when you start telling me how you chew up your old fentanyl patches because you are in such bad pain.

Instance #5: I recognize your name from a client/patient that was at another clinic where I worked last week for the same seizure disorder. Can you say Keppra??? And no rescue valium for you!

Non compos mentis

The VBB, you may have noticed, complain about clients a lot. That is not to say that all clients are terrible. There are many we simply aren't mentioning here, because honestly - would it be any fun to read about my perfectly lovely day with perfectly lovely people bringing perfectly normal pets for perfectly routine visits? No. That's not funny, and it's not fun. So anyway, there's one segment of the frustrating client population that I don't believe we've mentioned yet. We've covered the rude, the abusive, the ignorant, and the stupid, but not the ones who are not of sound mind.

So.

It may not be obvious to all, but the mentally ill/mentally disabled/demented are a group which is present in society, and that includes the population of people who bring their pets to a veterinarian's office. I happen to have a lot of elderly clients, and a good number of them are very sadly in various stages of dementia. This is terrible. I feel terrible for them, and I feel terrible for their pets. I usually start out trying to help by making them large-print schedules of when to give their pet medication, and often I will ask for an additional contact person and then try to get their son or daughter or whomever to help out. But unfortunately, more than once, I've had a client become so incompetent that he or she has actually become confused, and thought I was a physician, and then gotten distraught when he or she realized there was an animal in the room. These were clients who used one of those "elder transport" services, so no one was with them. It's heartbreaking all around when these things happen. Luckily I've never had one of these people decompensate to the point that I had to call 911 or anything. The few times it has been really bad I have led them into my personal office, sat them down with a bottle of water and a cookie, and had a tech babysit them until they pulled it together enough to move forward, or their ride showed up, whichever came first.

Along the lines of mentally ill, I've been keeping a diary of my client/patient encounters since I entered practice, and I was reviewing it recently and found this from many years ago:

Saturday, I'm giving a cat an enema when I hear yelling from the reception area. I go up to the front desk and see a client literally screaming to the receptionist  "You are EVIL. You are an EVIL LIAR. I can NOT BELIEVE you would say that!" The receptionist is sitting mutely and staring at the woman. I interrupted the tirade and asked if I could help. The woman sweetly said that yes, she had Fluffy here for an office call. I brought them into an exam room, did an exam, chatted about Fluffy, and prepared to send her home when she said "and by the way, I will need all of the records for all of my pets because I can't come back here. I can never trust that SHE won't harm my animals." I said I was sorry to hear that and that I was sure my boss would be sorry to lose her as a client, and asked if there was anything I could do to make her happy today. She said all I could do was fire the receptionist, which of course I couldn't do, seeing as how I just work there, so I said ok, I will ask the receptionist to get the charts ready for transfer. So, we did, and the woman freaks out on me "No, no! I must have the ORIGINAL forms. You are SO SNEAKY. No copies!! Just ORIGINALS!" I offered her the phone number of the state board of veterinary medicine and explained that if she called them she'd see I was not lying when I told her that I was legally required to keep the originals. She then jumped down my throat, called me an "EVIL LIAR" and stalked out. Half an hour later, she called and apologized, and has been doing so twice daily since then!

Clearly, that is a mentally ill person, right? I mean, no one mentally sound would do something like that, right? Another one from my archives: I have also had a middle-aged man start taking his clothes off in the exam room. When I exclaimed "stop that right now!" he looked befuddled and said "oh! sorry, I thought I was told to disrobe and wait for the doctor." I said no one had told him that and he meekly apologized. Then he asked me if I knew where the lettuce was. I said I did not have any lettuce, and asked if he wanted me to go ahead and examine his dog now. He said "yes please, but is it ok if I wait out there? There are too many people talking in here." I sent him to the waiting room happily. He and I had been the only people in the room.

Vets do not receive training in how to handle this sort of situation. We muddle through as best as we can. It can be pretty difficult at times.

Sex Education 101

A call to the emergency line at our hospital:

Caller: " I think that my cat is having trouble giving birth. She is rolling around on the floor and meowing real loud!"

Vet: "How old is your cat?"

Caller: "She's 9 months old, never been out of the house."

Vet: "Do you have any other cats? Any tom cats?"

Caller: "No, no other cats. Just her and she never goes outside."

Vet: "Well, I think your cat is going into heat. If she hasn't been around any male cats, it is unlikely that she is pregnant."

Caller: "Oh, ok."

*******few minutes later the guy calls again******

Caller: "I forgot to tell you, we do have a chihuahua...he's real close to her size."

****vet laughing******

Caller: (mad) "Well, you don't have to laugh, is she having chikitties or not?"

Seriously. And this guy had kids. Public education fail, folks!