Emotional Bond

Even as professionals, we too emotionally become bonded to our patients...Unfortunately in emergency medicine we often are faced with critical patients who don't realize we are there or are very very sick and have a poor outcome. Often times our patients also may stay a day or two for "simple" diarrhea or vomiting and those are the happy outcomes. 

As technicians we spend a lot of quality time with our patients and sometimes cannot help but become attached. We are involved in the every aspect of care with the patient and spend a lot of time perhaps just sitting down next to them and petting them on the head to keep them comfortable or administering medications, or "bedside" monitoring vital signs. Our jobs are to provide quality care and with that comes emotions to each and every one we care for on a daily basis. 

Recently we had a patient that was a middle aged lab and was blind, a very very sweet dog and spent a great deal of time in the hospital. The patient came in already blind and had both eyes removed previously from primary glaucoma but fortunately dogs adjust well to being blind. Often times they rely on other senses such as auditory and olfactory to adapt to their environments. This patient was very sick and had been through a lot at the Primary Veterinarian before coming to us. She had an exploratory (a surgical procedure for exploring the abdomen for various reasons) and was very depressed and not feeling well. She had a long stay in the hospital but fortunately went home feeling much better than when she arrived. Her technician was quite attached to her and loved this dog just in a few hours of her first night having her as a patient. Come to find out dad had a video on youtube of the patient with her at home which was very touching. We never get to see the patients in the happy days and it was great to see this one in her own home happy and healthy. 

Nights with patients like this keep us motivated to come back another day even through all the sad stories we could all tell in our experiences, we do love our jobs. We would love to see all of our patients make it home and continue on a happy and healthy life just like this one in particular. 

Thanks for reading, sorry I havent been posting recently. I am going to try and keep up at least once a week or so on just random topics or things that happen in our positions as a Veterinary Technician.