Last Monday, I found myself in a place that I’d hoped to never return to. I’ll continue with that thread in a second but allow me to provide you with some context. For two extremely long and grueling years, at the turn of this very century (you don’t get to say that often!), I worked as a Veterinary Technician in Cornell University’s Small Animal Intensive Care Unit. Now, I’ve had a plethora of jobs in my life and that was by far the worst. First of all, it was the only emergency clinic in the area at the time so it was super busy and you saw all sorts of traumatic things: gunshots, animals with drug balloons up their butts, hit by cars…. you name it. Some people are built for emergencies (bless them) but I’m not one of them. Despite knowing this beforehand, I was desperate for a vet tech job in the Ithaca area so I took it.
I haaaated this job. My coworker had a doctor’s note to eat every half hour because she had low blood sugar so that meant that she took 15 minute breaks every half hour. You do that math to figure out how much time she actually spent on the job. This meant that I was left to watch about a dozen animals clinging to life, most of the time completely alone, and to handle any new emergencies that came in. I peed myself on several occasions because I wasn’t able to make it to the bathroom in time; I was bitten by a dog and had to go on antibiotics because my arm became infected; the antibiotics led to me actually pooping my pants on the job once; and my coworker was so busy feasting that I was never able to take my meal breaks. At the end of each shift, looking down at my scrubs, I had no idea what was animal excrement or my own.
Most of the veterinary students were great to work with but a few were absolute nightmares. The worst one made me do all of her work and years later I turned on Animal Planet only to find that she was given a spot on one of their television shows. The worst irony is that it was a veterinary emergency show. She would literally walk into the ICU at Cornell, say that she had too much to do that day, and walk out leaving me to do all of her work… and they gave her a show! It still makes me furious because she would have never graduated if it wasn’t for me and all of the other techs who carried her sorry ass. Some students had zero idea how to care for their own animals. One thought it was okay to leave her dog in a crate for twelve hours a day without ever letting it go to the bathroom. Many students didn’t even like animals or were scared of them. I’d ask why they were in vet school if they didn’t like animals and they’d always say that their families back home considered vet school to be even more prestigious than going to medical school. Yup, to that, I roll my eyes.
One day, I was sitting in my car, feeling sick to my stomach about going into work. I’m in the parking lot, just sitting there, trying to collect myself and there’s a gentle tap, tap, tap on my window. It’s one of the veterinarians that I worked with but didn’t know very well. He simply said to me, “Don’t go in there because that job is killing you and it’s not worth it.” Then he just sauntered away, into the building. Those words cut so deep, that more than two decades later I still carry them with me.
I collected myself and worked my shift but later that afternoon I went to see my mother who was an administrative assistant in the career office at a nearby community college. I told her that I HAD to leave my job and that I’m considering a total career change. My vet tech degree had led me to three terrible jobs and my future prospects were more of the same. I mentioned how I had just had my annual exam at Planned Parenthood that week and how I really wanted to work there. She thought that I was crazy but I explained that they all seemed really happy and were having a lot of fun. They also treated me like family as soon as I walked through the door. It felt like I’d known them all my life. It was honestly a bit uncanny how much fun I had during a pelvic exam with these people! As soon as I said that, a fax spit out of the machine near her desk. Right on cue, it was a job opening for a Medical Associate at Planned Parenthood. My mom took the piece of paper out of the machine, glanced at it, and handed it to me, incredulous. I immediately knew that I had the job. Before the ink was dry on my resume, I put in my two weeks notice, and I found my home for the next ten years. Planned Parenthood supported me through getting my bachelors degree, getting my masters degree, my field biology jobs, my winery jobs, and a wide variety of other adventures. They’re my forever family.
I’m getting off track with all of this but that story deserves to be told because sometimes coincidences don’t exist and me finding Planned Parenthood was way more than that. It was destiny! But let’s fast forward now to last Monday. For the first time since I quit, I found myself back in the dreaded Cornell Small Animal ICU. My friend’s dog had been hit by a car (she’s on the mend now so have no fear) and I was waiting with him while they worked on her. The several hour wait left me with not much else to do but think. For the first time in about 25 years, I thought about the job (and career for that matter) that I had left behind and how it shaped me.
That job was my first real introduction to being in the same room with Death. Now, by that time I was no stranger to death. I’d lost all of my grandparents, my high school best friend, my sister, and a myriad of other animals and people who touched my life. As a vet tech, I’d euthanized more animals than I’d like to count. Death was no stranger but the ICU was different. It was the first time that I had felt its constant presence in the room with me. It was there just in the periphery of my vision every day. It would gently tell me that no matter how hard I tried to save every animal that came through those doors, ultimately it was out of my hands. No matter what, I didn’t have the final say in whether something lived or died. I could crack every chest open and massage their hearts with my bare hands until they started beating again, and it still wouldn’t make a difference. It made me feel powerless and angry and I was determined to prove whatever this was wrong even if I had to crack myself into a million pieces to do it.
I didn’t have words for all of this back then, but I do now. And being in that waiting room and thinking back, I can say that I was very much in competition with Death and believe it or not, I had sort of won. I’m not being obtuse or woo-woo when I say all of this. For the two years, working in an insanely busy ICU, not a single patient died on my watch. Sure, a few animals came in dead on arrival or nearly so, but the ones I was able to care for during my shift, never passed. Death always held back. I felt it there, intently watching me work my ass off with complete reverence for the love and care that I put into every patient, so much so that it would wait until I was gone from the building to collect them. It’s like it didn’t want to hurt my feelings or offend.
Before you say that I must not have seen anything bad in those two years, I say poppycock. I cared for a sheepdog that fell off the side of Taughannock Falls (which is taller than Niagara Falls) and bounced several times off the rocks at the bottom. I cared for a German shepherd that was dragged for miles by his owner who forgot that they’d tied him to the bumper of his truck. By the time the dog got to me, he didn’t have any skin on his body. Both of these animals, and many more, lived and went home to their families on my watch. That is a crazy realization and I’m not sure what it means.
I think about how this experience has informed my future. I’ve since been the caregiver to both animals and people and they’ll pass away when I’ve temporarily handed the baton to someone else. For example, for two years I cared for people with dementia in a private home. I was given leave to return to Yellowstone for a couple months and as soon as I left, one of the long-term residents passed away. The same can be said for my pet crow–as soon as I left for work in Yellowstone, my mother finds him dead “of a broken heart.” I can’t seem to catch Death in the act for the life of me!
So was I ever in competition with Death? I’ll never really know until it’s my turn to get whisked away by it. Then I plan to ask a ton of annoying questions. But my time in the ICU, taught me humility. At the time, I definitely felt like I had something to prove, especially to the presence annoyingly breathing down my neck every damn day; the thing that would take my patients as soon as my shift was over. But its gentle nature when it came to me, saving me from the day-to-day agony of loss, makes me think that it was not a competitor but instead a silent partner. It knows me better than my stubborn self and refused to give me more heartbreak than I could handle. More than anything, a building block of mutual respect was laid in that ICU and continues to build to this day. Those agonizingly long and stressful days taught me to do my very best despite the odds and sometimes my hard work would be repaid by forces much larger than myself.
I told my therapist all of this and he chuckled and remarked about how ironic it was that I’d pursue being a death doula after all of this. And yes, nowadays, I feel that same presence whenever I go into nursing homes. It lingers in the corners gently reminding me that although I like to think that I can save the world and everyone in it, I most certainly can not. I’m not the one in control here and there’s no escape.
The biggest difference between now and then is that death was always an emergency. Death was something to fight against–my divine rival. In doula school, the biggest thing that you’re taught to pass along to your clients is that death is NOT an emergency. There’s no need to panic and call 911. You can sit for as long as you want with your loved one. You can sit comfortably, peacefully with Death. The competition is no longer there, like in the ICU. Instead, it’s a partnership.
The Unmaker 