Something I Though Everyone Knew

If you make so much fried chicken in your home that the unmistakable fragrance of grease and fowl flesh emanate from not only your pores, but those of your dog, it's time to stop making fried chicken.

I had a patient the other day that I could literally smell all the way down the hall. I don't mean this in the way you'd first imagine upon finding out I work in an animal hospital, but I'm not sure that this was much better. I walked into the room, and found a sparsely toothed smiling man, a bored looking woman, and a terrified looking poodle waiting to see the doctor about his cataracts. The first thing the man did was shake my hand enthusiastically, tell me proudly that he had cataracts too, then asked if I could tell which of his eyes was prosthetic. He puffed out his chest and rolled his good eye from side to side in his head while I pretended to be stumped. This man was clearly enjoying himself more than anyone else in the room.

It turned out that he was home bound and the bored looking woman in the room was his driver. All of them smelled overwhelmingly like fried chicken. He kind of reminded me of an elderly neighbor who lived down the hall from me in my previous apartment building. My neighbor also had a dog, the most morbidly obese daschund I'd ever seen, and their diet, man and dog, consisted solely of tator tots and Pepsi. He and his dog gave off a similarly unmistakable greasy odor which makes eating tator tots difficult for me to this day.
He used to knock on my door at all hours of the night to tell me that he was having a heart attack and was going to the hospital, so could I watch his dog for him...then he never went. Not once. That is of no consequence to my story, but it serves to illustrate that the people in my life have always provided me ample writing material. I think my neighbor and this client probably would have gotten along just fine.

During the course of this man's visit, we deduced that since the man was basically a shut-in, he did not take his dog to the vet regularly, if ever, and he wanted the dog's eye removed so they could both have glass eyes. Y'know, like a bonding thing. So maybe he could invite his friends over for fried chicken and chat about their shared ophthalmology experiences?

The more I work with people and think I start to understand them, someone like this comes along and completely ruins the curve. It's not that bad, though, because it's things like this that keep my days entertaining. I just can't help but wonder exactly how much fried chicken someone would have to eat to create an aura like that. It's truly astounding.

General Specialty

There are certain times in life when your learning curve is very high, which consequently means that your comfort level is usually very low- both of which are very exciting. I am currently experiencing such a high learning curve because my life is a series of "new frontiers." I use the word "frontier," not because of how nice it would sound in a Hallmark card, but because it's literal definition pertains to my situation. I have reached the limits of what is comfortable and familiar, and have taken a giant step beyond those limits into landscapes I've never known before. For example, tomorrow I will turn 28 years old for the first time ever. I will take the knowledge and wisdom I learned from being 27 and figure out how to apply it to being a Twenty Eight Year Old. Just like I'm learning how to be Diabetic All Over Again, I'm learning how to be a Girlfriend, and I'm learning how to be Almost Thirty and Living at My Parents' House [Without Going Insane].

Most specifically, though, I am learning how to be a Veterinary Ophthalmology Technician. For me, this means learning what it's like to have a Stable Working Environment, to be Treated with Respect, and to Have Weekends Off. New jobs are hard because learning a new job is like learning to function in an entirely new culture, regardless of any relevant experience or presence of mind you may have. You have to learn new rules, both concrete and unspoken. Unspoken rules include the popular notion that you have to learn to be accepted by your new coworkers. I don't abide by that rule, because I do not care if they accept me or not, I only care that we can all do our jobs well together. The fact that I don't care what they think of me has already been extremely offputting to my entirely-female coworkers. They'll get over it.

Adapting to new coworkers is only a piece of the puzzle. Though I have four years as a veterinary technician under my belt, I have to learn a new and intricate set of skills for veterinary ophthalmology. After a week and a half I am already intimately acquainted with the anatomy of an eyeball, and have only hit the tip of the iceberg of all the unimaginable procedures they can do to fix a seemingly infinite list of things that can go wrong with an animal's eyes.

The years I spent vet-teching in general practice are by no means futile, however. They are absolutely essential to being able to learn the job. My experience as a newbie technician at a specialty practice is different from being a newbie at any other job I've ever had. I'm not starting new in a field, I'm just starting to take on one tiny part of the field and learning more about it than anyone ever really wanted to know, ever. It's pretty fascinating stuff, though. It's amazing to realize that the more I learn about something, the less I actually know. Or, I could really blow your mind and say something like: In the eyes of a dog, I see that I am but I tiny speck of dust in the universe.

It's a good thing I don't plan on getting too deep in this blog post.

I've started to pick up on a vibe among the new people I work with, and I usually find it amusing...when me being the butt of the joke isn't involved. The vibe is that Specialists are way cooler than anyone in a General Practice. Oh yes, they are very snooty about this. Every time I make a mistake, which happens often (and is unfailingly pointed out to everyone in the building including the dermatology clinic down the hall so everyone can join in the fun of laughing at the new girl's folly) (and of course everyone sits around and waits for the new girl's every mistake so they have an excuse to carry out the above action plan, because if they don't, how the hell else will their seniority, and entire existence, be validated?), every time I make a mistake, someone invariably says, "Geez, didn't they teach you ANYTHING in General Practice?!" spoken like the very words left a bad taste in their mouths. Professionally speaking, I am learning a job with a much higher standard for a starting place. To put it another way, Specialty is The Shit, and until I get the General Practice out of the fibers of my clothes, I am barely worthy of cleaning up the shit.

It reminds me of the movie Best in Show, where Fred Willard, the clueless and inappropriate commentator of the prestigious dog show, provides his fellow commentator, the knowledgeable former seasoned dog show judge, with a series of personal anecdotes, tasteless jokes, and unrelated questions. Like:

"Now tell me, which one of these dogs would you want to have as your wide receiver on your football team?"
or
"And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten..."

In one scene, toward the end of the dog show, Fred Willard's character finally gets around to taking an interest in the dog show. He asks, "So, these are supposedly the best dogs around. How do they determine the winner? Obviously they start on a higher level than the basic 'sit' 'fetch' 'roll over'...do they just looking at how well a dog is groomed?" His fellow commentator just looked at him in silent exasperation and wouldn't dignify his question with an answer.

It's a funny moment in the movie, I laughed, I get that. But, as a person who never really understood dog shows or the people who devote their entire lives to being in them, I never found his question to be all that unreasonable. He was just trying to make a connection, come on. Obviously I

The Specialist is like the seasoned dog show judge: way too cool to answer such tedious ignorant questions that General Practice vets spend their days answering for people. Specialists are, like, totally too good for that. So I guess that all things considered, this looks good for me in the long run. Should I ever start to get snooty about my past as a general practice technician, someone better slap me across the face in a dramatic manner, but it does mean that I have paid my dues and moved up in the world. As much as my coworkers are (trying to) give me shit all day long instead of helping me learn, I am proud of myself for getting here. I can already see tiny ways I am starting to carve a place for myself there, and the uncomfortable newness and insecurity will soon be far behind me.

I hope I can say that about all my new "frontiers" soon as well.

The "I Made It" Moment

I've completed three days at the new job, and I still haven't seen any penguins. This is rather unfortunate, but I know the time will come.

It is kind of amazing to hear myself say that I've only been working there three days because it feels like much much longer. I'm not even sure if I mean that in a good way or a bad way. I mean when you're new to a job, especially if you're the only one hired on at that point in time, and you're also replacing someone who had been there for years...and your coworkers are all women...it's reasonable to expect a period of [unreasonably] dramatic transition. The new coworkers are not very friendly to me, only because I had the audacity to show up for my shifts and NOT be their friend who recently quit. So they're not necessarily an inclusive bunch, but I wouldn't expect much less from a group of women who have been working together for years.

They actually do a lot of things together. Road trips, family dinners, vacations, menstrual cycles, diets... Oh yes the diets. They are all on the same diet, hence from this point on in this blog my new coworkers will be known as the Synchronized Dieters. I do not to ask them for any details about the diet, but I do know that the diet involves drinking water, making check marks on the dry-erase board recording how much water you drink, and squealing with excitement when someone reaches their daily water consumption goal. Hooray for solidarity and sisterhood and all, but I have to say that I do enjoy drinking soda and eating peanut butter in front of them while they look longingly out of the corners of their eyes. It kind of makes up for all those years I spent as a diabetic munching on a pretzel while the other kids ate birthday cake.

At this point, however, I couldn't care much less about what goes on in the Synchronized Dieters' subplot. I have a lot to learn about doing my job, and I have eighty seven days to get through before my medical insurance kicks in, so that is where my focus lies. They can like me or not, but it won't really change much for me.

I realized this evening, as I drove home from a day of catching on to procedures quickly and enthusiastically, that my days of paying dues are over. I mean I have to be "The New Girl" there for a while, probably longer than I would ever agree to if I had a choice, but as far as all the ass-busting I did to get myself here...it was worth it. This place is on a completely different level than the other vet tech jobs I've had, and everyone there had to work their asses off to get there too. It makes for higher standards and more personal benefits in the long run. Not that I am able to just sit back and relax now, not by any means. But my days of giving more than I had to give in the name of survival, and with little respect and no recognition in return, are over.

I can now get on with my life.

Two Thousand Nine!

Happy 2009 to all my peoples!

Being able to write that new number next to the date represents many things to me this year; namely, that it is no longer 2008! I survived a job whose level of sheer dysfunctional insanity inspired the creation of an entire blog, I somehow lived the entire year as a diabetic with no medical insurance (thanks to a penny pinching promise breaker of a boss), I got ringworm, I moved back into my parents' house, my dogs got tapeworms four times, and I learned how to neuter a dog by myself, even though that's mostly illegal. 2008 was an interesting year, I'll say that much for it, but it's a year I have no trouble walking away from.

Tomorrow is the first day of my new job as a vet tech for an animal eye specialist. It's going to be very different from the other vet tech jobs I've had, as in more eyeballs and less great dane in liver failure shitting orange stuff on my shoes, and I am really looking forward to starting. I will have full medical coverage through this place, I will be working a four day work week, and on occasion I will get to work with zoo animals. Not too shabby! I also find that I am in no way nervous or anxious about starting, as I usually am with first days/weeks. I think it's because after everything I went through in this last job, whatever they try to throw at me in this new job will be a piece of cake. I've heard opthamologists can be a little eccentric. I say, bring it on.

So on top of a life-changing new job opportunity, 2009 has already been rich with good friends and family, a new boyfriend who has already been more supportive (and charmingly quirky) than I could've asked for, and a brand new blog to fill the void that has been haunting me for months.

Best wishes to all as we start back to Real Life this week and say goodbye to the holidays.
Oh, and it's nice to have you guys back too!

The Wait is Over

I'm back, baby.