The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us About Love, Life, and Mortality - Hardcover

Fine, Karen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593466896 ISBN 13: 9780593466896

Verlag: Anchor, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Calling all animal lovers! A heartwarming memoir about one woman's career as a vet and the unique role pets play in our lives • “Filled with compassion and wisdom, Karen Fine is a healer whose own wounds have deepened her gifts for bringing animals and their people comfort and peace.” —Sy Montgomery, bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus
 
A tribute to our furry, feathery, scaley, and wet family members, All Creatures Great and Small meets Being Mortal in this compelling memoir of one woman's dream to become a veterinarian.

Karen Fine always knew that she wanted to be a vet and wasn't going to let anything stop her: not her allergy to cats, and not the fact that in the '80s veterinary medicine was still a mostly male profession. Inspired by her grandfather, a compassionate doctor who paid house calls to all his (human) patients, Dr. Fine persevered, and brought her Oupa's principles into her own practice, which emphasizes the need to understand her patients’ stories to provide the best possible care.
 
And in The Other Family Doctor, Dr. Fine shares all these touching, joyful, heartbreaking, and life-affirming tales that make up her career as a vet. There's:

• The feral cat who becomes a creature out of a fable when he puts his trust in a young vet to heal his injured paw

• The pot-bellied pig who grows too big to fit in the car but remains a cherished part of her family

• The surprising colony of perfectly behaved ferrets

• The beloved aging pet who gives her people the gift of accompanying them on one final family vacation

• The dog who saves his owner's life in a most unexpected way
 
Woven into Dr. Fine's story are, of course, also the stories of her own pets: the birds, cats, and dogs who have taught her the most valuable lessons—how caring for the animals in our lives can teach us to better care for ourselves, especially when life seems precarious.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Karen Fine is a holistic veterinarian who is fascinated by the relationships between animals and their people. She is an associ­ate veterinarian at Central Animal Hospital in Leominster, Mas­sachusetts. For twenty-five years she owned and operated her own house call practice in central Massachusetts. Dr. Fine is certified in veterinary acupuncture through the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society. A leading expert in the emerging field of vet­erinary narrative medicine, she has also authored a textbook called Narrative Medicine in Veterinary Practice.

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1

It’s a Calling

The cat had come with the house.

He was a feral black cat that John and Susan, who bought the tidy bungalow in a quiet tree-lined neighborhood, had named Miles. Many people wouldn’t have concerned themselves with a stray, especially not when doing so cost them money. But although John and Susan hadn’t expected Miles, they accepted him as their responsibility. They had him neutered and vaccinated at a nearby clinic. Miles warmed to his new humans, enjoying their attention even though he remained wild at heart, preferring to be outdoors most of the time. John and Susan allowed him into the house whenever he wanted, keeping him fed and warm. Slowly, he had become a part of their family.

But one chilly afternoon in February, John called me, his voice heavy with worry. He thought Miles might have an infected front paw. It was swollen, he explained over the phone, and Miles was limping. Suspecting an abscess, I told him it might need to be treated at a clinic. But as he and Susan were unable to catch Miles, I agreed to come to their house.

I was never happy about using a fishing net to catch a cat. I had learned the technique from another house-call veterinarian, who specialized in cats and cared for some feral cat colonies. It always felt traumatic, especially when I knew the cats I cared for didn’t understand. Still, I kept a fishing net in my car, if only to use as a last resort.

This was a last-resort kind of case.

When I arrived at their home, John and Susan led me to the back bathroom, where they’d been able to corral Miles. The poor kitty was petrified from being cooped up, and although he wouldn’t allow me near him, I was able to trap him with the net. Wild creatures do not like being confined, and I hoped to be able to release him soon.

Remembering what the other vet had taught me, I used the double-wrapping method to enfold Miles until he was snug inside the net. My patient scratched and clawed, and I felt his distress. Yet I knew I had to be vigilant not to let him out or I wouldn’t be able to catch him again. This was my one chance to help him. Finally, he settled and became still.

Biting my lip in concentration, I gently slid the long handle of the cat-net package a few feet along the linoleum floor into the kitchen, where the light was better and I had more room to work. I stood on the handle to hold the net in place. As soon as I looked closely at the paw, I could tell what was causing the limp. Occasionally a cat’s claw will grow long enough to curl around in a circle and continue growing right into the pad, causing pain and often an infection. Miles had a badly ingrown nail, which had become embedded in his paw.

I would need to trim the nail to relieve Miles’s pain and allow the infection to heal. However, I couldn’t get to the nail with Miles compressed under the netting. Complicating matters, it was a front claw, close to Miles’s sharp set of teeth. In a clinic setting, it would have taken two trained professionals using leather gloves to hold Miles so I could trim his nail safely, if it could be done at all. Otherwise, we’d have to anesthetize him. But here, hovering over Miles in the middle of the kitchen, none of those options was available to me.

I explained the problem to John and Susan and told them I didn’t know what to do. They looked at me nervously. Although it would terrify Miles to go to a clinic, it would be a good option if I could get him into a carrier. But I doubted I’d be able to do that once I unwrapped him from the netting. And I had no injectable anesthetics with me, as that was not something I used in clients’ homes. We had no good options.

As I stood there debating what to do next, this feral cat, trapped in the net, slowly extended the affected paw through the netting. The three of us watched, disbelieving, as he spread his toes. We looked at each other, mouths agape and soundless. That old thorn-in-the-lion’s-paw story was flashing before our collective eyes.

As I quickly found my nail trimmers and cut the offending nail, Miles kept his paw completely still. None of us made a sound for fear of breaking whatever spell he was under. At last, I released Miles from the net. He shook himself and headed back outside. His limp was gone.

It was impossible to look at Miles, who would surely make a full recovery with the help of some antibiotics, and at John and Susan, who cared so much about this feral cat, and not think about the ways they had agreed to take care of each other and how, because of this, they were all better off.

I’ve been a veterinarian for thirty years. For most of that time I’ve had my own house-call practice, going inside people’s homes to care for their animals, meeting my human clients and animal patients where they live. I’ve been in hundreds of residences, working at kitchen tables and living room sofas, even in bedrooms and bathrooms. Occasionally clients seem awkward as they invite me in, apologizing for clutter, dishes in a sink, or an unmade bed. “Don’t worry at all,” I respond. “No one sees my house!”

In this book, I am going to open my door and allow a view into my own home. You may see my clutter, my unmade bed, the dishes in my sink. You may witness how fully I’ve loved my own animals, and how I have struggled personally as well as professionally over the difficulties pet lovers face. And you can discover how much I have learned from my animal family members and patients about life, and love, and even death.

When people ask me when I knew I wanted to become a veterinarian, I tell them I’ve known my whole life. I have always loved animals. As a child, I drew them with crayons. I read books about them. I pretended to be a dog, a cat, or a horse and favored stuffed animals for toys. Yet one trip stands out in my memory as the moment when I knew I didn’t just want to be a vet but needed to make animals a central part of my life.

Although I grew up in Massachusetts, my parents were born and raised in South Africa, and most of my extended family lived there. Holidays were lonely times for us because they highlighted what others had that we did not. While other people had family who visited them, who showered them with presents and hugs, we had only each other. We didn’t have pets, either, as my mother said she had her hands full caring for myself and my brother. Then, however, came the opportunity to not only connect with my family but also to encounter the animals whose company I craved.

When I was a child, the fare for an international plane ticket was half price for children under twelve. My parents offered my younger brother, Michael, and me each a choice: at age eleven, we could either travel to South Africa to stay with family for the summer or we could save the money for a party to celebrate our bar or bat mitzvah when we turned thirteen. I immediately chose the trip.

I didn’t know much about what to expect in Johannesburg when I arrived there in 1978, only that I would get to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins, many of them for the first time. I imagined what they would be like, these people who looked like me and spoke with accents like my parents’. I expected to finally get to see what their lives were like and to be spoiled by my grandparents. What I did not expect was that when I finally arrived, my aunt Hilary, uncle Leigh, and cousin Joanne would invite me on their weeklong safari vacation to Kruger National Park.

Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It has a land area roughly the size of Wales and within its walls live just about every kind of African animal imaginable:...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anchor
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593466896
• ISBN 13: 9780593466896
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland