This point was brought home to me about ten years ago when I met Harry, a patient I'll never forget. Harry's owner had called the clinic one slow winter afternoon to inquire if I would see her sick mouse.
"Of course," I confidently told the receptionist. "I'll see anything with four legs."
I was not as cocky when Harry's owner entered the examining room and placed the bird cage containing Harry on the table. Harry was a small, brown mouse with a large swelling on the side of his face and under his chin. I had removed a salivary gland cyst from a dog the week before in a long and difficult surgery, and I began to silently pray that Harry's problem would be a simple abscess rather than a salivary cyst.
Harry ran wildly around his cage and managed to elude my attempts to capture him. I appealed to Richard, the 200-pound, muscle-bound kennel man, to help me restrain Harry. With a horrified expression on his face, Richard said," I ain't touching no mouse."
With the owner's help, I finally cornered Harry. I held him firmly in my left hand while I attempted to lance the abscess with a scalpel blade. Completely absorbed in my surgery, I suddenly realized that Harry had stopped struggling and was lying limp in my hand. I glanced up at Harry's owner and wondered what I could possibly say if I opened my hand to find that I had squeezed Harry to death.
I slowly opened my hand, and Harry looked up at me with with his fearful little eyes. He wriggled out of my grasp and ran to the safety of his cage.
Harry recovered completely from the abscess, but I will never conquer the fear of holding a small animal or bird too tightly. Sometimes, a person doesn't know his or her own strength.
Harry appeared in the Sentinel on August 7, 1982. In the years following Harry, I saw many mice in my role as laboratory animal veterinarian for various research facilites. Harry remains the only mouse with a name and the only one I remember, almost as if our encounter were yesterday.
Gone, thank goodness, is the misconception that female veterinarians lack the strength for veterinary practice. We have proved ourselves in every facet of the profession. The women that my coauthor Dr. Sue Drum and I interviewed for the book Women In Veterinary Medicine: Profiles of Success attest to our strengths--emotional, mental, and physical. |
