Archive for 29/09/2007

What an insulting end to a long day!

sleeping-old-dog.jpg

Today has been particularly exhausting. There are many of us out there juggling children and careers and today I felt (and looked as you will see at the end of this post), about 10 years older than I should!

My 3 year old daughter had me up at 2am with a nasty sickness bug and and I ended up having to bath her and wash all her bedding and then sleep on the floor in her room as she continued to be violently sick until the morning. I lay there on her floor in the early hours planning how I was going to organise childcare for the day. As it is a Saturday, my husband looks after our children but he had to go out this afternoon so I relied on a friend to babysit during this time. With my daughter so ill, I felt the only solution was for my husband to bring me the 3 children at work and they could watch a DVD upstairs until I finished consulting.

My day at work was emotionally draining. I remember learning that there was a 2% chance of a consultation being a euthanasia in our daily veterinary routines. I had triple that statistic today as I had 4 very old animals to put to sleep.  Two of them were gentle and very old dogs who could not stand, a cat with a tumour on his skull who had stopped eating and a very old rat with pneumonia. Each and every case drained me emotionally as I felt for the weeping owners who were losing such valuable members of their family. Even the rat belonged to a young man who cried apologetically in my room.

My children were very good thankfully so I could concentrate on the last few hours of consulting, but by the end of the day, having had not much sleep and trying to keep an eye on them and give each case my full attention; I felt exhausted.

When it finally came time to go home, the cleaner at the practice held the front door open for me and my children as my hands were full. She said to me as I left - ‘Are these your grandchildren?’ I know I looked tired but to be asked this left me feeling VERY old and miserable!

|