Is it unprofessional to cry?

I have performed hundreds of euthanasias in my many years as a vet and they each touch me differently.

When a brother and sister brought in Max, their 15 year old Staffy to be put to sleep today, I seemed to feel their grief more than ever and I could not help but cry with them. Is that unprofessional?

I had a 6 hour long consulting session with no break today as a patient needed blood tests during my break and maybe I am just getting old, but I really felt the owner’s pain seeing their old pet that they had grown up with lifeless on the table.

Thankfully he had gone so peacefully and even licked the owners tears off his nose as I gave the lethal injection into his vein. It is exactly as they had wanted it. He was falling down stairs and they wanted him to go peacefully and be unaware of it all but the reality of it  made them both cry uncontrollably and I could not help myself but cried quietly too.

This entry was posted on 10/05/2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under Being a Mum and a vet, A veterinary day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.