When you are a veterinary student in India, you spend a long time dreaming of becoming a Veterinarian in the USA. You spend so many hours online, and in lectures where the fancy board-certified veterinarian from abroad teaches you medicine you only in your wildest dreams can imagine, that it becomes the only thing you think of. You are jealous of the opportunities they have been given, you start embracing your own ignorance. And believe it or not, you become competitive. And this competition is quite sour- because it is fueled by your colleagues, peers and friends. All of you, at the same time, are trying your hardest to oust each other by reading a new article, or a new book.
The professors don’t help- obviously. They are already old, tarnished, secure in their own ugly reputations as surgeons or internal medicine teachers. There is barely any diversity in students picking clinical or non-clinical subjects. You form an unhealthy bias where you tend to look down upon those in paraclinical studies- Parasitology, pathology, anatomy, nutrition. You want to be known as fierce. You want to be branded as specific, as an artist and a muse at the same time. Everyone wants a mentor, yet barely anyone understands true mentorship and its capabilities and the power it possesses. The power to sculpt an individual into a true veterinarian and a human being. Very few vets in Mumbai (I can only speak of Mumbai as that is where I am from and cannot offer opinions on the rest of India- unfortunately) actually are truly powerful teachers. I do not know, if it is our boon or our misfortune to have the good ones in paraclinical studies. The thing is, the second they stepped foot into a true specialty practice- they were written off. However, I digress. I do not think competition is only unhealthy. Indian students, in the end, do have a very strong sense of camaraderie- one that I did not see abroad as such. As much as you will have a few stepping on each other, the vast majority pull each other up and walk hand-in-hand, always trying to save the life of the next stray they see.
I miss that.
I was one of those students. Star struck by the USA. Wanting to belong in the best of the best. Wanting to go to Cornell, or U.C. Davis, or Penn. The universities we had only heard of, or read in Ettinger and Feldman with the words “researched by” next to them. We forget though, that in a first world country, where everyone has money or a few dozen credit cards, the true essence of why we became veterinarians in the first place- to save the strays- is lost. We become embroiled in the medicine of it all, we look at patients as patients and the practice as the truth. Euthanasias no longer sadden us, we stop fighting with all our might for each and every patient we see. That was clearly brought to my notice recently by a friend who does surgery in Mumbai. She took a neonate to surgery in a shelter to give it that fighting chance, which I would have probably written off as a euthanasia. Maybe its the academic thinking- too many things can go wrong. Septic peritonitis, hypothermia, cardiovascular instability, too many post-op complications, and for what? Will that kitten even end up in a home? What if it survives all this to succumb in the shelter to a cat fight abscess 2 months from now?
But I was wrong. Very wrong. Old me would have fought for that kitten, the same way my friend did right now. Old me would have taken that kitten to surgery, done my best for its post-op care and then tried to find it a home. That kitten would have had facebook and instagram pages. That kitten would have lived. Look at me now. Just one year out of vet school, already tired. Look at my friend- 2 years out of a masters in surgery- still fighting. Hats. Fucking. Off.
The difference between India and USA ya’ll.
It is when you gain perspective, that you realize, that despite all its medical advances and clinical resources and money- India still practices veterinary medicine closer to human medicine. Why? Because if there would have been a human child needing this same attention- all would have been done for it. And it pains me to say that the first thought that jumped to my head was humane euthanasia. Did I not care about that kitten? Of course I did. That does not change. My CARE does not change. It is just overburdened by the thought process that infiltrates the deep recesses of my brain, the judgement of it all- the future if you will. Because of my severe focus on the future, I did not want to fight in the present.
But we are back to square one. Because this incident, kind of makes me want to study harder and actually try to make a bigger difference. And I am back to thinking that I am thankful I am accredited here because now I can study and try to make that difference in my own way. But without the stars in my eyes. Because what I am taking 5 years to achieve, my friend in Mumbai achieved in 5 minutes just by sheer force of will.
I am not trying to put a certain form of education down. Nor am I saying a child should be less ambitious. I think what I am trying to say in the longest way possible, is that veterinary medicine is global. Is that animals do not know geographical boundaries or the difference between money and no money. Is that our care should not change whether we are here or there. Is that, if Indian students can learn so much from the economically forward, then the economically forward also have a lot to learn from the Indians. Let’s try to remember why we truly got into this field in the first place. Maybe this is just me. Maybe everyone else already knows and is aware. But if I can make even one other vet with compassion and decision fatigue like me remember their place- it is worth it.
We are equal. We are strong. Each and every one of us knows something the other does not. Each and every one of us can teach someone else something.
Let’s go back to fighting for each and every life out there.
Let’s not lose hope.
Let’s learn forever, and globally. Let’s not fixate on what we deem as worthy brought on by years of brainwashing at a university level. Let’s also not forget the education that the very same university blessed us with.
But let us also remember- humane euthanasia can sometimes be the kindest medicine that we practice.
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