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    On Being a Veterinarian: Book 1: What to Expect, How to Prepare
    On Being a Veterinarian: Book 1: What to Expect, How to Prepare
    On Being a Veterinarian: Book 1: What to Expect, How to Prepare
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    On Being a Veterinarian: Book 1: What to Expect, How to Prepare

    By April Kung DVM

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    About this ebook

    The On Being a Veterinarian Series gives pre-vet and veterinary students a glimpse into what it's really like to be a small animal veterinarian. Each book in the series provides insight on a different aspect of small animal veterinary medicine to help future veterinary doctors better prepare for the challenges of this career. Book 1 puts the reader in the doctor's shoes for a day to illustrate the importance of emotional resilience. Tools for building resilience are provided, as are scientific explanations for how and why they work.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherApril Kung DVM
    Release dateDec 27, 2017
    ISBN9781948356022
    On Being a Veterinarian: Book 1: What to Expect, How to Prepare
    Author

    April Kung DVM

    Dr. April Kung graduated from the Virginia Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in 2011. She has worked as a small animal veterinarian in Emergency Medicine as well as General Practice. Her previous professional background includes a career in corporate advertising and communications.

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      Book preview

      On Being a Veterinarian - April Kung DVM

      On Being a Veterinarian

      Book 1:

      What to Expect, How to Prepare

      April Kung, DVM

      Content disclaimer: Any incidents recounted in this series that are based on true occurrences have had select details altered to protect confidentiality. Suggestions made are based on the author’s personal experience and research. Author claims no professional training or education in psychiatry, psychology, human nutrition, exercise physiology, or medical education. Please consult a certified or licensed expert in these areas for professional help. Any advice on veterinary medical practice provided by the author is intended for application by licensed veterinarians capable of using their own medical judgment. Do not attempt to use any medical advice provided by the author without a medical degree. In no event should the author be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by, or in connection with, the use of or reliance on any such information provided by the author. Health-related topics, legal and financial information provided by the author should not be substituted for professional medical, legal and financial advice. It is your responsibility to research the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of all opinions and other information provided by the author. The author assumes no responsibility or liability for any consequence resulting, directly or indirectly, for any action or inaction taken based on or made in reliance on the information provided.

      Published by Happy Animal Productions

      ISBN-13: 978-1-948356-02-2

      Copyright 2017 April Kung. All Rights Reserved.

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Dedication

      On Being a Veterinarian: Series Introduction

      Preface

      What You Might Expect

      What You Don't Expect

      Your First Day As a Doctor

      Transition Shock

      What You Should Expect

      Why Doctors Need Emotional Resiliency

      Resistance is... Not In Your Best Interest

      Why It Works - A Scientific Explanation

      Recommended Practices

      The Mind-Body Connection

      In Closing

      Index

      Acknowledgements

      I am forever indebted to my dear friend and colleague, Kerry Kraemer, DVM, and to my dear friend, former client and retired cardiac nurse, Denise Urquijo, for reading every laborious draft without complaint, and for cheerily encouraging me to continue when I felt so discouraged I wanted to quit. Many thanks also to the pre-veterinary and veterinary students, and other veterinarians whose feedback helped shape this work. I am blessed to have in my life my psychiatrist, Harold Figueroa, MD, because he taught me to like myself and to love my life, which made the pursuit of this endeavor possible. I am deeply grateful to my mentor and cherished friend, Alicia Ragni, DVM, for her faith in me, when I had none, and for going through my writing line by line, improving both the style and substance of the books in this series. To my sister, Eva Lawrence, Ph.D., I owe a huge debt of gratitude for the inspiration she has always been to me, for her insightful and incisive editorial assistance, which has made me a better writer, and for the countless hours she spent sourcing academic articles and helping me to better understand and explain psychology concepts that were out of my league. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Alex Jacobs, MD, for believing in me, and for his love and essential guidance throughout this project. He pushed me to think more deeply about what I was really trying to say. Sometimes, at personal cost to himself due to my irritation with him, he prevented me from believing I’d already said what I’d really wanted to say - when I hadn’t. His support gave me the space I needed to wrestle demons and wring ideas out of air, and he asked only a few home cooked meals in return. I lament I haven’t time to say more nice things about him, but I have to get started on dinner…

      Dedication

      "He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion."

      - Unknown

      In Loving Memory of Monte

      (September 1997 – June 8, 2012)

      In the spring of 1998, before the dream of becoming a veterinarian had entered my mind, I set out to hike the Appalachian Trail with Monte. He was nine months old. We started at the northern terminus of The Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, and hiked south. Monte carried his backpack and his bedroll, and I carried mine. I had never hiked before. Not like this. Not with a heavy backpack that contained everything I needed to survive in the woods for weeks. Monte didn’t enjoy carrying the heavy weight of his pack any more than I enjoyed carrying mine. For the first week, every morning when I packed up our gear and called him to me so I could put his pack on, he would run away, or he would roll over. It was a daily battle of wills.

      About halfway through The Hundred Mile Wilderness, as we were struggling up and down a series of four mountains, White Cap, Hay, West Peak, and Gulf Hagas, we encountered an almost impassable obstacle. At the top of Hay Mountain was a blowdown of what must have been a hundred pine trees. A violent storm had hit that peak the previous winter. Since most hikers hoping to hike the entire 2,200 miles of the A.T. begin in the south, in Georgia, trail maintenance crews hadn’t yet cleared this section of the trail.

      I had had the terrifying experience several days prior of losing the trail completely after trying to bypass a much less impressive blowdown. That day, I’d searched vainly for the trail for over an hour before finally resigning myself to starving to death in the wilderness. I sat down in the dry, brown leaves that covered the forest floor, and cried. I called to Monte who was sitting with his back to me about 300 yards away. He wouldn't come. Finally, I went to him and discovered why he wouldn't heed my call. He had found the trail.

      The trail, I learned, was like a lifeline, winding its way through a 65,000-acre forest that looked the same in every direction. It would disorient you at the first opportunity, and was indifferent to human tears. I would not risk losing the trail again. We wouldn’t go around this blowdown. We were just going to have to go through it. At first, we tried doing it with our packs on, but Monte and I both kept getting caught on branches, and we often couldn’t squeeze between the skeletal remains of the trees at all. So I took my pack off, then I took Monte’s off. He was elated to be free of his heavy burden, and he zipped through the maze of trunks, branches and pine needles like a happy little mouse. I had to push and pull both of our packs through the wreckage, climbing over and under the trunks and branches, inch by miserable inch.

      When I emerged on the other side almost an hour later, I was covered with sweat and blood. I’d received hundreds of scratches from the sharp twigs and prickly needles, and the sweat seeping into the wounds stung me all over

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