Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years (3 page)

Our troop leader, Dr. Norris, a short, stocky man with prematurely graying hair and beard, gathered us outside the corral as parents started showing up to drive us home. “Next month we’ll meet at Dr. Diaz’s clinic on the west side. He specializes in ophthalmology and promises to have something like a prolapsed eyelid for his surgery demonstration. We’ll see you then.”

I had no idea what a prolapsed eyelid might be, but I was already eager to see it. Any trepidation I may have had over whether I was cut out for the reality of veterinary medicine had vanished completely as I watched Dr. Bentley work. I had felt nothing but fascination and a sense of awe. I wanted the knowledge that these professionals had. I wanted the ability and the confidence to treat an animal in need. I wanted to be close to the animals I loved so much. And I wanted the respect this profession could provide.

Almost from the moment I climbed into my dad’s car, words about this awesome milestone experience were already tumbling out. I wanted my excitement to infect him too. I wanted him to see what a wonderful opportunity
lay
before me.

But by the time we were halfway home, all I wanted was to break the studied silence that had fallen over him. Something was wrong, though I couldn’t imagine what.

“I don’t want you going to any more of those meetings,” he said at last.

Stunned, I could barely stammer out, “Why?”

“Is this what they’re going to be teaching you? How to castrate bulls? Breed cows? You’re a young lady. You don’t need to be watching that sort of thing.”

And there it was.
My dad, the prude.
Friends my age were already doing the mating dance and having babies, but my dad thought discussions about artificial insemination in cows should be off limits for a 15-year-old girl.

It took a lot of persuasion, but Dad finally agreed to drive me to Dr. Diaz’s clinic for the next meeting. There I found out what a prolapsed gland of the third eyelid was. Dr. Diaz showed us before and after pictures of a Lhasa
Apso
he’d operated on earlier in the day, removing the engorged gland that had blown up in the inner corner of the dog’s left eye. “Cherry eye” the condition was sometimes called since the exposed gland presented as a brilliant—and rather rude looking -- red mass. Back then, the treatment was to remove the gland completely and send the owner home with a bottle of artificial tears to replace the natural tears the gland produces and keep the eye from drying out.

The surgery we were going to see was another common procedure – this one to correct
entropion
in a red Chow about a year old. The dog’s upper eyelids rolled inward causing the eyelashes to rub against the eye resulting in constant pain and irritation. The young Chow squinted at us in obvious distress and we could see tear tracks along her nose. The vet’s assistant injected a bit of pentobarbital into the Chow’s foreleg and the dog slipped into a light coma, ready for her operation.

A couple of other girls in the troop were a bit squeamish about the eye surgery, but I was glued to the procedure as the vet gently excised a piece of skin from the dog’s upper eyelid, curled back what was left and sewed the eyelid back into its normal position. First the left eye and then the right, and the difference, even with her eyes closed, was immediately obvious. Once she recovered from the surgery, there would be no more red eyes and pain for that lucky Chow pup.

When Dad came to pick me up that evening I led him back to the kennel where the dog was waking up. Eyes were apparently on his list of approved surgeries for me to see because he never said another word about my quitting the troop, and I never missed a single meeting.

I know now, of course, how hard it had to have been for my dad to relent his position. Looking back, I realize how many factors were at work against me and against him. Women in the early 70s were asserting themselves more and more and he felt threatened by that. Just as he felt threatened that I’d long surpassed his level of education. Intelligent, assertive young ladies were a thing undreamt of in his middle-aged philosophies.

Nor did the threat end there. In his way, he was just as overprotective of me as my Mom tended to be; not because I needed his protection any longer, but because it was difficult for him to admit his little girl was growing up.

 
When Opportunity Knocks, Throw a Few Raisins Its Way

As happens with many well-intentioned efforts, the veterinary medicine chapter of the local Explorers lost steam, first from the members who decided they either couldn’t be bothered attending the meetings or realized they weren’t cut out to be vets, and then from the leaders who were having trouble finding colleagues willing to volunteer an evening with the troop. Within a year, those of us left pretty well knew ours was a patient that couldn’t be resuscitated.

The three leaders, though, seemed determined not to turn their backs on the handful of Explorers still showing up with wide-eyed wonder at all the meetings. On our final night together as a troop, they made an incredible offer. Each weekend, we could show up at one of the clinics, help the regular staff clean cages and bathe animals, and, as payment, spend a couple of hours in the exam room observing and learning.
Real patients, real medicine, in real time.
What could be more thrilling?

At least that was the arrangement in theory.

I was already well acquainted with bartering my time for something other than money. At the tender age of 15, I’d already been burned by a similar work-pay deal – one which I’d just completed with the owners of a flight service at a small airfield located outside the city limits.

Didi
and Drew ran a weekend operation renting out two gliders and giving soaring instruction in a third. Drew flew the single-engine plane used to tow the gliders up to about 3000 feet and
Didi
taught students how to fly a plane with no engine. With both of them in the air all the time, there was no one to run the ground operation, and there was too little profit to hire someone to do it. Because there was no way I could afford to pay for lessons, I offered to take care of the customers on the ground: keeping track of time in the air, since rental was by the minute; tallying up tow fees, flight time and lesson costs; taking in the money; and keeping the books. In exchange,
Didi
would teach me to fly.

My “pay” usually came at the end of a long day when the thermals, or
updafts
of warm air that help keep the gliders aloft, had died down, meaning my training flights were always short. Drew would tow us up to altitude while I concentrated on keeping the glider in proper position behind him, then I would “wiggle’ the glider’s wings so he would know I was about to pull the latch to release the tow rope. Then I would pray for a bump in the seat of my pants that would let me know I had hit a weak and dying thermal, and struggle to gain just a little more altitude before
Didi
had me practice stalls and spins that would take us from 3000 feet down to a 1000 or so in just a few seconds. Once that low, there was no option but to land the glider at the airfield or risk landing it in someone’s pasture and then having to retrieve it by flatbed truck. Believe me, none of their students was willing to put
Didi
and Drew through that hassle, and I wasn’t going to be one of the unlucky few who did.

Husband and wife were both tough and no-nonsense. They accepted few excuses from customers or from their help, whether it was how their planes were flown or why the books were a dime out of balance. In fact,
Didi
proved she wasn’t one to renege on a commitment to take a student up or miss a chance to pocket his money, even if she happened to be in labor at the time. Straight from the airfield to the hospital she had gone, giving birth to a baby girl just a few hours later.
 

So, reluctantly, I would turn the glider’s nose toward home and try to make as smooth a landing as possible. Total elapsed time: maybe 10 or 11 minutes. Rate of pay: about one minute in the air for every hour worked. Still, for a 14-year-old who couldn’t legally drive but was landing gliders at 60 miles per hour, it was an equitable trade.

That is, until
Didi’s
nanny broke her leg.

~~~

Though the hours were long, my job was far from difficult. I spent a good bit of time simply sitting around the hangar getting wind-burned and sun-burned, talking shop and joking with the regulars. Our customers were mainly young to middle-aged males, soaring hobbyists eager to talk about the sport, who often hung about the airfield for hours just to be near others who shared their same passion. Tall, lanky Steve, for instance, had flown helicopters in Vietnam, and had lost an eye in the war. Jim, one of our few black customers, loved building experimental planes. Aside from
Didi
and Drew, he was the most experienced of our pilots and, to the envy of everyone else, could somehow keep his homebuilt glider aloft for hours, even on the most uncooperative of days. It was uncanny how he could find enough lift in the calmest of air to stay up.

“Jim, what’s your secret?” I asked him one day while we were sitting alone watching Drew towing
Didi’s
two-seater trainer through the cumulus-speckled skies.

He grinned and pulled out a box of raisins. “See those buzzards up there?” I looked up at the large black birds circling lazily in the sky, rapidly gaining altitude without ever so much as a single flap of their wings, and nodded. “They always know where the best thermals are. Maybe they can see ‘
em
, or smell ‘
em
or just feel a change in the air.”

“So you follow the buzzards?” I asked.

“Oh, if it were as easy as that, everyone would be doing it now, wouldn’t they?” He stood up and crooked a conspiratorial finger at me. “Come here.” I followed him over to his sleek white glider, skirting around its long, tapered wings. He pointed to a small hole just under the canopy.
 

“First, you have to make friends with the buzzards.” He shook the box of raisins in his hands. “So, I drop a few of these through that hole and lure those buzzards near enough that I can see which way they turn and how much they have to bank. Then
me
and the plane follow their lead.
Simple, really.
Just remember, the secret is in the raisins.”

He winked, and I couldn’t tell whether he was serious or just having a good time teasing me.

A few months later I learned that Jim had been test flying an experimental glider in the mountains of New Mexico. The plane crashed and Jim was killed. Everyone thought it must have been mechanical failure.
Maybe.
But I prefer to think Jim had just run out of raisins.

~~~

Despite my innate shyness, I felt comfortable socializing with our customers. We met on common ground, sharing a common interest, and age, color and gender didn’t matter. The experience was special, the outdoors appealing and watching the planes fly fun. I looked forward to the weekends. That’s why when
Didi
asked me to babysit Crystal until the nanny’s leg healed, I felt my heart flop.

OK, I thought. I can do this. I’m only a few more lessons away from soloing, and it can’t take more than six or eight weeks for a broken leg to mend, right?

In retrospect, save for the fact that she was saving money,
Didi
no doubt realized the mistake she had made in asking me to tend her child. I knew very little about babies and cared about them even less. No maternal instincts bubbled to the surface when faced with a squalling ball of baby flesh. Days at
Didi
and Drew’s house were tedious and painfully long. As a nanny I was totally inept. I did manage to keep the baby clean and fed and somewhat entertained. But the crockpot of beans
Didi
asked me to watch for supper dried out and nearly burned, pot and all. I used the wrong cleaning agent on the wood floors. And washing and ironing -- not among my better skills.