Client communication, the ability to listen to clients and get them to understand you, is a vital skill for a vet. It doesn’t matter how clever or compassionate you are if you can’t get an animal’s owner to understand what’s going on and work with you to treat their animal.
Some people are just bad listeners. Some people just don’t have English as their first language, which can lead to interesting situations with charades or trying to find alternative words someone can understand (like asking a proper old lady whether her cat is still taking a shit each day because she doesn’t know the words for faeces or poop), but sometimes you get a genuine gem.
This client in particular was a little challenge to communicate with because of limited English, but we both tried to meet each other in the middle. And over the week or so we managed to get her little cat from ‘very very sick’ to ‘finally back to normal’.
She was extremely relieved to have her little cat well again, to the extent that she brought in a thank you card to the clinic, that she’d had her neighbor write because, again, English wasn’t her first language and she didn’t want to be wrong.
But it was her words that stuck with me. She spoke about how her cat was all better and would sleep on her pillow next to her head again, but she didn’t know the word for ‘purring’. She said,
Everybody. Much to the frustration of medics whose jobs include exertion when they need to not be doing things like running around on a busted leg. Medics probably keep a stock of Things To Do on hand to keep their patients from complaining even more.
normalize polyamorous people having families and raising children together. destroy the idea that the nuclear family is the default, that it’s the best option for everyone, that it’s the only option that “counts” and that any other kind of family is automatically unhealthy and ‘bad’.
Also intimate friend groups and communities and other non-monogamous family structures that aren’t specifically polyamorous.
if your gf/bf has anxiety u need to be fuckin patient lmao don’t freak out on them because it’ll make it so much worse
Also just a reminder that anxiety doesn’t always present as a rocking-in-the-corner-uncontrollably-crying episode of paranoia or despair, it can also present as:
Agitation or short temper, lack of patience
Insomnia
Upset stomach
Repetitive motions, redoing things you’ve already done, obsessing over specific things
Physical tenseness (back and shoulder pains are VERY common)
Feelings of physical weakness and exhaustion
P l e a s e take the time to understand how your partners experiences anxiety and do some homework on how you can best help them. While we have a responsibility to communicate our needs, it is so massively helpful and comforting when our partners put effort in to understand us and understand how they can effectively assist us in episodes when we might not be able to clearly convey our needs in the moment.
Oh, by the way, all of those except the obsession can also be symptoms of various blood pressure problems. It’s worth looking up “poor man’s tilt table test” and checking your related person, all you need is a blood pressure cuff and like 15 minutes. Basically you lay down for a bit and see if your blood pressure does anything, then stand up, hold still, and check your blood pressure every few minutes to see if it does anything new.
Sometimes that happens in the general vicinity of your period, or while you’re growing. If it keeps happening but only during your period, it’s probably OK but is worth mentioning at your next doctor’s appointment. If it happens nowhere near your period, unpredictably, or intermittently, and keeps happening, you may want to see a doctor specifically about that. Also, you may want to Google medical questions. This is just what I know off the top of my head in the general “maintenance of squishy flesh body” category.
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