The moments were bitter-sweet on Friday afternoon, as I finished up my last shift, knowing not only would I not be back on Monday, but as of now I don't have plans to return to the Vet med industry at all.
Being a Vet Nurse has been a very big part of how I identify myself and it's the only career path I have ever known. Nursing animals is literally all I have done, since I left school and it's very hard for me to say goodbye, atleast for now, even if it isn't forever.
Alot of people have said to me, that they can't imagine me doing anything else and I can one hundred percent understand what they mean by that. I myself never pictured myself in a setting outside of working with animals.
Always being able to surround myself with as many species as possible, to help them when they're in need, to understand how they work and to be their voice because they can't speak for themselves has been my absolute passion and everything that I have wanted to do with my life.
Be it a rat, a snake or a prize winning ram, they were all just as important as the next. They all filled me with just as much purpose, no matter what they were or "how much they were worth".
You can't put a price on the human-animal bond.
It isn't without pride and warmth, that I look back apon all the things I learned to do in the last decade; Fast thinking, a successful CPR, reading an ECG, all kinds of cannula and catheter placements, high tech equipment and beyond.
And on the days that your skills and training are put to the test and you manage to achieve a small miracle.. It's a high that I cannot even begin to describe.
Yet at the same time, I have to remember that life isn't always compatible with passion. Vet medicine comes with days of feeling so emotionally drained that you come home and can't even speak. It's putting in long hours and you're always on your feet. It's having to take life, even more than you give it.
It's constantly being financially distressed even when lucky enough to be so generously paid above award.
Veterinary Nursing was a career I chose, as a child, still in school. I had nothing but love in my eyes and followed nothing but the drive of my full passionate heart for all things furry, feathered and scaled. I never thought about wages or about paying bills and a mortgage. I never imagined being a single Mum and I never could have imagined what it would look like to actually be one. I didn't know that I'd face some of the problems within my health that the past few years have brought me. Not to forget, living through a pandemic amongst everything else. It all takes a toll.
So it was with the heaviest of hearts that when a new opportunity presented itself, I just knew it was the right thing to do for me, with where my life is currently. I had to give this new opportunity a try. I owed it to myself to take an emotional reset, to do something that doesn't require so much of myself to be in it at all times, something that allows me to check out and to not be thinking about it once I'm off the clock. I also owed it to my son, to take an opportunity that comes with the flexibility that works better with caring for him.
It was so hard to come to terms with the fact that this change would come with the inability to be with the animals every day. Not having those quiet moments, one on one chatting with them, letting them snuggle in for a cuddle because you feel safe to them. Knowing that I won't be getting my hands dirty to improve the lifes of creatures and critters to earn my living.
It's like I'm saying goodbye to the best part of myself and the only thing I've ever felt good at.
Yet while I'm so emotional having to let go, atleast for now, I will remember all the good I did in the past ten years. I will see it when I look at Red and remember how I brought her home with me in the first week at my first full time job. I will remember when I look at Seven and I remember why I gave him that name. I will remember when I see Roo and think of the scared little dog she once was. And I will remember when I go to my Nan's and see the smallest baby from my last litter that I hand raised.
Just because I'm leaving, my passion doesn't go away. And just because I'm doing something new, that won't erase the good that I have done or remove the things I already know.
The paths you take don't always lead you home.
But sometimes they do.
And sometimes they lead you somewhere even better.
The important thing is that I already know who I am. I know what makes me passionate and happy and what I am capable of doing.
So now it's time to be brave, spread my wings and leave my comfort zone and the only real work I have known in my adult life. It's been quite a journey, a real ride.
I am so incredibly greatful for; The people I have met along the way. Some of the best friends and humans I have ever known.
The experiences I have had. The good, the bad and the ugly, it's all helped to build me into the woman I am today.
The memories I have made. The laughs, the smiles, the cheers of joy and sighs of relief and even the tears I shed.
The skills I have earned. Hard work, grit and determination, Nursing is a big part of my learning what I am made of.
And most of all, every single patient I have ever had the pleasure to see. The hardest thing to part with, all the paws I will miss holding and all of the noses will miss booping.
I've hung up my stethoscope just one last time.
And it's bye for now. It's been real, it's been raw, it's been amazing. It's been my all.
