Mysterious Ways

‘Life is a balance of holding on and letting go’

It was October 2014. One month after Harley, the man that I loved, had taken his own life. I was back at work, but I was struggling. The tragedy itself had cut me to pieces, and the messy aftermath of devastation was crippling. Back then I didn’t know much about how psychological trauma gets deep into our physical bodies; all I knew was I was teetering on the edge.

I tried to function normally, but the bones in my legs often disappeared. They were like jelly when I stood up or walked. And when I sat or laid down, they jerked with tiny unstoppable shakes like growing pains. I was having anxiety attacks, for the first time in my life, when I went inside shops and my local supermarket. My breathing was ragged. I remember sighing all the time, just to get enough air. Often I couldn’t turn off the taps in my eyes. My body ached from grief. At times my mind was so foggy that it felt like I was pushing through a heavy, thick white-out.

On this particular day, in the office at work, I leaned against the desk, and used it as a backup for my wobbly legs while my friend Ros, who managed my schedule each day, filled me in about the next call. It was a euthanasia.

The client was a regular. A race-horse trainer who worked for a wealthy owner on a beautiful property in the hinterland. He needed a pony put to sleep. Given my sadness, Ros asked me if I was ok to do it. I shrugged and said yes.

I can handle it, I thought. Anyway, what choice do I have?

I didn’t know if I was fit to work. I didn’t really know anything anymore. But my boss, the only other vet in the practice at the time, had taken off somewhere out of the state, and left me to it. I did plead with him not to go. Blubbering, I asked him to please understand that I wasn’t in a fit state to be responsible in the job we did as mobile equine vets. He said he thought it would be good for me to ‘let go of Harley’, to ‘pull myself together’ and ‘get on with it’.

And so here I was, getting on with it.

As I left the office, I leant on the door handle for a moment, like a crutch. In the carpark I reached for the bonnet of my work ‘truck’, as we called our 4WD vehicles with the big aluminium trays on the back that carried all our medications and diagnostic equipment. X-ray machine, ultrasound machine, endoscope. I heaved my 53kg of dead weight up into the driver’s seat.

I didn’t know the client’s pony, but Ros had told me he was old, he’d been having seizures and things had gotten bad. It was time. I wouldn’t have to worry about diagnosing anything or deciding on treatments. Not even about putting my false happy face on. All I had to do was calculate the drug dosages and get the job done. So, an “easy” job for me, I thought, if you can ever call a euthanasia easy.

Performing euthanasias is one of the hardest parts about being a veterinarian. Often it was gut wrenching for me. I’d question myself each time: Who am I to play God. It was devastating when an otherwise perfectly young and healthy horse sustained a fatal injury, and especially hard when a horse needed life-saving surgery that wasn’t available or affordable.

After a euthanasia, regardless of the story, it was also really hard to get back into the truck and rush off to the next job, and plaster a warm and happy smile on my face before arriving there.

Being a vet takes its toll on your mental, physical and emotional well-being. There are very real reasons why so many veterinarians take their lives (they are in the profession with the highest number of suicides, at a rate four times higher than the general public and double that of other health professionals). Working long hours and dealing with sickness, death, extreme stress, abusive clients and trauma on a daily basis, as well as midnight emergencies, can weigh heavy on people who are often highly empathetic by nature.

But mostly performing a euthanasia was a privilege. Vets are blessed to be able to prevent an animal’s suffering, to let them go in the most peaceful way possible. I was good at them, at ensuring my patients didn’t suffer and that they passed away peacefully. I was also good at letting people make the decision, weighing up the prognosis and suffering of their horse’s disease or injury against the monetary costs and other consequences of trying to save them or hang on to them. If a decision had already been made, it was my job to support the client in that space. I would also explain the process of the euthanasia to my clients to help them understand how it was going to happen, without overwhelming them. Euthanasias came with all the emotions: shock, sadness, guilt, fear. I would hold their hands and hearts through it all, and it was often very draining.

From a medical perspective, I had a euthanasia regime that worked well. Euthanasia is a bit of a challenge with horses. You can’t just ask them to lie down on a bed or table, or cuddle them on your lap like cats and dogs. You can’t ‘simply’ withdraw life support and let them go. Unless a horse is maimed or unable to get up anymore (and those cases often came with different challenges), horses are hardwired to stay standing up, ready to flee in the face of any danger. My first step was to inject a sedative into their vein. Giving a sedative calms their nerves and alleviates some pain, but also helps their muscles relax so they will lie down – with the next step – somewhat gently. You can not rush this step. The horse must be as relaxed as possible and it takes several minutes for the injection to take full effect. It was my responsibility to ensure the horse, the client, myself and the environment around us remained calm and quiet, which was not always easy depending on the nature of the situation.

My next step was to inject a general anaesthetic drug. The trick is to make sure the horse is so sleepy, that when the anaesthetic flows into the body and gets to their brain, their body gives up physiological resistance. Their muscles ‘let go’ and they bend their knees and hocks to gently, slowly, collapse to the ground. For a 17HH horse it’s a long way down. Small shetlands, even though they are super strong, don’t have so far to fall. It was my role to hold the horse’s head up by the head-collar and lead, reassure them and keep them calm, and make sure that when they fell down, their head (on the end of their long neck) didn’t crash to the ground. Once they were lying down, I’d carefully lower their head. Continually reassuring them with a calming voice, gently rubbing their face and eyes, was important for both the patient and the clients. Within moments the horse would be completely under and wouldn’t feel anything.

Up to this point, the process is exactly as it is for gelding operations or other small surgeries in the field. For a euthanasia, the last step is to inject a big dose of a lethal injection, and within a minute their bodies let their spirits go and they fly free, like pegasus, over that rainbow bridge.

I figured for this call I wouldn’t need to worry too much about any of the moral and emotional aspects of euthanasia. The client was an ex-bushy, down to earth, and had seen it done before. He knew about my own recent loss, so he’d understand that I wouldn’t want to sit with their sadness today. And in any case, veterinarians must be good at hiding their personal issues.

All these thoughts were washing around and around in my mind as I drove along the windy hills to the property, when a wave of sadness sideswiped me. Suddenly I couldn’t see the bitumen through my tears. I had to pull over. Visions of Harley flashed through the fog. The million pieces of my heart hurt in my chest. Pity. Remorse. A million if onlys. All of that. The floor in front of the passenger seat was full of scrunched up tissues.

Again I pulled myself together. I have a job to do for God’s sake. And moments later I drove the truck steadily through automatic electric gates and down a hill into the client’s property. It was a gorgeous sprawling green space with post and rail fences, several stable blocks, paddocks with mares and foals and spelling thoroughbreds and a working track with its long end running beside a deep creek. The sort of place you see in movies. At the bottom of the hill, the trainer and his wife stood waiting on a nice patch of deep grass with a lovely black Shetland pony. The pony’s head hung low and he wasn’t eating.

Ok, Claudia. I often talk to myself. I just have to do this. I forced my lungs to open and let some air in, and I got out. Who cares about my red eyes and blocked nose, it’s time to help this little fellow forever let go of his struggles.

“Hey guys,” I tilted my head to the side a bit and lowered my eyes in sympathy.

“Hey Claudia,” they said. Kind eyes. “We’re so sorry for your loss.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Thank you.”

The wife looked at me, her eyes sad too.

“And we’re so sorry to get you to do this now. It’s just, he’s been getting really bad with all the thrashing around, you know, when he has a fit. We’re worried sick he’s gonna hurt himself badly next time.”

“It’s ok, I’m sorry too,” I said. “It’s never easy.”

I sighed for air.

“But we can give him the gift of peace. The gift of taking away his suffering. At least we have that honour with our loved animals, and this little fella.”

And that’s more than can be said for our loved humans, I thought.

Moving into automatic mode I figured out his weight, and back at the tray of my vehicle, I pulled out the bottles and needles and syringes and drew up the three doses I needed.

Back at the pony, I ruffled his forelock and patted him. His eyes looked tired. I didn’t bother with small talk with his owners. Nothing. I just squatted right down beside his little neck and found his vein. And I was just about to inject, when something made me back out of the fog.

I realised I hadn’t even got the pony’s name from the office. That wouldn’t do at all. I paused and looked up at the couple, who were watching me with concern.

“What’s his name?” My voice was so soft, I think they only just heard me.

“Oh,” the trainer said, and then smiled a little. “This is Harley.”

His words punched me in the guts and pushed the air out of my chest. I half fell backwards over my boot heels to the ground. Had to steady myself with my hands, careful not to stab my legs or drop the needle in the grass. The air around me went cold.

“What’s wrong, love?” they were worried, and came straight to my aid. They were lovely people.

I wanted to curl up in a ball right there on the grass. Or better still, just disappear into nothingness. It wasn’t the first time I wished I was the recipient of the euthanasia drugs. But they helped me to stand. I took my glasses off and shook my head and wiped the tears and my snotty nose with both of my shirt sleeves like a child.

“I’m so sorry,” I managed. “You weren’t to know.” And I told them Harley was my partner’s name.

They gasped and apologised. The shock on their faces was palpable.

I went back to my tissue box in my truck. Calmed the shaking in my chest. Rubbed my wet sleeves on my jeans. Emptied my head. It wasn’t this pony’s fault. Nor the client’s. It was nobody’s fault. It was just one of those things. The universe works in mysterious ways but I knew well enough that shit happens.

I pulled myself together again so that I could be strong enough to do my job and I went back to my clients, to peacefully end their Harley’s life.

 

Epilogue

If I remember correctly, I didn’t have any more calls that day. I went over and over it in my mind. Why? I don’t think Harley is that common a name for a horse. I’d only ever come across one before in my 30+ years working with horses. Why did the universe give me a horse, called Harley, to euthanase (of all things) that day? Was it just another shitty thing? Was it a sign? If so, what did the sign say? The racket in my head was deafening.

I think it was the next morning, on the urging of my family, that I stopped in at a medical clinic on my way to the office.

I asked the doctor to give me drugs to calm my nerves and help me do my job. Anything to give me strength. She insisted that it wasn’t only irresponsible, for someone in my state, to have to be responsible for making life and death diagnostic and treatment decisions, but, because of the sheer size and volatility of many of my patients, it was dangerous for me. She also said I shouldn’t even be driving my truck.

Still I pleaded with her. I don’t have a choice, I have a duty to my clients. To my employers. There’s no-one to cover for me.

My words flew off her shoulders. She typed up a medical certificate and told me I was not to go back to work. At the time I had absolutely no idea that even six years later, my doctor and I still wouldn’t consider I was capable of going back. I know now that in some ways, going back to work just after the funeral, long before I was ready, contributed to my breakdown. For some people, working while grieving, is good. For others, it isn’t.

Life is precarious. Little pony Harley tipped the balance. The universe made it mysteriously clear that I had to let go of something, so I could hold on to the rest.

 

 

 

(pc pony: alamy
pc rainbow bridge: My Pets Ashes)