Pregnancy brain. Most people have probably heard of the term. To be honest, I used to think this was a made-up condition. I now know that is not the case. Being a veterinarian, especially a veterinarian that owns a practice, requires you to juggle a lot of different tasks and projects at one time while getting constantly interrupted and somehow keep track of everything. Add a tiny human stealing your brain power to the mix? It can make for a pretty interesting day. I’ll briefly describe a day inside the clinic to paint a picture of how hectic it can be. I wake up VERY early to squeeze in my morning run before work. My morning runs actually seem to not only improve my state of mind, but they also help me wake up and organize my thoughts for the day (a plus for a pregnant lady). I then get ready for work, and if I’m on call, I may get a few phone calls while eating breakfast or brushing my teeth. These calls could be anything from appointment cancellations, appointment requests, emergencies, or people just wanting free advice very early in the morning. I used to be an overachiever and made mental notes or wrote things down in order to make those changes to the calendar when I got to work. If it’s something simple, I now just tell people to call the clinic after 7:30 A.M. when someone is there that can look at the calendar and make necessary changes. I arrive at the clinic, coffee in hand. I make some charges for some farm call emergencies I had the night before. I check my inbox to see if I got any mail I didn’t get to yesterday, taking mental notes of drug promotions going on that month, writing down things I need to order, and read through outside lab results. I make notes to call those clients with those results later in the morning as most people don’t exactly appreciate a phone call at 7:15 A.M. I check on my hospitalized patients and adjust any treatment plans if necessary. I look at the schedule for the day and decide what bad cases I’m going to brush off on my associate (just kidding!). The phone rings, and since my receptionist doesn’t come in until 8 A.M., I answer, “Howard County Veterinary Service, this is Dr. Stroupe.” The frantic voice on the other line says, “My dog has been vomiting all night long after eating the two pounds of lard we threw out (this is an actual case I have seen, by the way). Can I bring him in first thing this morning?” I look at the calendar and see that I have a bunch of appointments scheduled first thing in the morning while my associate is out on a farm call. I tell the owner to bring the dog on in and we’ll work them in as quick as we can. Meanwhile, someone walks in (without an appointment) with an itching cat. “My cat has been scratching itself until it bleeds, Doc.” My first reply, “Is your cat on a flea and tick preventative?” The owner says, “Yeah. I’ve been giving that real cheap Hartz stuff from Wal-Mart and give flea baths periodically, so I know it ain’t fleas.” I check the cat in and take him back to the exam room. I manage to convince the owner that the cat is itching, in fact, due to fleas by running my flea comb through it’s fur and showcasing the fleas that are jumping off of it. We send the pet with a flea preventative that isn’t complete crap, just in time for the morning emergency to come in. As I’m examining the emergency in the exam room, I hear the phone ring in the background. One of my technicians answers, and I can tell the person on the other line is asking to speak to me with some questions. My technician writes down their name and phone number and posts it on my bulletin board for me to call back later. We check blood work and take radiographs (x-rays) on the sick dog. After discovering he just has a rip-roaring gastroenteritis from his fat feast the night before, we send him home with some medications. I walk to the bulletin board and call the client with the question. I then start catching up on my medical records for the morning so far. Another phone call with a request to refill a medication comes in. I grant the request and print a label for the medication. Okay, where was I again? I continue to finish (or attempt to finish) filling out the medical records. I hear one of my technicians holler from the kennel room, so I walk back there. Buddy, my patient on fluids, had just ripped out his IV catheter. “#$&!” I say under my breath or very loudly depending on how my mood is at this point. I replace the IV catheter and move on with morning. Wait, where was I again? My receptionist yells from up front, “Dr. Stroupe, your 8:30 A.M. is here.” As I’m walking to the exam room to see my appointment, I remember, “Oh! I almost forgot! Could you refill Mrs. Smith’s medication? She’s going to pick it up later this morning. I printed a label for it, or at least I think I did.” I finish seeing the appointment and tell them we can check them out and send them with their preventatives up front. The client says, “Wait, weren’t we going to trim Frisky’s nails?” “Crap!” I think to myself. She just told me to do that two minutes ago. I say, “Yes! Certainly!” and trim the dog’s nails as it squirms in my technician’s arms. I secretly hope that my client doesn’t think I’m suffering from some sort of dementia. After that’s done, I stand in a daze for a second and then go look at my bulletin board (my guide for the day). I see several things posted that I need to order from our distributor. While I’m on hold with the distributor, I look up purchasing history on different products and decide how much of each product I want to order. When I’m done with that, I either catch up on medical records while on hold or just daze off if I’m not feeling particularly productive. My technician says, “Dr. Stroupe, you forgot to charge our last client for that nail trim and anal gland expression.” Great. Oh well, that client gets a little bit of a discount today. My distributor answers and I place my first order of products for the day. While I’m talking with the distributor, my phone dings with someone sending me a Facebook message with a pet question. I think to myself, “Seriously? Do they not know how to pick up the phone and call the clinic like everyone else?” I ignore the inquiry seeing as it’s not an emergency and I haven’t spoken to the person since high school. Another thing I stopped doing with age and wisdom: acting as a 24/7 vet advice line for my “friends” on social media. I have plenty on my plate as is. I see several more appointments and frantically type in records in my little time between appointments. I get a tinge of hunger and grab some Ritz crackers from my desk so I don’t get hangry before lunch. I answer a few more phone calls. Another client calls and asks, “I have some pigs and I’m looking for a dewormer that I can add to their water or feed. I also have a sick goat. Do you think it got worms from the pigs?” I answer their questions and tell them I’ll have to research some products they can use. While I begin the lengthy process of finding a product with the right concentration that isn’t too expensive but also isn’t backordered, another appointment comes in. It’s a dog with a fresh laceration. We tell the client the dog needs to have the laceration sutured, and my technician goes over the permission paperwork with them. We prep for surgery and suture up the dog. I then call the client after to give an update. I wash my hands and roll into the lounge and heat up my lunch. I collapse into the chair and munch on my food. I’m starving! (another permanent pregnancy condition). I’ll go ahead and stop the description of my day. That gives you a bit of an idea of why I might a little scatter-brained. You have probably also gathered that in this profession (and many others) your brain needs to be organized and juggle a lot of tasks at one time. We have to be problem solvers and utilize a lot of critical thinking. While I have found ways to manage, my brain no longer functions the same as my pre-pregnancy brain. I’m hoping things will return to normal once Pip is born, but I’m told that it only gets slightly better once the baby is born. Things kind of leveled out and became normal during the second trimester, but as I approach my third trimester, pregnancy insomnia has kicked in. That certainly doesn’t help my cognitive performance. No worries. I double check everything I do, so I haven’t made any terrible mistakes at this point (so please don’t be afraid to bring your pet to me). However, I struggle to juggle my many tasks much more than I did before. I have literally stopped in the middle of a sentence while talking to a client because I couldn’t remember what I was saying. I struggle to recall information that I learned in veterinary school years ago (which didn’t used to be a struggle) and have to utilize my reference textbooks more often. Sometimes I have trouble recalling names of basic pieces of equipment (or anything really). I might say, “You know, the thingy that spins down tubes of blood and urine?” My tech replies, “You mean a centrifuge?” with a look on her face that clearly shows I’ve lost my mind. My co-workers don’t really buy the “pregnancy brain” thing. They point out that I was a bit forgetful before I was pregnant, which is fair enough. But don’t listen to them, it’s totally pregnancy brain! Another interesting component is my new-found lack of coordination. I tend to fumble and drop things a lot. A couple of weeks ago, I had to draw blood on a geriatric cat with kidney disease for a send-out lab test. The lab wanted 1 mL of serum. Seriously?! Have these lab people tried to get 1 mL of serum out of a geriatric cat before?! They should be slapped for requiring that. Anyway, I finally got enough blood and put it in the tube. As I grabbed my blood tube to hand it to my technician for it to be spun down, I dropped the tube. There was a look of horror on both our faces as we watched the tube fall to the ground (seemingly in slow motion) and it shattered. I kneeled down on the ground and just stared at the clotted blood on the tile floor and nearly started to cry. In talking to my colleagues who are currently pregnant or have been pregnant, they have had similar experiences as I have. A colleague of mine who has four children (a pregnancy/pregnancy brain veteran) says, “I still have the thought train run right off the tracks sometimes. I couldn’t remember the name of a ‘drip set’ in my first week back from maternity leave. I asked my tech, ‘What’s that thing? That thing that the fluids drip through?’ He looked at me like I was totally insane.” Another colleague in her last month of pregnancy says, “My techs also understand pointing with mindless stuttering at this point. I can’t drink any caffeine or my legs twitch all night long. It’s killing me!” Which brings us to caffeine. Another colleague due the same time as me says, “I max out the acceptable caffeine levels….(for pregnant women).” I’m the same. I keep telling myself I’ll drop down from two cups of coffee a day to one, but now that insomnia has kicked in that probably won’t happen. We all know pregnancy is not for the weak of heart. Practicing medicine while pregnant obviously adds an interesting component. The good news is that my colleagues and I are fairly smart to begin with (not to brag), so even on our worst days, we’re likely functioning at a much higher level than our dogs. Obviously, our cats are superior in every way and they know it. So if your vet has a baby bump, rest assured your furry friend is still in good hands. I’m going to end with a little advice for all the pregnant vets out there experiencing pregnancy brain:
* HAHA! Jokes on you. Wheatgrass and spinach are gross, and bananas make you constipated. Just eat some chocolate. Geez!
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Jessica Stroupe, DVM
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August 2017
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