It is a truth universally acknowledged – people are weird. It’s something that becomes clear within a few days (or even hours) of any job that has significant interaction with that terrifying, unpredictable section of humanity known by the strangely bland collective term “the public”.
Actually, it’s pretty clear in almost any job – except to those wise individuals who have given up on the whole idea and gone to live in a cave. I’m not saying I’m jealous of them, but if you know of any good caves going, drop me a line.
People are weird enough in consulting rooms when you only see them for 10 minutes – they’re double weird with a cherry on top when you visit them on their home turf.
Home sweet home
I find home visits frustrating, scary and fascinating in equal measure.
They’re frustrating because they take up so much time – there’s always so much more you could be doing, so much backed up waiting for you when you get back.
They’re also frustrating because you’re so limited with what you can do on a home visit – quite often, you don’t have the drugs, equipment or manpower you need, and end up bringing the patient back to the surgery anyway.
Home visits are scary because you’re out of your comfort zone – I imagine this isn’t really a problem for large animal and mixed vets, but “smallies” such as me like a bit of routine to try to wrestle some order into the chaos of veterinary medicine.
Consulting in someone else’s room feels a little wrong, and is enough to throw me off my stride, so you can imagine how consulting in someone else’s house feels.
How the other half live
Home visits are fascinating because… well, okay, let’s admit it – you get a nosey, voyeuristic pleasure in seeing how someone else lives.
I think many of us struggle through the world thinking we’re getting it wrong, we’re not quite like other people and, inside, we still don’t really feel like we’ve grown up.
Seeing how others behave in their own home, order their lives and want their home to look is alternately reassuring – because they seem to be a bit like you – or terrifying because their lives appear completely alien to yours. Either way, it’s fascinating.
It’s also often a bittersweet pleasure, because the most common reason I tend to visit client’s houses nowadays is for euthanasia.
Different strokes
Strange things can happen on visits; people behave differently than when in a consulting room.
I have been threatened with violence twice on house calls – both times when I was on my own, called out in the night, and dealt with a family member who didn’t agree with the rest of the family’s opinion (and mine) that the family pet needed to be euthanised.
Once, on a visit to a small seaside town, I euthanised a great Dane belonging to an elderly woman. I had brought a stretcher, but it was quite clear the poor woman was too frail to help me take her dog back to the car – and, manly superman though I am, even I would have struggled to hoist 80kg worth of pet back into my car by myself.
Practical thinking?
While I pondered the problem, the woman wiped away her tears, stood up, opened her front door and said: “Ah, excuse me, sir, I wonder if you could help me with something?”
I heard a slightly surprised “oh, er, of course” and a few seconds later, a bemused passer-by walked into the front room. His eyebrows raised as he saw the dead dog, but before he had time to say anything, the old woman bustled in behind him.
“Could you be a dear and help this nice young gentleman with my darling Montgomery? I’m afraid he’s rather too heavy for us to carry on our own.”
I smiled politely at the man, and offered him what felt like an entirely inadequate “thanks” as he helped me carry the poor, deceased and incredibly heavy Montgomery back to my increasingly tiny-looking Ford Fiesta.
With it being a strange enough experience for me, I often wonder about the story the man told his friends and family later.
Each to their own
It was a very weird experience, but that’s the thing you learn on house visits – people are weird.
They are awake at strange hours, eat different things to you, watch different things, tolerate different levels of mess and tidiness, and have strange in-jokes you can’t understand.
Everyone is weird in their own way – a way fully on display on a house visit. Everyone is weird, and that includes me – in a world like this, any other response would be crazy.
Everyone is weird, and I think that’s normal. The people who think they’re normal – they’re the ones you need to watch out for!
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