I’ve been away lately. I haven’t been posting on any of my social media accounts and I’ve been scarcely getting enough time to scratch myself, let alone write! With end-of-year exams over I have 18 months to go before graduation, and only six until final rotations. I was looking forward to working to save some money, reclaiming my social life, and mostly getting stuck in to my writing. But life had other ideas.
Superstitions have a special place in my heart, whether they are veterinary superstitions like the ones featured on VIN recently, or the habit of throwing salt over my left shoulder that I picked up from my great-grandmother. In this case though, it was the rule of threes that led to me working as the sole cook in a busy café with absolutely zero experience. In the space of one week away (for veterinary placement, what else!) from my regular part-time job at a local café two assistant chefs had broken bones. Both breaks had them out of action for at least 6-8 weeks, leaving the head chef to run the kitchen solo. Unfortunately due to health reasons the head chef was forced to stop work the week I returned from placemen, leaving the kitchen 3 chefs down with nobody to man the kitchen besides one of the baristas who was needed for the café’s primary order of business – coffee. Somewhat foolishly, this situation led to me volunteering to ‘give it a crack’…
For those of you used to working in a vet clinic, working in a kitchen would be an excellent experience. There are more similarities than you may realise…
Whether it’s meeting customer/client expectations, managing a team environment, keeping a clean work area or even working under pressure I found the similarities almost comforting. The challenges of managing a dozen different meals at once was a similar feeling to managing a ward full of sick animals – though with a markedly better smell. One thing that was different though were the injuries. I’ve only ever drawn blood from an injury once in a vet clinic – 2 AM Gastric Dilation and Volvulus ‘bloat’ surgery aren’t great for the hands of the assistant (me) – yet my weeks as a cook have left me with more burns, cuts and blisters than I’ve had time to count.
In this time however I’ve managed to squeeze in a few bits and pieces: I castrated the bull calves back home with a better technique that I had learnt since doing them the year before, I met some of the students interviewing for places in the Charles Sturt University Veterinary Science course in 2015, and I submitted my first ever book review to the Australian Veterinary Journal. I’ve also been re-reading my Herriot collection (hence the title of this post).
Now for the future: In two weeks time I will be in India preparing for a week at Bangerhatta Wildlife park, and two weeks at the Worldwide Veterinary Service Indian Training Centre desexing stray dogs. I’ll be keeping a journal and video diary so there will definitely be a plethora of stories about that trip in the coming months.
Seeing Practice 