Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Vet Files today.
Today we are joined by Lauren Cabrera, a veterinary student at
Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine
with unique and inspiring path to the field.
She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of
Vermont, worked previously as a nurse practitioner and even
founded the Humane Society of Siphon Island.
She is a mom of two and a previous yoga instructor.
She also runs Future Island vet Instagram page.
Thank you so much, Lauren, for joining us.
Thanks for having me. We'd love to start off with just
hearing a bit more about your background and your path to
veterinary medicine. What were some important
milestones that you went through?
Sure. Well I'll start off with I am a
non traditional student. So I'm 36 years old and had been
away from school for a while. Like you mentioned, I went to
University of Vermont. I got my nursing degree and then
eventually I became a nurse practitioner.
I did a fellowship in New York City for a year.
I moved around and eventually was on Guam and worked in the
hospital there and got into animal rescue, which kind of
like morphed into me being at vet school.
So I guess that I always wanted to be a veterinarian like many
of us, but I just took a totally different path.
My mom had suggested I get a job where I can just pay for animals
and have them as a hobby instead of making it my whole life.
But I guess that didn't happen because here I am now at that
school. So what was the final decision
that you said, OK, I'm going to apply to that school because you
had another job, I'm assuming, and then you started the shelter
and then what? What made you bridge?
Yeah, so I guess, well, what happened?
I was living on Guam. I had my first child, it was the
pandemic. I couldn't find daycare.
So I was like, I will start fostering dogs.
I love fostering dogs. But then I realized nobody
wanted the dogs. And so I'm like, am I going to
keep these three puppies for the rest of their life because I
already have dogs? I don't need more.
So I met somebody who was who had flown a dog off island to
somebody stateside. I guess some background I forget
that people aren't like really familiar with Guam and Saipan.
Guam is AUS territory, there's about like 150 or 60,000 people
and around 60,000 free roaming dogs and one animal shelter, a
couple of private vets and there's a military presence.
It's also very far away, you should look it up on a map if
you haven't. And then Saipan, where I live
now, is part of the Northern Mariana Islands, which is also
part of the US, but very, very far away.
And we have no veterinarian at all.
We also have a lot of stray dogs and cats because we have no vet.
So there's been no access to Spay Neater for a long time.
And there's one government shelter there and that's it.
So knowing that, I can kind of tell the story a little better.
Backtracking, I was fostering dogs and didn't know what to do
with them. The option was either like bring
them to the shelter and they would get put down or keep them
forever. But I ended up flying them off
island and founded a rescue called Boonie Flight Project
with my friend. And since then we've flown over
700 dogs from Guam and Saipan to the mainland US, which is a lot.
And it's crazy amount of money and work and it we never got
paid for it. It was like just kind of our way
of getting into animal welfare I guess.
But eventually you're kind of like, cool, I can help like 700
dogs, but there's like 60,000 on Guam and 20,000 on Saipan.
What do I, this isn't actually like doing anything.
So that's when I got involved with the shelter on Guam.
I became their board president and I helped restart a low cost
spay neuter clinic that had kind of died there.
And then when I moved to Saipan and I realized there was no vet
and my own dog got sick and died, I was like, this is crazy.
And so I kind of was, I got involved with a rescue there,
Boonie Babies, who was doing a spay neuter clinic.
And then I just started my own organization, Saipan Humane
Society, which sounds like a shelter, but it's actually a
clinic. And our goal was just to support
the government shelter, like help them with euthanasia, help
them with adoptions and do spay neuter.
But it became quickly apparent that people really wanted care
for their pets. And so now I guess last year we
provided care to over 6000 animals and that's with visiting
vets who are volunteering and virtual vets who help us and
protocols we have written up. So I guess at some point I was
just like, do I keep spending all this effort bringing vets
out or do I just become a vet? Because I was already doing a
lot of like clinical stuff. And it is frustrating because as
a nurse practitioner, I can prescribe and diagnose and do
all this stuff. And I really wanted to learn how
to do spay, neuter and learn a lot more.
So I tortured like my mentors and my husband asking them if I
should do it a lot. And finally, I just was like,
I'll apply and see what happens. And now I'm in fed school.
That is my story. That's absolutely incredible.
I. Completely relate, I worked a
lot in animal sanctuary and welfare is one of my biggest
things. You should compete in the
welfare judging contest also. Yeah, yes.
It's so much fun, you learn so much about other species.
But I get it because when you're put in a position and no one can
do anything and you're like, fine, I will.
I will let it be me. Whatever I have to do to let it
be me. But it's also a lot of pressure.
How do you feel like knowing that when you go fresh out of
school, you're going to have to go and take this over?
What does mentorship look like for you for this?
So I guess already like I was serving in a pretty like
interesting role where I will do like wound repairs and like
basic procedures and handle a lot of sick patients and
euthanize pets. So I'm very comfortable with
that and with client communication and we have very
limited diagnostics, but I want to get really, really good at
surgery because I will be out there alone doing it.
And people seem to have the impression that like when I'm a
vet, they're like, I can't wait till we have a vet so that like
XYZ doesn't happen. And I'm like, you know, that
stuff like actually requires like an X-ray machine and like
stuff that we just don't have, right?
Not everything is going to change, but I'll at least be
able to like, do the basic surgeries we need, which is spay
neuter, amputations and nucleations and mass removals,
pretty much. So this summer, we have vets
coming pretty much the entire summer.
And my goal is to get as much surgery experience as I can with
them and then, you know, chase whatever opportunities I can
during school. And I'm hoping when I graduate
that I will just like be able to bring mentors out to help me
until I'm comfortable enough. It is hard being far away.
But I guess the good thing is we always have a vet on our
schedule there back home at the clinic.
And like every day our our staff are seeing sick pets and running
them by the vet virtually. So there is somebody always
there who's happy to video chat and walk you through something
if it's something you've never done or like, you can bounce
cases off them. And at the end of the day, with
limited diagnostics, there's only like, you can't, you can't
do everything, you know, There's only so much you can do.
So yeah, that's what mentorship will look like, I guess.
Yeah, I think it sounds like all, I don't want to say fun and
games, but it's like, oh, yay, dogs and cats on an island.
I want to go live on the island. What are kind of the harder
parts of it? I'm sure.
I mean, I if you even have looked at your Instagram page
that it gets hard. So do you want to talk a little
bit about that? Sure, there's a lot.
Part of why I didn't go into vet Med originally was I didn't want
to do euthanasia. And so then I ended up helping
out the government shelter and realizing that once there, there
was a government vet on the island and he retired and there
was no way to euthanize animals. So they were just like
languishing and dying. So I figured out how to
euthanize them without controlled drugs because we
could not get controlled drugs at the time.
And I taught the staff to euthanize and I've euthanized
like over 1000 dogs and cats, puppies, moms, everything.
So that's definitely hard obviously.
And also, you know, when people bring a pet in, like say we get
a pyometra, which we can, you know, it's, it's either open or
you can see it because we do have a handheld ultrasound.
And so say we have that and there's a vet coming next week,
but the dog has pyometra now. And you're like, well, we can
give you some antibiotics and hope for the best, but your
dog's maybe going to die before the vet gets here.
And then the vet gets there and the dog's either dead or too
sick for surgery, that kind of stuff.
You know, there's so many things that we could fix if a vet was
there and you just can't doing health certificates.
Most people hate those for travel, but it's really
important where we are. And a vet has to sign those.
So a lot of pets get left behind because there's nobody to do the
health certificate. And then another hard part is
boundaries because it it is a small island.
Just my favorite example is on Christmas, I was home for a
break and I took my kids to the pool.
My husband was working at the hospital and he got a call from
the emergency room, somebody working in the ER and they were
like, Hey, can you, can you hear wife come look at this Drake
cat. And he was like, what's wrong
with you? It's Christmas, like, goodbye.
And that kind of thing has happened quite a few times on
holidays. And then just like any day over
winter break, it was like, oh, Laurens home.
Like, let's start bothering her personal number and husband and
everything to see if she can come help our pet at midnight.
So that is hard. And I think the other hard thing
is, and another reason I didn't want to go into vet Med
originally is cost of care and denying access to care because
somebody couldn't afford it. That just didn't sit well with
me. And one of my one of the
volunteers at clinic shared a story the other day where the
clinic, we were charging like $10.00 for like vaccines and
flea and tick meds or something and they only had $5 and
somebody in the waiting room paid the other $5.
And it's like the fact that people cannot afford $10 is
challenging because in reality, things cost the clinic a lot
more than $10 to provide. And the community doesn't always
see that just keeping the clinic alone is hard.
Open is hard. And so like, how do you fund a
clinic in an area that doesn't have much money to keep it
going? And how do you elevate the,
like, quality of care? Some people, maybe like a
handful of people want an X-ray machine.
How do you pay for that? That kind of thing.
So there's a lot of challenges. It's also very far.
What are your like main challenges because I have a big
interest in practice, ownership and the business side of it all.
Where is your main funding coming from?
Is it all donation based? And how do you get those
donations? Is it just social media at this
point and saying, hey, here's my what I'm doing, here's our
mission, here's how you can help.
I don't know what else to do. Yeah, pretty much as a as a
nonprofit do well when we first started scrounged around looking
for people to help us a lot. And there are a lot of grant
making organizations across the country.
The challenge is pretty much none of them want to help the
territory or Commonwealth of the US And so I would see these
organizations doing really great things and just get denied by
them. I used to e-mail like some very
popular ones every month, like on a schedule and they're the
one of them was like, oh, sorry, we don't help territories.
And I was like, but you're in Puerto Rico.
So and they're like, oh, but that's invite only.
And then I'm like, how do you get invited?
And then they would just not answer.
And then the next month I would do the same thing.
And eventually, thank God, Banfield Foundation ended up
being the organization that's like saved us all.
Without them, we probably wouldn't exist.
Still, honestly, it was just way too difficult to make it make
sense. So they provide us with a lot of
in kind supplies and they helped us actually get our clinic space
because when we first opened and like accidentally became your
neighborhood pet clinic, we were basically in a closet at the
government shelter and our waiting room was outside on a
porch. And there'd be like 20-30 people
out there with their animals in the heat and humidity for hours.
And we would run out of space in our closet.
I have like 2 sedated dogs on the floor in the hallway.
And like, it was just very chaotic.
So now we have a space. But yeah, most of our funding, a
lot of in kind stuff from Banfield Foundation.
And then yeah, social media. I'm lucky enough to have a big
social media presence on Boonie Flight Project and I used to
fundraise hard to ship dogs off island and I've kind of shifted
that to clinic. But it's harder to fundraise for
the clinic because people get really invested in stories of
individual dogs that we're like saving from the shelter and
flying somewhere and being like, hey, can you help?
Our clinic is not as interesting to donate to, so that's been a
challenge. But yeah, really hard because I
feel like in vet Med there are a lot of things that we cannot
share. Like if it's a complaint, we
cannot share. McCann and I talk about this all
the time because we would love to show more on our social
media, but as you know, we're all first year veterinary
students. We really cannot show them what
we're doing the majority of the time.
Besides, you can watch me study for a million hours.
Exactly. I think that's one of the things
we're really lucky with back home.
We have like incorporated into our release when people come
into clinic that like you, your pet might end up on social
media. And that's just part of the
deal. And nobody seems to have problem
with it because in reality, it's like their pet on social media
that is making their pet scare possible.
It's a free for all when I'm home and adapting to it not
being a free for all here has been weird because I'm just used
to like walking around and showing everything.
Like you're look at this shelter full of sad puppies and look at
this clinic and look at this dog with its leg hanging off and
this is my life. So here it's there's nothing to
show, just my dog. And I know it's going to find
one of the hardest things about running a social media account
when you can't take pictures or when we did national PVMA and
you don't really have like a meeting space, what is there to
take pictures of where? Asynchronous.
It's a national organization and there's one meeting a year.
How am I going to make content and get people interested
without just putting blocks of text?
And I think about it a lot and I'm not like funny.
I can make a quick little joke and make a little tick tock and
go viral. I don't have clients to put on
there. It's just been interesting.
I do a lot of externships. LSU incorporated them into their
semesters, so we do 2 weeks every semester and even on my
Christmas break, on my spring break, I'm doing externships
because I've said it before, but all my experiences in necropsy
and production animal. So I'm trying to play catch up
here. Anyway, it's always interesting
to me the different ways of going about it.
For the most part, I just can't take pictures.
Or if I take a picture they say don't post it or da da da.
I don't know. I feel like when I'm in bed, I'm
like, I'm taking pictures. Like I want to be able to share
our profession and I think the schools, it's harder because
they're bigger entities and I talk about it all the time.
It's just interesting to me because the general public
doesn't understand And they say, well, we don't put anything out
because the public doesn't understand.
And they get upset. Well, how are they ever going to
understand if we don't educate? How else are they going to learn
this? That's the way I look at it.
And so they, I'm on an externship right now and the
doctors like take a picture of this.
And I said like. Here and then.
Life being able I'm the only person in that Med, I'm not the
only person with animals in my life, but being able to share it
even once after it's happened, regardless of social media, just
taking the picture and saying look at this like this is what
I'm doing. This is what this means because
people will sit and ask and they're confused or I mean, how,
how do they know if they don't see it?
And so I think it's really good to talk about it and raise
awareness for the shelters the way that you do.
Or not shelters, but shelter medicine, if you will, and stray
dogs. And why do we spay and neuter?
Why do we euthanize so many shelter animals?
People don't get it. How are they going to get it if
they don't see it? So I love to see the education
part of what you do. Definitely.
And it's become like over the years of like throwing stuff on
social media by like thing has always been, I'm just going to
tell it like it is and you can get mad at me and go off like it
just boosts the algorithm. That's fine.
So people get mad a lot. But over the years, the things
that I have been preaching have locally like improved things a
lot. Like one thing I was preaching
spay abortions. Why are we having more puppies
when we're putting down puppies at the shelter?
Get an abortion if you can, or feeding stray dogs.
Don't feed them. It gives them resources to
procreate. And then we have more puppies
and guess what? They're all going to die on the
street and nobody likes dead puppies.
So, and now like on Facebook, I'll see rescue groups that are
like, you know, some random person will be like, can you
help me feed this dog? And all the rescue groups will
go in and be like, no, only feed it if you're bringing it to get
spayed. And it's really cool to see that
like culture change over time because there was there was a
pack of dogs of like 50 dogs on Guam because they were on a
feeding schedule for two years and it did not start with 50
dogs. So yeah, that's interesting.
It's interesting to figure out what to post though, cuz I am
also not that in real life. I'm like kind of maybe a little
funny, but mostly because I just am in a funny, I guess.
Like the way I exist in life. It's not like I'm trying to be.
I just do dumb things a lot, but I can't like become a witty
person and make like silly things on on social media well.
Well, I really like your niche, though.
I don't think you need to be going out and doing what
everyone else is doing. Like a lot of the times.
I think it's important for people to have a space where
they learn because whether or not they like it, people are
going to be making decisions that affect our profession.
And so I think the more you're able to talk about this in a
comfortable way. Like the other day we had a
lecture on slaughter and some people had never heard about the
process before at all. And I had a welfare judging
contest and we had to judge slaughterhouses.
And it is. It's hard to stomach the first
time you hear about it, but then the more you inform yourself,
you're like, OK, I understand the repercussions.
It's like Keating keeping a breeding population around when
that same amount of effort could go into trapping them.
And guess what? You save so many resources.
That's how I like to think of it.
There are only so many resources in the world and there's only so
much time. Like we need to be using it
efficiently. And that's what your whole page
is trying to do. And I think it's doing an
amazing job. At least I know a lot of people
who have learned a lot from you. That's always good to hear.
And sometimes I wonder, like, what do I put out in it?
I just kind of like wake up one day and I'm like, OK, I guess
I'm going to write about this because I'm thinking about it.
But it is interesting to like hear and see that it has
impacted people or made them interested in like if we have a
few people coming to Saipan who like heard of it through social
media and just like kind of inspires people to work in more
underserved areas, help change perspectives on euthanasia and
all that stuff. I'd love to hear more about.
So my friend is a medical student and I told Mikaelin
about this the other day. She had never heard of One
Health before and that was shocking to me.
Could you go more into that with your life as a nurse
practitioner and why you left and maybe how One Health
compares to what you're doing now?
I liked my life as a nurse practitioner.
Honestly, it was like a cushy job.
I mean, I would work two weeks straight, but then I would get 2
weeks off. At my, my like last NP job, I
was a hospitalist. So basically I was just like the
primary provider for patients who were admitted to the
hospital. You'd get admitted.
You'd either be assigned to a physician or to one of the NPS.
Usually they were like lower acuity patients, but sometimes
the lower acuity patients become high acuity patients.
And you always, I always, always had a physician to back me up
and bounce things off of. But it was pretty autonomous,
which was nice. And it was all internal Med,
which I love. It's just detective work and
trying to rope in all the specialists and get everyone on
the same page. But my real specialty before I
was a hospitalist was palliative care, end of life care, pain
management for cancer patients. And that was hard work and a lot
of like difficult conversations with people, but also very
rewarding. And I would have just dated a
nurse practitioner forever, except for kind of when I went
into maternity on maternity leave.
Everything just changed. And I was going to, I had a job
lined up at the hospital on Saipan when we were moving
there. And I was like, hey, husband,
what if I just, like, enjoy the kids and, you know, volunteer a
little and just enjoy my life for a minute?
And he was like, yeah, that's fine.
And so that just kind of like, snowballed, obviously.
But yeah, during my time as a nurse practitioner, one house
did not come up much and definitely not in palliative
care. But you know, now in my my
actual job where I work now, I work for the government back
home, we don't have a vet, you know, like state vet type of
thing. So I fill that role with a vet
on Guam who mentors me. And so I am in charge of the
regulatory stuff. So that's like, you know,
zoonotic disease prevention and management detection,
surveillance with with nothing because we don't have things to
do stuff with. And then, you know, like
elaborating with public health, like when avian influenza before
I left, we had like a big, what's it called, like tabletop
exercise with public health and at the epidemiologist and my
animal health team and all the players who would be involved.
It's interesting that I feel like one health is definitely
not as talked about in human Med and I don't know why that is,
but as like from the vet Med side, you can clearly see where
like animal disease impacts humans, but you just don't see
it as clearly from the human Med side.
Or maybe you're like so narrow in your specialty that you're
like, yeah, other people deal with that comparing.
Vet Med and human medicine, it's so similar but so different.
Like when you look at school and that's all different
conversation. But I think it's interesting at
a conversation today about why do we feel as vets that we're
responsible to save every single animal that we can or should or
blah, blah, blah. People will private practice
that business owners will go broke trying to provide and save
and save and save and save for people who don't or aren't able
to pay their own bills. And why are we the bank?
Why are we, I think there's been a little bit of a shift here
recently to that's kind of standing up for themselves and
saying we're not a bank. You need to pay before we do
anything or before you leave. But point is, there's people who
still do. Why are we expected to not
charge anybody? I know insurance gets involved
and that's the whole conversation.
But when you talk to anybody about human medicine, nobody's
expected. We're not expecting MD's to go
work at the homeless shelters and volunteer their days off to
do low cost blah blah blah blah. Why are events expected to do
that? And I can't imagine being the
only vet and getting all of those, the different things
you're expected to save every single animal, to do every
single job on the entire island. There's not somebody you can
refer to. It's just crazy.
I mean, what do you think we could do either as a profession
or general public to kind of shift the narrative to like,
because I feel like you're good with boundaries or at least
better than I am and a lot of other people are.
How do we start shifting it to say we are not responsible?
We we should have the knowledge and the know how to fix any
animal that comes in the door and do what we can do, but we
are not personally responsible for saving every single animal's
life on the planet, if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
And that's something I definitely deal with every day.
When you work in the hospital, someone else handles staffing,
someone else handles billing. That was part of why I went into
human Med too. I was like, oh, I can go to work
and then leave and I'm off for a few days or weeks or whatever,
you know, and somebody else will come in and they take care of
the patient. So it's like much less burden,
but in Vetmed, especially where I am, it's just me.
So boundaries are really hard, I think kind of a way to what I've
been trying to do. And for recent, I mean, it feels
like we don't get anywhere in setting boundaries a lot of the
time. They're constantly crossed.
But recently I was talking to a professor here who is like, just
keep doing it and eventually it will make a bigger impact.
I promise. You just have to you feel like
you're saying the same thing over and over.
But trying to humanize us is what I've done a lot.
I'm like, hey, clinic is closed because we don't have staff.
Or like, hey, clinic is closed because our staff just worked 80
hours doing a spay neuter clinic and they need to recover and,
you know, breakdown everything and set up everything and we
can't be available 24/7. Or hey, don't bother me and my
personal number because I'm also a mom and Saipan Humane Society
isn't even my job. I just like help.
So I don't know, talking about what you do.
I think that I think the public kind of thinks sometimes that
like a vet is just a vet and you can't be like anything else.
But you can be a vet and a mom and have other jobs and have
other responsibilities and want to have a life and that should
be OK. So trying to humanize it more
and, you know, sharing that on social media too, because that's
where a lot of people get their information now I think helps.
But you'll always have angry people about it.
I love. That you're talking about
humanizing it. I think for you especially, I'm
so glad that you share that more personal part of your life
because not only are you so dedicated to be the only
veterinarian on the island one day, you're also, what, 20 hours
away from your family? Yeah.
And that significant, it's far, it's like 2626 now.
Wow. It's crazy.
Do you ever get comments about you being a mother who's away?
Because I feel people would attack that.
And that's not fair because if you showed a man doing the same
thing, I doubt he would receive the same kind of comments.
Yeah. I did get so so back home.
It's like pretty, it's not abnormal for somebody to go away
and go to school, even if it's a mom or whatever.
Like if you want an advanced degree, you have to leave.
And I was pretty well supported judge and, you know, guilt
myself more than anybody else has except for one person.
I don't even know who it is. But there was one person who was
like really hunting me down on social media, telling me how
horrible I was of a mother and stuff.
And I was just like, whatever, loser get with the times.
But the other interesting thing is we've never had a female vet.
We did have a private vet once. He retired a while ago and then
the government vet on both were men.
So being the first female vet is kind of cool too.
But yeah, I'm surprised, honestly, that I haven't gotten
more hate for leaving my kids. But they have.
I mean, if I brought them here, their life would not be as fun.
I've gotten so many videos of them in the yard the last two
days, like jumping on this huge bouncy house and running down
the slide and jumping into a little kiddie pool and then
running up the slide. And I mean, they have a pretty
good life. Childcare is much more
affordable back home. I don't, I don't doubt that at
all. I would think even even when I
am like around my family, I should say, just so the public
knows, when you're a vet student, it's hard to be present
no matter where you are. It's incredibly hard to be
present even when I'm at an event and I do try to like turn
it on and turn it back off like, oh, this is my time to actually
enjoy and take a break. But there's always more you
could be doing. So being able to separate that.
So I think people with families we were talking about, we're
like, we don't know how anyone does it if they have a million
responsibilities sitting in front of them, because those
thoughts are always at the back of.
Your mind, unfortunately. Definitely.
I don't know how people do it, but like, major kudos to them.
I maybe not have made it through my first semester if my family
was here. But the kind of beautiful thing
is because before I left for vet school, I was doing my prereqs
online. I did a shelter Med master's
degree online and I was, you know, working and helping at the
clinic and I had my kids. So I was just like spread thin
all the time. And then like when I went home
over a winter break, I was like, I'm not doing anything.
I'm just hanging out with my kids and my family and is kind
of nice to like, I, I, I'm hard on myself and want to like, be
always doing something productive, right.
But after working so hard all semester, I'm like, I'm taking a
break. And it's the first break I
realized that I've had. I don't even know, like it's
been years and years and years. So you kind of earn that.
And then you get like more quality time with your kids
instead of quantity. So that makes me feel better
too. But yeah, yeah.
Definitely, Yeah. I feel people don't talk about
that enough. That's a good point, Gretel.
I was trying to explain this to somebody the other day because
they said, Oh my goodness, you feel like, or you're acting like
yourself again because I'm on this externship and I'm not
worried about. I mean, school's still there.
I still have classes, don't get me wrong, but there's not a big
exam coming up. It's like clinical skills and
whatnot, things that are hard to study for.
So I mean, they told me, they said, wow, you're back to
yourself, at least better than you were.
I thought maybe that's going to change to you and you're just
boring now. And I was like, no, I'm not
boring. I'm just always, even when I'm
with somebody and I'm doing something like doing something
fun and I'm out, I don't purposely do it.
It's just in the back. And it First off, you're
drained. You're drained from school and
you try to go have fun and say I'm taking some me time.
I'm not going to think about school and you go there, but
you're so drained. And then in the back of your
head, you don't realize it, but it's like that invisible, like
there's something I can be doing right now.
It isn't ever, ever, ever done. I'd never take a day off from
studying. I take hours off of studying.
But if I took days off from studying, me personally, I'm not
saying it's impossible. Me personally, happy family
because weekends are my study time and weekdays I've got like
extracurriculars and parts off job and like and so yeah, people
will talk about that. And what have you found, what
have you learned about yourself during that school that has kind
of surprised you? Well, I've learned that I'm very
disorganized and I did not realize that before because so
many people I think helped me stay organized or they would
just be like, oh, Lauren, like and also I was so productive.
Like I was very disorganized, but I would get a lot done.
Like I forgot this and that, but I wrote a lot today, like here,
look at this like so it was kind of like I could function.
I had a lot of help. Here is just me and so I have
struggled to stay organized for sure.
And also like, I don't know, when I first came to vet school,
I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm like I'm state side.
I haven't been here for a while. I want to go like work with
horses again and do this and that.
I learned that I can't do that during vet school.
I have to just study and, you know, I really need to just
study and I work online and it's flexible, but I'm not the
strongest student. So I have to try like, very,
very hard. And I have some amazing friends
who help keep me organized and also like, teach me things when
I'm lost. But yeah, they'll, they'll
remind me like multiple times, like don't forget this quiz
that's due or don't forget this or.
And that helps a lot. I think that was the biggest
thing I learned was that I'm a mess.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't think you're a
mess. I don't think.
I don't know, I get by for sure, but it's it's a little chaotic.
I'm very type BI also learned that I'm not like I am 36.
I don't feel 36 like my my best friends at school are all like
21 to 26 I think. And then there's one other old
person who's 36 also. But like it does, I don't think
age matters in vet school. I've had a lot of fun just with
my friends of all ages. And I was kind of worried about
that before I started. Like I, I envisioned me at vet
school being like me alone, studying and like not talking to
anybody. And it's very much not that, but
I do study a lot. I'm not alone a lot.
Yeah, the age thing came up two episodes ago.
We put something out about cap years and people get really
scared going in. I see it all the time in the
PPMA group chat. I don't know, like it.
Should I switch careers or from vet tech?
I've been a vet tech for X number of years.
I want to go into it and from a 21 year old's point of view, I
don't care. I have not personally met
somebody who's ever cared or we don't even know.
We talked about it on the last episode, but somebody tells me
their age. I'm like, really, everybody here
is not my age and they do the same thing.
Everybody here is not my age. And so when you're older or, you
know, not a traditional student, there's so many of us.
I just, it really is not anything to be ashamed of,
scared of socially even. I mean, my best friend is 10
years older than me. It doesn't make a difference to
anybody that I've ever talked to.
It's so true. Yeah.
I could literally be like some of my best friend's moms, but
I'm not, obviously. They're just my best friends.
And I remember like when I first started that school, you know,
you're like making small talk with everybody, trying to like,
find friends. And the most common question was
like, oh, where did you go to undergrad?
I'm like undergrad, that was like a million years ago.
I don't remember, like I went to University of Vermont 15 years
ago and they're like, what? But yeah, gap years, Gap years
are a blessing in disguise. I know people are like so afraid
of them, but I had a lot of them, obviously.
And, and I think younger people also feel like maybe they have
put themselves on this timeline and they need to like get into
vet school, become a vet and do the thing.
But if you have a gap, you're like, go do something crazy.
It's really cheap to once you get into like a different
country in Southeast Asia or somewhere, it's really cheap to
exist for a long time. So just like go live your life
because once you graduate, you're gonna have loans and jobs
and it becomes a lot harder to do crazy things once you have a
job and loans, bills. So use those gap years to your
advantage for sure. I completely agree.
There's really no timeline. Like once we think about the
real world, some of my classmates like lived in
Switzerland for a few years before and then met their
partner in London and traveled the world.
And I'm like, that's such a better start before sitting down
and really figuring it out because Michaela and I both went
straight into school. We know nothing else.
And I look at my friends traveling around the world.
I'm like here's my view of the library.
Yeah, it's definitely a different life.
A. Different life, that's for sure.
And I have the realization recently that I've never had a
full time job. I've had tons of part time jobs,
but that kind of came to my realization in the past few
months and I said it must be so nice.
Of course you have family and you have other responsibilities,
but as far as work itself, it's not like school where you get
home and there is so much to do depending on your job.
You get home and yeah, there's always something to do and you
can work on your business and do all of these things at home, but
for the most part you get home and you can be done that day.
You can do it tomorrow for school.
I feel like it's never ending from the time I wake up to the
time I go to bed. I can take breaks but like it is
not done. I said I haven't had a full time
job. I don't know what that feels
like. That must feel crazy to go to
work, come home, focus on family or do something else and then
start again tomorrow. Hey, it can wait till tomorrow.
Nothing. It feels like nothing in that
school can wait till tomorrow. Because if you wait till
tomorrow then you're behind. You're already behind.
I don't want to say nobody. I'm so jealous of the people who
can go into class and just absorb and then go home and do
active recall only. I have to like review active
recall and then memorize. Memorize to me is a whole
different ball game than just reviewing.
I can review, but by the amount of time it takes me to review,
then the exams coming up and I have to start memorizing and
then I have no energy or mental capacity left to memorized.
And another thing, I saw a video recently and I said, Oh my gosh,
I thought I was the only person memory loss.
Is anybody else talking about this?
Like I don't remember anything anymore.
And you always used to be the person in my family.
Hey, Michaela, what happened in, you know, 2015?
What was that one little thing? I always knew it.
I have such a good memory but your brain, it's like trying to
over stuff a suitcase like it's so full and you're stopping
something something and something's got to pop out like
something's got to be let go. And so I found myself kind of
falling behind more on like I talked to my friends and they're
like you don't remember when we did this last year and I'm like
that didn't happen and you got me.
And also I don't believe you but it's just been crazy.
I don't know if y'all gotten that either.
Big time. I forget everything, Yeah.
I don't remember. Sometimes it's like certain
words for basic things. It's like, or it'll be like a
trip we took years ago and I'm like, oh gosh, I really don't
remember that and that wasn't that long ago.
It feels a little concerning sometimes, but I.
Just. Overload it.
I like the suitcase analogy. Yeah that is a great one.
I'm currently like trying to sit on the suitcase and squish it
all together is how I feel. Lane's broken.
The suitcase is broken and it's. Not suitcase is broken, yeah.
I'm bouncing on the suitcase trying to get it to close.
Yes. Yeah, I feel like that's a good
analogy. That's the way that I think
about it. You know, you stuff the
suitcase, full information, information, information.
Something's got to come out. And then memorizing it feels
like you're like pressing it down and trying to compress it
and like take out only and leave only the important stuff that
you don't remember. Try to zip it.
The zipping never happens for me in vet school.
That's I am never like fully prepared for an exam ever.
Just. You can't be.
I just go in and I say, I hope I can clinically reason my way out
of this, but my clinical reason doesn't seem to be that good.
We have a class that there's not really, I don't want to say
there's no memorizing, but it's, you know, evidence based
veterinary medicine and it's essentially they'll say, here's
a case and they'll ask a question.
They're not asking us to diagnose this first years, but
they'll ask a question about the case.
What does this mean or what does this part indicate or things
that you talked about in class? But you have to do a lot of
clinical reasoning. It feels like I'm a vet and then
I suck at it and then I do battle on the test.
I'm like, I'm going to be such a bad get when I grow up.
It's just first year. First years, like kind of like
partly hazing, I feel like it's just a lot of like you're not
going to feel great about yourself, but that's just part
of the process. Get used to it.
So hang in there. The suitcase analogy reminded me
also that my suitcase did break recently and I need to get the
airline to reimburse me for it. So thanks for that.
A good reminder, yeah. On a different note, still
talking about vet school and it being overwhelming, what I
always thought. So I had a few options for
veterinary school and I really almost picked one that was going
to be way more money because it was so, so beautiful.
And then the vet I was working for talked to me and she's like,
hey, you know, in the real world, we don't have these
glitzy machines. We don't have these options.
You're going to have to be a doctor with next to nothing.
How do you feel learning all these things in veterinary
school and knowing what you have to go back home to versus the
rest of the class? I'm not sure because McAllen,
like you were saying, we've never had a full time job.
I'm not sure if they're aware of what spectrum of care they'll
really be able to have access to.
Yeah, that's a good question. I feel fortunate that I have
worked, you know, on Saipan and, and started the clinic and I
know what it's like to work in a very, very under resourced area.
But I also know what it's like to work at a good like fancy
hospital, at least on the human Med side where I can be like,
OK, let's get a CAT scan and, and do labs and call a
specialist. So going to the teaching
hospital won't be like, hopefully super jarring to me
because I can at least remember what it was like to go to the
hospital as a nurse practitioner.
And it will be fun in some ways, because I do love to work up a
case and have access to everything and be able to do all
the cool stuff. Like that's that was part of
what I really loved about my job.
But yeah, it'll be interesting. I'm some thing that we see a lot
when vets come out to visit is they go through like stages of
grief, like with like, you know, this patient could have an X-ray
and we could fix the leg instead of cutting it off.
But we just don't have one here. How do we get you guys on?
I'm like, you can't right now. Like just we're just trying to
survive here. Like and you know, seeing them
kind of struggle without labs, struggle without specialists
especially and be like, oh, let me hit up my friend who's an
ophthalmologist and see do what they think You're doing all this
like extra work for somebody who can pay $5.
And so how do you balance it all out with like the clients
expectations and finances and what you can actually do with a
tiny, tiny team? I'm glad I'm coming from there
and I'll have fun at the teaching hospital, I'm sure.
But I do like the under resourced spectrum of care type
of work. It's fun because you have to
really figure things out on your own.
I always bring this up, especially when I go on
externships because the school and they'll acknowledge it.
They say, hey, we teach you gold standard or at least like upper
level standard of care. And then they'll sit there in a
separate class and define this is scope of care, spectrum of
care, whatever. And just be aware that it
exists. But we're we don't have time.
They don't have time. I'm not hating on the schools,
but they don't have time to teach us every single option for
every single disease, right? And so I always ask on
externships especially, what do you think about this thing that
they taught me in school? That just seems unreasonable to
me coming from a very poor area of the United States in like the
middle of nowhere, Texas, and working to that clinic there.
I didn't work there very long. I volunteered.
And even then I was like, wow, we are pretty limited.
You know, the diagnostics are older, it's just smaller.
And there's just not as much money where I live.
And so for example, I had a veterinary dentist come in and
give a talk on dental care and they said you should never,
ever, ever almost said float. I'm been doing equine too much.
They said you should never, ever, ever scale teeth without
taking an X-ray. And I said, yeah, that sounds
great. That makes a lot of sense.
But X-rays are expensive. X-ray machine is really
expensive for the clinic so I didn't get the chance to ask
because we're in a huge lecture hall.
But every time I go to a small animal clinic and they do a lot
of dentistry, I say what are you?
What are your opinions on this? Like do you have clients that
say I can't do X-rays but you yourself as a clinic have a
policy? We don't do it dental or a
scaling, whatever you want to call it without an X-ray.
Just questions like that. It's always in the back of my
mind coming from somewhere with no money.
Not nearly the same situation as Saipan, but it's definitely a
consideration and I want to go back into a practice like that.
What options do I have for my clients?
And nobody seems to know the answer because the answer is
always money. It's all about money.
Unfortunately. People say money doesn't solve
problems. Money doesn't make you happy,
sure, but money would get us a lot farther.
And allow us to do a lot more things.
Yeah. And like to your point, I feel
like spectrum of care needs to be a lot more integrated into
fed school because we don't take new grads as volunteers anymore.
But it is challenging when we have because they struggle to
not do gold standard and you can't and and a lot of places
you really can't. So like, you know, if you go to
a school with a teaching hospital and you're spending the
bulk of your clinical experience, they're doing like
the most fancy care ever. And then you go into the real
world and there's nothing, what do you do?
And you might feel you're going to feel uncomfy when you
graduate. You might feel a lot more
uncomfy when you don't have the crutches of certain diagnostics
and you and specialists and everything to lean back on, you
know, So I don't know, I wish, I wish there was a way to, I mean,
I'm sure there's a way. I wish there was a lot more
integration of that into vegetables because some vets are
real, real good at it. At Spectrum of Care, are we
producing graduates who are prepared to do that?
You know, I don't know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Like they acknowledge it. For example, if they're teaching
us, this would be the gold standard for, I don't know, I'll
just use dentistry again, just, you know, here's gold standard
for dentistry. Cool, whatever.
And we don't talk about anything else.
That's great. And then in a different class,
they'll sit there and have a whole lecture on here is what
Spectrum of care is. So there's no, there's no
solutions. Why don't we just at least give
one, even just one option to every treatment or procedure to
say, here's just another way to do it, Just one.
I feel like that would make a big difference.
Just here's a lower budget option or here's what you should
do if this is not an option, because sometimes there isn't a
lower budget option. And I mean, I just want people
to realize it's not just Cypan. It's not just Africa and I I see
a lot of people, I don't know how to make this example, but
they go to other countries and America sometimes use all other
countries is lesser than and they're the people who need
help. We need to use our resources to
go help other people. America itself, there are
thousands of clinics that could use extra money, extra help,
extra hands and we outsource a lot of people and it's great.
I love, I personally like going to other countries, but it's not
just other people. This effects Americans, this
effects especially rural Americans and people just forget
about it, especially once you get to bed school and it's just
not talked about. It's not when you go to Saipan
and there is no diagnostics. It's also when you go to rural
clinic and even if you have the X-ray machine, somebody can't
afford that, you know, I don't know, it's a very long,
interesting topic in itself. And so to hear the extreme of it
like Saipan or again, you go to other countries and extern, what
do you do? I don't know.
I don't know the answers. Yeah, it's just like slaps you
in the face on side pan, but it is everywhere.
And even in well off lake cities where you do have like the
fanciest clinics, there's still going to be lots of people who
can't afford that. So what do you do?
And that's, I feel like it's the big question in vet Med right
now, I think. That's why we try to build
communities like this and we have our pages and we talk about
it because otherwise I've been stuck in like that grief process
before, like when I went into large animal work in Belize and
we didn't intubate. You just sedated them.
Ivy worked as fast as you could and you prayed nothing went
wrong. You monitored them with the
stethoscope. And we didn't even have sterile
gloves. And the shell shock in the room
was was crazy. But at the same time, you're
looking at it and you're like, OK, well, that doctor just
spayed 50 dogs and cats. Like, the effect of that is way
more important than my bias in that moment because we're still
making an impact. Will they get an infection?
Hopefully not. Are animals pretty tough?
Yes. Yeah.
I still in like a perfect world, I would have sterile gloves and
pain medication, but they're getting spayed and neutered for
free like this. This is to the public for free.
So we're doing the best we can and I think that's all we really
can do, definitely. Yeah, I think so.
I kind of want to end off. Gretel has some of these little
rapid fryer questions. It depends on the episode, but
sometimes we do them, sometimes we don't, and I like these ones,
so I want to do these ones. What's the most underestimated
skill in Island that? Keith and Asia, yeah.
Every day, yeah. That's definitely.
Been boundaries? Is that a skill?
Boundaries. Boundaries is definitely a
skill. What has been the most rewarding
moment? Just kind of like being at
school and seeing the clinic functioning without me there is
pretty awesome because in the beginning it really hung on me
and my friend Ruby, and now I'm gone.
She's there. We have staff, we have a
director, like an executive director, Ruby's the clinic
director. So being able to step away and
have it like keep going just as strong is very rewarding.
And then what's a word that describes island medicine?
Messy. Messy.
Yeah, messy and hard. Messy.
Hard, emotionally, physically messy.
And we're trying. To end off every episode by
asking a question. So what's bringing you joy
today? That's our question.
Not leaving my house, sitting on the couch doing Quizlet with my
heated blanket and my dog and I, my friends were going, like,
drifting. And they were like, hey, come
and then we're going to watch a movie.
And I was like, I am just not going to leave my house today.
I'm going to sit here in silence and Quizlet.
Yeah, but also knowing that there's only 28 days till I go
home, so that's good too. Yeah, Gretel, did you?
I'm just saying I'm happy for you.
I think what you're doing is amazing.
We're so glad that you joined us today.
Thank you again, Lauren for joining us today.
We love talking to you and if you wanted to plug your socials,
it's future dot island dot vet right on Instagram and ghost
look her out. That page is awesome, like I
found it and I watch it. I watch all the content, all the
stories. I'm like, wow, people really
live whole other lot people. You I like the quote, you know,
you never know what somebody's doing in their home.
You never know what somebody's doing it like on Saipan because
what's going on, you know? But yeah, it's definitely a
different world and it's so good to educate yourself on different
aspects of that Med, whether it's shelter medicine.
I know it's not technically a shelter, but working with stray
populations, they're served areas.
You're kind of a conglomerate of a couple of different things
that are so important to me. So in the same way they're
underserved, they're under nice. You know, people don't talk
about it, people don't know about it.
And again, how are you going to know about it if you don't see
it? So I love when somebody takes
the time to get on social media and say, here's what I'm doing,
here's what we're doing, here's why vets do the things they do,
and here's why it costs this much to you and just general
education. I saw a quote or it's been going
around, you know, why are in or why are vets trying to be
influencers? Well, because influencers are
trying to be vets battling misinformation or just general
wives tales and things that have been here before social media.
So thank you for doing that. And listeners, go check her out
and thank you again for listening.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Of course.