Women and Medicine

I've been in Northwest Arkansas for almost 2 years now and the things I see and hear still never cease to amaze me. I was reading through the blog of a human anesthesiology resident yesterday and she was remarking about her day in the ER. One of the attending surgeons that she had worked with repeatedly thought she was a CRNA (nurse anesthetist) apparently just because she was a woman. I started ruminating about why, in this day and age, having two X chromosomes in medicine is still an issue!

There are very few "lady vets" around here. This, apparently, is reason to not be called by your name but by the terms lady vet, woman vet, that woman vet, the girl, that *#@! woman vet and very seldomly doc. In fact, it seems to be code for them using my first name while calling all my male counterparts "doctor." It doesn't really chap my hide. I've gotten over any semblance I had originally out of school about people just accepting a young woman veterinarian around these parts. And the funny thing about it is....its not just when I'm working on large animals. There are more elderly women with little fru-fru dogs (am I allowed to say that since I'm a vet? That's not politically incorrect is it?) that think I'm seriously not qualified to express little Fluffy's anal glands than there are middle-aged men who think I can't trim their cows' feet. I've heard, "oh, are you getting those vaccinations ready for the doctor?" (to which I promptly start twitching and smile broadly to introduce myself, for the third time, to the client) I've had a crotchety old man tell the entire staff that he "wasn't havin' no damn woman workin' on his cows." Another: "Are you an intern?" To this I wonder if they really know what an intern even is. Yes, I look younger than I am. Sorry 'bout that.

But I will tell you one thing .... or as my dear mother would say, "let me tell you this about that..." this place has certainly thickened my skin. It is not for the faint of heart or the sensitive soul, which I was before I came here. God thought I needed a little toughening up. I can now puff out my thorax and give it right back to them with the best of them. My two X chromosomes can semen test bulls to no end and I can bleed pigs with the best of them--well, maybe not the "best" but I'm not bad at it. I am otherwise known as "the vampire" to some of my clients from bleeding pigs. And it's oh-so-worth-it when you win over the skeptics by saving their animals life and maybe changing the client's a bit too.

So here's my advice to all of the woman doctors of every kind: "Don't let it get you down. Let it make you better." And good luck with that.

Sincerely,

That *$#@ woman vet