This week I experienced total
frustration and a lesson in persistence, thanks to our veterinary reference laboratory.
A long-time client was
boarding her two cockatiels for a few days. She asked if I would examine them
and do their routine annual blood screening while they were at the hospital
boarding. They are Brie, a sweet, beautiful
female and Ollie, a happy, busy male bird with unusual leg conformation. His unusual legs are due to a previous
accident in which he was accidentally sat upon - breaking both of his
legs. Both birds were healthy and active
the day that I examined them and drew their blood to send to the outside laboratory
for analysis. It was a Tuesday afternoon.
On Wednesday (my day off) I
was going through records at home, trying to catch up, when I ran across the
blood results in the computer. Brie’s blood
was completely normal, but Ollie’s blood was definitely not normal. In fact, his calcium result was only four,
and his Hematocrit was 10%, along with a bunch of other abnormalities that
indicated that this bird was surely dead.
I dialed up the hospital and
asked to speak to one of my technicians.
When she came to the phone, I said, “Will you please go look at Brie and
Ollie, the two cockatiels that are boarding, and tell me if the male is dead?” She gasped and said, “I think he is fine, but
I will go look.” She put me on hold and
when she came back to the phone she said, “He looks fine to me, he is eating
and whistling like normal.” I said, “That’s
good, I thought so.” “Now, will you
please call the lab and see if you can find out what happened with his bloodwork
results? The results listed in the
computer must be a mistake because they are far from normal, they are
impossible.” She told me that she would
call and get back to me after she talked to the lab.
The lab could not give us an
answer, so I spent the next day calling the owner and telling her that I did
not believe the blood results and that they were far from normal. I asked her
to bring him back in a week to retest him. She promised to bring him back after
her vacation for a repeat blood draw. She
brought him back the next week, and we again sent blood out for analysis.
The next day I received his
chemistry report, which was completely normal.
His calcium was 8.5, and the other chemistries made more sense, but then
I noticed that I was missing the Complete Blood Count portion of the panel. I needed it because that portion gave me the low
Hematocrit of 10%.
Argh!!! Again, I had the technicians call the lab. The first answer that we received was that we
did not have enough blood to do the testing. I knew that was incorrect because
we had sent plenty. The second time around, I asked my most assertive
technician to call because I know that she is a fan of conflict. Like me, she
enjoys a good fight and would surely get to the bottom of it. When she called, she went round and round
with the staff at the lab and eventually got in touch with a supervisor that told
us that there was a miscommunication between my hospital team and the lab staff
and they thought that they were only rerunning the chemistries. They did not retain the blood slides and were
unable to redo the test. What??
Fortunately for me, this is a
rare occurrence with this lab, in fact, I think that I have not seen an issue
like this in the past couple years, so I guess I should cut them some slack. Unfortunately
for me, it is now my job to call the owner and explain again that we need more
blood from this small innocent creature.
Making this phone call is
going to take some mental toughness - not to throw the laboratory under the bus
and blame them for this circumstance. I need to prove to myself that I am tough
and resilient. I need to let my anger go
and decide on purpose to overcome this obstacle. I will be persistent. I will persevere.
Before I call this client
again, I will take a lesson from Rocky and go “one more round” with this
laboratory and little bird.
“Going in one more round when you don’t think
you can. That’s what makes all the difference
in your life.” – Rocky Balboa
Dr. Julie Cappel
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