Teamwork lessons from Carmen

I spent this weekend in Louisville Kentucky attending my daughter’s professional opera debut.  She has been performing in opera for the past several years as an apprentice artist, but this performance marked the first time that she was hired for a supporting role in a major opera performance.  Kentucky Opera’s performance of Carmen.

Carmen is probably the best-known opera to the general public because most are familiar with the music.   It is a compelling, entertaining, and easy to follow story about a soldier, a bull fighter, and a wild gypsy - Carmen.  They are involved in a love triangle which ultimately ends in Carmen’s death in the finale.  (spoiler alert – I know)

Watching the performance opening night was a memorable experience that the cast made appear effortless. The singers, who had rehearsed this performance for the past month were prepared and professional.   Performing in a large theater - without microphones - their beautiful, highly trained voices rang out over the hundreds of attending guests. 

The performers and support team had traveled from all over the United States to spend a month living in Louisville, rehearsing and staging this show.  All of this work for just two performances, Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.

I marveled at the number of people that it took to put this piece together.  There was the conductor with a full orchestra, playing the beautiful music live in the pit – at least 35 people.  There were 11 principal opera singers, 34 chorus members and a children’s chorus of 15.  There were also people behind the scenes, including stage managers, set designers, lighting crew, choreographers, prop coordinators, costume designers, wig masters, makeup artists, and even a dictation coach.  There were people working security, tickets sales, ushers and bar tenders at the theatre concession. 

When you think of a performance like this you appreciate the art and entertainment, but you don’t often appreciate the massive dedication and teamwork that something like this entails.  You do not see the years of voice training, movement coaching, or the memorization of lyrics and dialogue – in French!  You don’t appreciate the travel, set building, staging, dance, coordination with the musicians, conductor director and then the

All of these things come together to communicate the story to the audience.  If they are effective as this team was, the audience leaves the theatre better than they were before they experienced Carmen. 

If we could take a life lesson from a production like this, it would be that dedication to a craft along with teamwork, allows for creation of something much larger than one individual can attain. These talented artists are a living example of what it means to work together towards one goal and achieve it well.  As you work as a member of any team, remember that the individual is key to making any large quality production work.  Dedicate yourself to your team.

"Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a teamwork, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." --Vince Lombardi

Dr. Julie Cappel

How much can a little bird and one veterinarian take?

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

Episode #35 - Let's Talk about Money - Again

On this episode of the podcast Julie talks about money once again, but this time we discuss attitudes about money.  Your attitude about money will dictate how you use and relate to your finances.  Julie talks about using money as a tool and how to approach your budget, debts, investing, and giving.  When you create a healthy attitude about money it will relieve much of the stress that your money thoughts can create.  

Check out this episode!

CATS - There is beauty within

She slowly rose from center stage alone in the spotlight.  She had been beaten down by life; rejected, bullied, and totally defeated – Grizabella the Glamor Cat (Keri Rene’fuller) belted out the final verse of Memories.

Touch me!
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun.

I choked up and tears ran from my eyes.  The music, her voice - it was powerful!

I did not expect the sudden flood of emotion.

Today I had the privilege to attend a live performance of the musical CATS at the Fischer Theatre in Detroit Michigan.  I have seen the show before and I know the music well, but I have not seen it live for many years. My son was part of the orchestra, which is always exciting for me, but as I watched the stage performers I was surprised by my emotions. I was also struck by a real-life lesson that I saw running through the performance.

Even the most repulsive of creatures may be beautiful on the inside.  

Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the 1939 book of poetry called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot.  It is the story of a tribe of cats call the Jellicles and their annual Jellicle Ball where they decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer to come back to life.  The musical opened in 1981 and is the fourth longest running Broadway show. 

As I watched the Grizabella character shunned and then accepted by the other cats, I thought of the animals and the people that we care for each day.  Some of them are just as repulsive and ugly to us, as Grizabella was to the cats.  They are critical, impatient, demanding, and some even bite (usually just the pets).  Some of them are beaten and are broken down by the problems in their lives.  They come to us unhappy and stressed asking for help then often redirect their negativity onto us. 

In those moments we are faced with a choice.  Our choice is to either treat the people and their pets with respect, or join them in their stress and negativity.  We can choose to try to increase their happiness or we can let them take ours. 

Maybe if we try to keep an open mind and look closer, we may see that they have some redeeming qualities on the inside. Some inner beauty.  If we can see it, we may be able to have more empathy and not allow them to affect us negatively.  Because, even the most repulsive of creatures may be beautiful on the inside.

That is the simple lesson that I got from CATS.  

Dr. Julie Cappel

“Happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give.” -Ben Carson

Episode #34 - Getting It Done

On this episode of the podcast Julie will teach you to embrace fear when facing your goals and dreams.  In order to become the person that you want to become, you must allow yourself to set goals and then follow through.  Julie will walk you through some action steps to get your goal on the calendar and start becoming more productive today.  She gives you the tools to start taking specific action to get something -anything -done. 

Check out this episode!

Goodbye Sweet Pete

Two short months ago I wrote about my family’s old ailing cat Peter and his terrific attitude as he battled cancer.  This Labor Day weekend, on his 19^th birthday, we sadly had to say our final goodbyes.  Peter, in his unendingly sweet and beautifully brave way, purred and leaned into my hand as he gradually fell asleep under the effects of the tranquilizer that I administered in anticipation of his euthanasia.

Peter came into our lives, along with his two sisters, 19 years ago - the Friday before Labor Day weekend.  They had been found on a highway embankment by a good Samaritan who delivered the day-old orphans to my veterinary hospital for assistance.  I was the only doctor at the hospital that day that was a “sucker” for orphaned kittens, so I took them home for tube feeding and fluid therapy over the weekend. One of the two sisters died the first night due to their extremely dehydrated and weakened condition. They were newly born and had been outside exposed to the hot sun for an undetermined amount of time.  The two survivors were a jet-black male kitten (Peter) and a tabby female kitten (Punky Lee).    They needed to be tube fed for the first few days of their lives but once they were stronger, they adapted to a bottle. 

Originally, their names were Punky Lee and Frantic Ernie because the little girl was so small and punky, and the boy would eat so frantically and voraciously from the bottle that we always laughed at him and called him frantic.

My children were 4 and 8 years old at the time that we took in the kittens, and they were active participants in their rearing.  They held them in hand towels at night after their sink baths to keep them warm until they dried.  If you have never raised orphan kittens, they get very smelly without their mothers to clean them daily, so sink bathes with baby shampoo are a must.  The kids also learned to feed them bottles, when they were available to help with the frequent feedings.  As every veterinarian parent knows, at some point in the process of fostering animals the children will become emotionally attached to the fosters.  It was particularly true with Punky Lee and Frantic Ernie. As they grew, I could see my children becoming more and more attached.  I knew that we would soon have two more cats in the family, once they cried enough to Dad. 

Peter got his name after Dad was convinced that they needed to stay.  The kids thought that Frantic Ernie was not a dignified name for a cat, and they wanted something that went well with Punky Lee – the name that they liked.  They came up with Peter and started calling the pair, Pete and Punky Lee.   Pete (aka. Peter or Petey Wheatie) was such a sweet soul and spent much of his time with my daughter Bridget.  He would follow her into her bathroom at night to watch her brush her teeth and race her to the bed to be sure that he got the best spot to sleep with her at night.  He always settled into someone’s lap when we were sitting on the couch playing video games or watching TV.  He would purr and beg for treats whenever he was around anyone. He never lost his zest for food, tipping the scales at 17 pounds, before his veterinarian (yes, me) put him on a diet. 

As veterinarians, we strive every day to save and prolong healthy life as long as we can.  We sacrifice our time and money to foster orphan kittens, raise baby birds and rescue stray dogs for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.  We do not receive anything in return, except for the joy of watching that life that you saved unfold and touch others in a beautiful way.  Peter was one of those lives.  He lived and loved well and brought a tremendous amount of joy to our family.

This weekend we mourn our lovely little Peter.   He will be forever remembered and greatly missed.

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”  - James Herriot

Dr. Julie Cappel