Why I came back

WCVM graduate student Dr. Jamie Rothenburger.

My brother leans over the table in an Airdrie, Alta., truck stop, sets down his steaming cup of coffee and arches an eyebrow at me.

“So why would you give up a good-paying job working for a great boss in a community you love to go back to school? Wasn’t seven years of university enough?” he asks me point blank after hearing my news.

I’m moving back to Saskatoon — to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine — to begin training as a veterinary pathologist, for reasons my brother just doesn’t understand.

“But you’re already a doctor (of veterinary medicine). Why do you need a Master’s degree as well?”

I tell him more about my program. Similar to the residencies that human physicians must complete before practising their specialty, the anatomic pathology training I’m taking will prepare me as a diagnostic veterinary pathologist.

In two years I’ll receive a Master of Veterinary Science degree. And in my third year, I’ll be a senior resident — studying for the board exams of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP) and doing diagnostic cases.

What’s it like to be a graduate student at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine? Dr. Jamie Rothenburger describes the view from her microscope.

I’m excited about my career path’s new twist, but my brother’s right — it wasn’t an easy decision for me to give up a fantastic job as a small animal veterinarian in a semi-rural practice. Ultimately it was a personal choice. My curious nature craved the stimulation of an academic setting full of resources, interesting books and people. I yearned to know and understand diseases at a deeper, scientific level.

As veterinarians we’re trained as problem solvers, but I quickly discovered that it’s not always so straightforward in practice. I often found myself second-guessing my decisions, and I reluctantly treated patients with insufficient diagnostic testing due to the expense or lack of time.

So when I had those few straightforward cases — when the chest X-rays revealed pneumonia in a puppy or the lumpy forehead bones on a senior dog turned out to be a tumour — it was an absolute thrill to be able to make a diagnosis. Then I had to struggle with another challenge: balancing my elation at finding the right answer with my sadness at delivering bad news to the owner.

The hardest conversations were those with owners who didn’t suspect that their pet was very ill. These emotional exchanges often left me drained, and I came to realize how compassion fatigue can develop easily in vets.

Do things change over time? I’m sure if I had stayed longer in practice, I would have become better at the art of veterinary medicine. I would have grown a thicker skin for the disgruntled clients and I would have better understood how to deliver bad news.

But perfecting clinical medicine and surgery was not a path I was meant to take. I’m more suited for anatomic veterinary pathology that involves diagnosing disease in dead animals or surgical biopsies. For me, opening a body is like opening a present: you never know what you will find. Most of the time pathologists can unveil the ultimate answer, name the disease, and determine the cause of death — all of which appeals to my perfectionist nature. It’s also very different from my experience in practice.

A microscopic view of canine histiocytoma, a benign skin tumour of dogs. Normal skin is on the left while the tumour (bluish skin) is on the right side. Photo: Dr. Jamie Rothenburger.

So here I am, six months into my graduate program – nearly one year since I met my brother in that Alberta truck stop. My vocabulary has increased to include popular pathology adjectives such as “admixed” and “subjacent.” In ways that would make my English teachers cringe, my sentences fit the definition of run on as I adapt my writing to the typical length and style of pathology reports. My view into the microscope is gradually transitioning from a sea of pink and purple to distinct tissues and their typical accompanying changes that occur with disease.

As part of my surgical pathology course, which focuses on the diagnosis of biopsies taken from living patients, I’m given a microscope slide set to become familiar with common types of tumours and other biopsies.

A feeling of dread overcomes me as I sit at the microscope to review my very first slide. All my doubts bubble up. Did I make the right decision? What if I can’t see the tumour? Maybe my brother was right about leaving a good job for more school.

Mustering my courage, I slip the glass slide onto the microscope table, click the light condenser in place, adjust the eyepieces and peer into the light. What greets me is a kaleidoscope of pink and purple — my favourite colours as a five-year-old. And there, clearly distinguishable from normal skin, is the blue-tinged tumour that I’m  supposed to see.

My doubts melt away. Okay, I can do this. Here we go.

Raised in Radisson, Sask., Dr. Jamie Rothenburger is a 2010 graduate of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine. She returned to her alma mater in 2011 to begin a Master of Veterinary Science program in anatomic/wildlife pathology.