Degrees of Learning & Writing

I'm not one to believe that things happen for a reason but it is tempting to think of serendipity as a helpful nudge in the right direction every once in a while. This past spring, I was perusing the shelves at my local Barnes & Noble, as I'm known to do on any given Friday evening prior to diving into a cupcake at their cafe to celebrate the end of the week.

CELEBRATION CUPCAKE

A recent release caught my eye: My Patients and Other Animals by Suzy Fincham-Gray. Flipping straight to the author bio, I found what I needed to know: veterinarian, author, and holder of an MFA, a degree I've been pondering for several years now. You see where this is heading.

Dear readers, I present to you my interview with Dr. Fincham-Gray.

Suzy graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in London in 2000, after which she came to the US and became board-certified in small animal internal medicine. "After almost a decade as a small animal internal medicine specialist in private practice, I was struggling to find balance in a life that was increasingly centered on my career," she says. "I made a decision to step back from practice and at that time I rediscovered writing, initially as a form of expression and then in a more structured way through the MFA program."

To get or not to get an MFA (that is, a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing): that is the question for many writers, including me. What does it "get" you? Or, more bluntly: what's it good for? Is this a career move? Is it for people who want to further hone their craft in literary writing? Is it just for the literary types or is there room for those interested in genre writing? Is it a bunch of navel gazing or a gate keeper to secret literary clubs and opportunities or a way of surrounding yourself with like-minded familiars for support and creative growth? So. Many Questions.

Suzy applied to low residency MFA programs across the US and accepted an offer from the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert which, she says, was a top choice due to the school's emphasis on the practical aspects of writing and publishing as opposed to an academic focus on literature studies. She chose non-fiction as her focused genre.

"The benefits of studying for and obtaining my MFA were many," she explains. "Expert input on my writing from professors; residencies that gave me the opportunity to meet literary agents, editors, and successful authors; and the support from the program, even following graduation, has been excellent."

Although Suzy's first published book is a veterinary memoir, she says when she began the MFA program she had no intention of writing a memoir. "My initial goal was to explore my writing and gain understanding of the craft, rather than to write a specific piece," she says. "However, in the first few months of the program I realized that most of my work swirled around my experience as a veterinarian." The first ideas of a memoir surfaced during a chat with an editor and aspects of the book evolved from there. "I wrote a proposal and sample chapters and acquired a literary agent," she explains. "We worked on the proposal for around six months and the finished proposal was purchased by Spiegel and Grau. I then began work on the final manuscript with input from my editor. The project took around five years from starting the proposal to the book arriving at booksellers."

"Those rare glimpses of the fluid perfection of writing are the reason I keep sitting in front of a blank page."

Having read several veterinary memoirs, I'm interested in how an author chooses which stories to tell. In Suzy's case she mentions having some patients that have remained etched in her memory years after seeing them; those were cases she was compelled to write about and include. "Writing was alternately frustrating and rewarding," she admits. "There were moments when I was certain the book would never be finished and others when I was surprised how the writing shaped an idea I'd not consciously formed. Those rare glimpses of the fluid perfection of writing are the reason I keep sitting in front of a blank page."

Suzy says she has cut back her days in the hospital to protect and dedicate regular time for her writing. As always, I'm interested in how a veterinarian's scientific and creative sides mesh. Suzy says for her, these two sides complement one another. "Although I sometimes dream about giving up my 'day job' to focus my energy solely on writing, I know that to do this I would also be giving up my inspiration," she says. 

Creating an overall "message" in a veterinary memoir is also something I find interesting. Some books lack one completely and read as a laundry list of memorable cases and you-wouldn't-believe-it stories, while others try to mold an overarching narrative from a life's worth of experiences. In Suzy's case, she wanted to portray veterinary life in the truest way possible in an effort to counter what is sometimes portrayed by the media. "I wanted to explore the many dilemmas--the philosophical, ethical, social and economic--that veterinarians face in their daily practice," she says. "In particular, by finding the universal narrative of caring for our loved ones who cannot advocate for themselves. I hoped to draw out a new perspective."

"Creative outlets could provide an avenue to draw our [veterinary] community together."

On Suzy's blog, she states her writing explores the role veterinarians play in the human-animal bond and in the narrative of caring for those we love when they are sick. This hits home alongside the concept of narrative medicine which is sometimes defined as the narrative between the caregiver and the patient. Used mostly with human medicine, I asked Suzy how she applies this to veterinary medicine. "I took inspiration from Atul Gawande, Abraham Verghese, and Danielle Ofri, all of whom are human doctors writing about the challenges of practicing medicine," she says. "I found when reading their work that many of their dilemmas were similar to those we face as veterinarians, in particular when approaching end of life care in patients who cannot advocate for themselves."

Suzy points out that the relationship between humans and animals continues to evolve and this relationship is arguably deeper and more significant now than it has ever been. "I think it is essential that as a community, veterinarians explore ways to discuss and express the many frustrations, challenges, and difficulties we face in practice." She points to the relatively recent revelations on the high suicide rate in the vet med profession that highlights in a way the challenges we deal with. "Creative outlets could provide an avenue to draw our community together," she says.

While still working on promoting her current book, Suzy says she is starting to gather ideas for a second. "I'm also continuing to write shorter pieces that expand on the concept of narrative medicine within the veterinary field," she says. "I would love to see my writing in the literary canon of narrative medicine alongside Atul Gawande and Siddhartha Mukherjee. There are so many areas I've yet to explore through my writing and I'm excited to see where my writing takes me over the next ten years."

And on that uplifting note, I'll leave you to it, dear readers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing, happy vetting.

A collection of kindred spirits: The Society for Veterinary Medicine and Literature

It's funny, isn't it, when something you didn't even know you were looking for suddenly pops up out of nowhere? That's what happened recently when I discovered The Society for Veterinary Medicine and Literature. What? I thought. You mean to tell me there's a group of vets out there who wants to talk about vet med as it's found in literature??? I assure you, it's true--the DVM book lover's Shangri-La. I spoke to one of the two founders of the group, Dr. Elizabeth Stone, to find out more.

The concept of the Society started in 2001 when Elizabeth and her co-founder, poet Hilde Weisert, put together an elective course for students at NC State University's College of Veterinary Medicine covering vet med and literature. After Elizabeth became Dean at Ontario Veterinary College, she brought the elective with her. "When I had the classes both at NC State and Ontario, the students who would sign up, for many of them, it was like an oasis," she says. "It's like they'd just been all science to get into vet school and once they get in, of course, it's all still science. It's like they have it hidden away in a drawer that they like these other things and they found some other people in the college who were interested in reading. It gives legitimacy to their interest. It's not serious science stuff for once."

After accumulating extensive positive feedback from students who had taken the course, Elizabeth and Hilde went on to organize the first ever international Veterinary Medicine and Literature Symposium in 2010 at the Ontario Veterinary College and in 2012, as editors, published their first collection of short stories and poems sharing the theme of animals and vet med, titled Animal Companions, Animal Doctors, Animal People.

Just two years later, Elizabeth collaborated with fellow veterinary professor Cate Dewey to edit another collection of vet med stories, this time featuring zoonotic diseases and titled Sick! Curious Tales of Pests and Parasites We Share with Animals.

Overall, the Society, "promotes the reading and discussion of literary works to explore important issues in veterinary medicine--and for the intrinsic pleasure and value of reading and discussing good literature, a way of renewing one's joy in being a veterinarian and a human being." Although the past few years have been relatively quiescent for the society, Elizabeth and Hilde plan on ramping things up again.

"We've cycled in and out depending on where we are in our lives," says Elizabeth. "But we really do believe in it. We need more than just Hilde and me working on it. It needs to be a true discussion, bringing in different points of view."

To this end, currently the Society meets virtually in an almost monthly fashion to discuss future plans for the group as well as what folks are reading and the relevance to vet med. Membership is free and if you're interested, contact information is available here.

Elizabeth's background in research is evident in one of her goals for the Society, which is to attempt to inventory what's available in terms of written work produced by veterinarians. "Blogs, Twitter accounts, what books are out there by and about other veterinarians, just so people know what's available," she says. "And having links to those things so people can get to them."

Analyzing what literature has to say about veterinarians can also play a vital role in a concept that is currently being discussed and emphasized in North American veterinary schools: diversity. "One of the things that has been impressed upon me while we work with students is that there is a way for people to learn about other societies and that is reading about them. I think using readings from different people's perspectives is another way to teach diversity," she says.

What about those who--gasp--just don't like to read? "There are some people that, because of their backgrounds--maybe in high school they had to dissect a poem--they really really don't like literature," Elizabeth says. "I don't think we're going to change their minds. But those people who are sitting on the fence or do really like it, I think there's a lot there we can work with."

When talking about literature in vet med, the subject of narrative medicine tends to come up. Far better known in human medicine but perhaps still not considered mainstream, narrative medicine is the medical approach that recognizes the importance of the patient's narrative to the clinical perspective. This encompasses listening to the patient's background story and therefore appreciating where the patient is coming from. Sound compassionate? That's the point. And I think to a great extent, veterinarians use this method as well (e.g. our patients can't talk to us so we get the story from the owner), but perhaps we just don't have a formal label for it. Narrative medicine also includes reading and writing on the physician's side, as means to foster creativity and self-reflection. Starting in 2009, Columbia University is now offering a master's program in narrative medicine. Additionally, there is actually a literary journal published called Intima that is specifically a journal for narrative medicine. What a wonderful creative tool for physicians!

**SOMEONE PLEASE START ONE FOR VET MED!!!**

Naturally, a conversation with Elizabeth eventually turns to the market for books about vet med or works that feature veterinarians. Given her background of scrounging for vet med-related pieces for her elective courses and for the Society, she has interesting insight into what's out there. "A lot of the work that is written by veterinarians is humorous, the 'guess what I have in the refrigerator' kind of thing. That may only go so far," she says. "Also a lot of it is making fun of clients which of course is the favorite pastime of veterinarians [it's true, sorry] but people who are clients don't necessarily want to read about that [also true]."

Somewhat ironically, although we work with animals and practically live for animals, what people seem to want to read about are humans, no matter the context. Elizabeth points to the king of vet med in literature, James Herriot, as an example of this. "What he's really writing about is the people," she says. "The descriptions of him finishing vet school and going into practice for the first time--we've used those chapters before in our classes and I think they really speak to people."

However, there is something about those darned saccharine sweet doggie tales that keep popping up on best-seller lists. "There do seem to be books about dogs that are best sellers," Elizabeth agrees. "What is it about that, from the veterinary side of it?"

I suppose if put head to head with a James Patterson thriller, I'd pick the sugary dog tale, too. On mere principle, of course.