This post won't be about my fertility or weight loss goals. It is about me though.
I read this article and was insulted by number 6. I agree that my hands are my tools and that they are something that clients see and follow. HOWEVER, I find it hard to believe that even a small animal vet would be able to keep them as clean and pristine as the article wants you too. It is IMPOSSIBLE for someone that practices large animal medicine to do so. I wash my hands frequently, am out in the cold often and expose my hands on a regular basis to harsh disinfectants. A manicure is out of the question.
My hands aren't pretty. The tips of my thumbs and middle fingers are painfully cracked. Its not uncommon for them to bleed spontaneously when I hit them accidentally on something. The skin is dry and it often appears that I am wearing a pair of dry skin gloves! I have deep painful cracks on the sides of my fingers where suture cut into them when I was performing surgery and where the gigli wire cut into them when removing goat horns this week. I bite my nails and often surrounding the edges of the nail beds are layers of who knows what from a long day out on farm calls that require intensive, focused scrubbing. (You would think this would be a good reason to stop biting them but somehow it hasn't stopped me. Gross, I know!)
Even if I was to treat myself to the recommended manicure, my hands still aren't pretty. My hands are small. I wear a size 6 1/2 glove which is the average women's size however, if I compare my hands to someone else that wears the same size glove, my fingers are often 1/2 inch shorter! My fingers are short and the palms are broad. The size was often commented on in school by my professors and clients still comment on it today. My small hands make some tasks difficult (such as farrowing pigs because my fingers are too short) but others easy (like delivering goat kids). Because my hands are small, I sometimes have difficulty using equipment the same way someone else would. But apparently, other female physicians do too.
So what I would ask of clients, when they look at my small hands with the cracked skin and cuts from sturdy suture material, is that they don't think that I don't take care of myself. I want them to think of all of the things my hands do. Finely stitching up a cut on a horse, performing a life saving surgery on a dog, blindly manipulating a calf to bring it into the world, palpating a mass on a cat, holding a paw as I help a pet pass away.
My hands are my tools. My hands are not pretty but they perform the job well and that's the most important thing.
