Inspired by her childhood pet pals
Waterloo veterinary technician’s passion and excellence recognized with award
Four names remain dearest in Purvi Patel’s heart. Kelly and Chance. Jimmy and Max. They were her dogs when she was growing up in Malawi. Four German shepherds that pawed their way into her empathetic soul.
Their story guided Patel — named North America’s registered veterinary technician of the year a week ago at an Orlando awards ceremony, hosted by a pet health insurance company — into this pet “nurse” profession and Laurelwood Veterinary Hospital in Waterloo.
The mark those dogs left on the University of Guelph grad’s life is indelible.
When Jimmy and Max got sick, there was no legitimate local veterinarian to treat them, and no veterinary hospital to send them to for specialized care.
They died abruptly, she said. Jimmy was barely a skeleton at the end, perhaps the victim of cancer. Max succumbed to repeated seizures. Maybe he had a brain tumour.
“We’ll never know,” said 29-year-old Patel, who lives in Guelph with a lab cross named Bear.
“You don’t get any closure from that. You have no answers.”
So there was no opportunity to save Jimmy and Max, or at least, to help them die more humanely. Patel, whose parents Kamal and Smita own a rice milling company in Malawi, found her calling at age 12. She wanted to help pets like Jimmy and Max.
“It was awful,” she said of their deaths. “It prompted me to say, ‘This isn’t acceptable anymore.’ That kind of brought me to being a technician.”
And eventually it brought Patel back to Canada, where she lived as a toddler. Born in London, England. Moved to Courtice, near Oshawa. Then to Malawi before coming back to Canada for an animal biology degree at the University of Guelph. She also picked up her diploma in veterinary technology from the Ridgetown campus, near Chatham.
Now, after four years at Laurelwood where she is head technician, she earned an honour that could easily have gone to veterinary technicians with decades of experience.
Stephanie Miles, the hospital administrator and a 15-year veterinary technician, nominated Patel for the honour. Miles has never met a technician like her, mixing top-notch nursing skills with such compassion and caring. “Her passion is evident in her everyday work,” Miles said.
Six thousand names were submitted from across the continent. Patel stepped onto a stage adorned with cat and dog figurines to accept. It was very surreal scene, Patel said.
Seven years ago, another surreal scene
shook Patel.
She was an intern at a wildlife rescue centre in Texas when a mother possum was brought in. The skin on the animal’s back had almost peeled right off after it had been hit and dragged by a car. It turned out the possum was carrying eight unhurt babies in her pouch.
Patel and other staff nursed the babies through a syringe and tube while the mother healed. In less than three months, they released the healthy family back into the wild.
“Everybody cried,” Patel said. “It was so emotional. She was literally on death’s door. That transformation, and to say you played a part in that, is phenomenal.”
Veterinary technicians often don’t get the credit they deserve, Patel said. She hopes her award might help change that. After all, their long list of duties includes administering anesthesia, X-rays and dentistry, collecting blood, placing catheters and lab work.
“We work behind the scenes,” she said. “People know your vet. They know your receptionist because those are the ones they commonly see. But they don’t realize there’s somebody behind the scenes who’s working tirelessly for them.”
And Patel works tirelessly to honour the memory of Jimmy and Max.
Last April, she returned to Malawi, bringing along pet medical supplies like deworming agents and bandaging materials. We take those items for granted in Canada, but they’re still rare in Malawi, she said.
Patel joined a local veterinary worker on some house calls to deliver those supplies to four-legged patients. The worker was astounded by what was available in other parts of the world.
“She’d never seen something as simple as flea medication,” Patel said.
“It was amazing.”