OXFORD, MI – It was just before Christmas, and Bell Veterinary Clinic was closed. But Tank, a huge, mostly white bulldog’s cancer had flared up, and so Dr. Tamara “Tommy” Moin, the medical director, told Sean to bring him in anyway.
“Dr. Moin, you are a rock star,” said Sean, a mechanic who specializes in foreign cars, as his 86-pound dog sat placidly as she drew blood and performed a painful procedure on him.
“He just loves Dr. T,” his owner said. Afterwards, “Dr. T” sighed. What few understand, she told me, is how stressed veterinarians are, especially since the pandemic his America.
“We (vets) were in short supply to begin with, and now our case load has tripled — quadrupled — because of COVID,” she said, “a shortage of veterinarians and veterinary technicians.”
Why? “It’s harder to get into veterinary medical school than human medical school – there are fewer schools to apply to. And not everybody wants to go to school for ten years and pile up all that education debt for a job that doesn’t pay that well.”
Veterinarians indeed, don’t make what doctors who treat people do. Both Dr. Moin and the American Veterinary Medical Association put the average starting salary at about $75,000 a year. But unless a vet can afford to own their own practice, it doesn’t tend to go much higher. That’s for emotionally draining work, including euthanizing pets who cannot be saved or whose owners can’t afford the cost of the treatments they need. Some burned-out young veterinarians are leaving the profession. Others, sadly, commit suicide. “The suicide rate for vets is way up,” she said. There are chat rooms on Facebook, she said, where veterinarians listen to each other’s problems and try to buck each other up. Part of the problem is that clients are stressed.
“They don’t have the money they used to, and they are stretched, trying to make ends meet. And we become the convenient scapegoat,” since few pets have medical insurance.
However, veterinary medicine, Dr. Moin noted, “is a huge bargain compared to human medicine.” When she had to have a complete hysterectomy, the cost approached $40,000.”
“For a dog, it is $400,” she said.
Yet for Tamara Moin, there really is no other choice than veterinary medicine. “It is what I was born to do.” She didn’t get there by a conventional route. She grew up in Detroit, after her Iranian parents fled Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970s.
Dr, Moin may, indeed, be the only Farsi-speaking Episcopalian vet in Michigan; on her shoulder is a elaborate pattern from an oriental rug with the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi embedded within.
She majored in journalism, but eventually took a position in veterinary pharmaceutical sales. “I was making six figures,” she said.
But she finally realized she had to be a veterinarian, so she went back to school in her late 30s, first taking all the science prerequisites she needed.
Then, with difficulty, she persuaded Michigan State, the only vet school in the state, to admit her. She was a single mother of a son then, and was also battling Lupus, but she made it through.
Dr. Moin finally graduated two years ago, when she was almost 40. “Educational debt? I owe $400,000. I don’t see how I can ever pay it back, but I will make it somehow,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s never too late to go after the thing that makes you come alive,” she said. Tommy Moin has since remarried, but lives in an apartment with her husband and son not far from her job, because she can’t qualify for a mortgage. Nevertheless, she has no regrets.
“This is what I was meant to do. When I get stressed, my solution is to work harder. And drink coffee,” she said.
That, or play with her personal dogs, Chihuahuas Dobby and Tonk, and the one she feels is her soulmate, Ryuu, a Belgian Malinois recently retired from police work. Working with police and military dogs, especially shepherds, is another passion.
Her dedication shows; some clients are willing to drive two hours to bring their dogs to her practice in this small town almost 50 miles north of Detroit. And she has a message she thinks everyone who has a pet they bring to a veterinarian needs to hear:
“Remember that your vet loves your dog, and we are your allies. We are doing our best to provide good medicine at a price that allows us to eat, too. And please be patient and kind while we work through the massive numbers of sick animals coming our way.”
Late last year, after battling migraines, Dr. Moin finally realized “I do need to take some time off, and I worked hard, negotiated and I did.”
She then, indeed, took a vacation — for two and a half days.
-30-
