Mrs. Argumentative, the final saga

If you've somehow found yourself with absolutely nothing better to do than to read my previous posts, than you're no doubt familiar with my arch nemesis, Mrs. Argumentative. Well, our heartwarming (or is that heart-worming...) relationship has finally come to an end.

As long as I've been seeing her and her pets, I only recently discovered that as a profession, she teaches medical and nursing students how to properly communicate with their patients. Yeah, I thought SHE was joking too.

Anyway, last week she called and told Rachel (one of our receptionists) that it hadn't been an easy decision over the past few months, but she had finally decided it was time to put her oldest and most beloved Sheltie down. Despite the fact that Mrs. Argumentative has been nothing short of a righteous Witch to Rachel, we've all been there and understand the pain that you feel when making that decision, so she sincerely gave her condolences and asked if she would want to come in that afternoon (the call was around 11:00am).

Oddly, Mrs. Argumentative declined and replied that she'd have to call us back. End of conversation.

Mind you, this isn't that strange of a thing, many people have to coordinate with other family members, so the initial call is just to find out what the protocol is and what times were available. They don't always immediately set up a time.

What was odd was the fact that we never heard back from her. I could have called, sure. But she's been thinking of euthanizing her 15 year old Sheltie for some time now for various medical and age-related reasons, and considering we aren't the best of friends, I simple-mindedly guessed that she changed her mind.

It was 4 days later that her neighbor, another of our clients, called us extremely irate and concerned because, when the unfortunate time came that HER dog needed to be put down, would we also be as insensitive and unprofessional to them as we were to Mrs. Argumentative and decline to perform the procedure.

???

Apparently when our friendly communication expert called and said the words "it was time...", she meant that literally. Not in a couple of hours, but right this very second. She was SO appalled with us as a hospital that Rachel would even consider the possibility that Mrs. Argumentative would be able to wait a few more hours. So why in the hell didn't she say that to begin with?? We try to schedule appointments for this procedure, but if someone wanted to come in right away we would never say no.

As one of my favorite t-shirts says (thanks j.cakes tees)


Fare thee well, Mrs. Argumentative. It's been real.