Excerpt
FEMALE CLIENTS
I think estrogen is a wonderful substance. In animals it is the hormone that helps regulate the reproductive cycle and gives female animals their female characteristics. In humans estrogen does roughly the same thing and is partially responsible for the pretty complexions, curvaceous figures, and normal sex drive of the female. Most of my female clients seemed to have just the right amount of estrogen, although some could have used a little more and a few probably had too much. One of the female clients that I had was probably in the latter category. This particular lady, whom I will refer to as the goat lady, lived by herself on a small ranch on the edge of South Dakota about forty miles from Gordon, Nebraska. Nan E. Gote (not her real name) had been married and divorced a few times and was now trying to make a living raising a few cattle and lots of goats on this small ranch. I had been to Nan’s place a few times on various calls, and she always seemed real friendly and maybe a little lonely. Nan would always invite me in after we had finished taking care of her problem. She seemed to like to talk and would always offer me coffee and cookies (her idea of cookies was chocolate icing between two graham crackers). Nan was about my age and kind of attractive in a goat lady sort of way. She also had very big brown eyes and when she looked at me, I would tend to loose my train of thought. On this particular call, Nan was having a problem with pneumonia in her goats. It was in the middle of the summer and very hot and dry. Nan had about thirty goats pinned up in a little shed which provided about the only shade on the place. She was trying to keep them cool by sprinkling them down with water every so often; unfortunately she was only succeeding in creating a very powdery dust that was probably giving the goats dust pneumonia. We decided we had better get the goats out of this shed and on some clean pasture after we had treated them. Nan would go in the shed, grab a goat and drag it out to me, and I would give it a shot and a pill. Then we would release it in the pasture. This was creating a very hot, dusty job, especially for Nan trying to catch a goat in this little shed where the powdery dust was being stirred up by the other goats. When we finally got through, we were both covered with dirt, Nan a lot worse than me. Nan said, “Lets go in the house for some iced tea and cookies (more graham crackers). I’ve got to take a quick shower, and you can wash up on the porch, or you can take a shower too if you want to.” Did she mean with her? I knew she didn’t like to waste water, but I guess my imagination was getting a little out of hand so I washed up on the porch and proceeded to get my tea and cookies in the kitchen. The bathroom was just next to the kitchen. Nan hadn’t bothered to close the door while she was showering, and she proceeded to talk to me while showering. I decided it might be a good idea if I left before she got through. I didn’t know what I would do if she came waltzing out of the shower in her birthday suit, so I said, “Nan, I’m running a little late so I guess I better be going.” Nan replied that she would be through in a little bit, and we could settle up. “That’s O.K. Nan; I’ll just send you a bill, and thanks for the tea and cookies.”
Two other female clients that were pretty much the opposite of Nan were Ruth Oliver and her mother, Viola. Ruth and her mother lived on a farm north of Johnson, Kansas. These were older, matronly ladies, and it was kind of hard to tell who the daughter was and who the mother was. They were both very kind hearted, likable ladies, maybe a little eccentric and frugal. The first time I went to the Oliver’s, Nancy (Hale) Sassin, the animal health technician that worked for me, was with me. Ruth at this time was probably in her seventies, and her mother had to be in her eighties. They had a pretty big farm, which I think they rented out. Ruth would take care of the various farm animals they had. On this particular call Ruth wanted me to treat an orphan calf she had purchased that had contacted pneumonia. She said she had been treating it with her home remedy, but it wasn’t responding too well. Ruth had the calf in a little stall in her barn, and when Nancy and I went in the barn, it immediately brought back unpleasant childhood memories. The whole place smelled like Vicks-Vapo-Rub. Every time I would get sick as a child, my mother would dope me up with Vicks. She would rub it on my chest and throat and cram it up my nose and any other orifice I had that she thought might benefit from it. I don’t know if the stuff ever did any good, but it was really an incentive not to get sick. I hated the stuff, and this is exactly what Ruth had done to the calf. The calf had Vicks all over its head and neck and up its nose. When Nancy tried to catch it so we could treat it, it would slip out of her grasp, sort of like trying to catch a greased pig.
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