It’s a feeling no textbook ever prepared you for.
The sudden drop in your stomach.
The coldness crawling up your chest.
The way your palms start to sweat even in an air-conditioned clinic.
Then the words come—sharp, heavy, impossible to ignore:
“Magko-complain ako sa PRC.”
For a moment, the world stops.
The machines hum, the clock ticks, but you don’t hear any of it. All you hear is that one word—PRC.
Your license. Your life. Your years of sacrifice.
Everything you’ve built, hanging in the balance, suddenly fragile in the hands of someone’s anger.
You want to answer, but your voice betrays you.
It’s shrill, shaky, not your usual steady tone.
You hear yourself sound smaller than you are, and that only deepens the panic.
Your knees feel weak. Your chest feels tight. The cold rush has taken over.
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It doesn’t matter how many cases you’ve saved.
It doesn’t matter how many pets have gone home wagging their tails because of you.
In that one instant, none of it counts.
What echoes in your mind is a nightmare scenario:
A letter from PRC. A hearing. A sanction.
The thought that a single complaint—valid or not—could unravel everything.
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And the truth is, this is the part of veterinary life no one sees.
Not the textbooks, not the seminars, not even the graduation oath prepared you for this.
Because this is not about medicine. This is not about science.
This is about carrying the unbearable weight of responsibility while standing alone in the storm.
The cold rush isn’t just fear.
It’s the reminder that every decision you make carries a risk far beyond the clinic walls.
It’s the haunting awareness that you can be judged not by your effort, not even by the truth, but by perception, by misunderstanding, by anger.
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And still—you stand there.
Your heart racing, your breath unsteady, your license flashing in your mind’s eye.
Because this is what it means to be a vet.
To keep showing up, even with the cold rush running through your veins.
This is the hidden side of the profession.
The part no one applauds.
The part no one trains you for.
The part that makes us human beneath the white coat.
Dr. Geoff Carullo is a Fellow and the current President of the Philippine College of Canine Practitioners.
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