Dr. Trae Cutchin vulnerably shares his career journey story, the struggles along the way, and the power of perseverance

Listen in as we talk with VIN Foundation board member Dr. Trae Cutchin as he shares his story of ongoing perseverance. Trae shares his personal experience coming out of the closet as a gay man with the fear of legal implications, to finding himself dealing with an unexpected addiction and the road to recovery, to the trials and tribulations of owning a veterinary practice and coming out the other side of a cancer diagnosis. Trae’s story will touch your heart and highlight the common threads we experience as humans, working on ourselves and trying to be better in all the roles in our lives.

*Trigger warning* a quick heads up, some of the content in today’s episode may include a trigger as it relates to substance abuse disorder.

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GUEST BIO:

Trae Cutchin, DVM

Trae Cutchin, DVM, is a 1988 graduate of the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine, is originally from Alabama. He has worked as a regular veterinary associate in full services hospitals, in a feline only practice for four years, and as an emergency room clinician for three years. For several years he operated his own relief service in the metro Atlanta area, and then opened his own full service practice in Flowery Branch, a bedroom community just north of metro Atlanta in 2006. He is married to his partner of twenty-five years and has two step kids and three step grandchildren. He has two dogs, Turbo and Shelley, and three cats, Mightie, Tessa, and Sushi. When he isn’t working as a veterinarian, he spends a lot of time working in his lawn and gardens. He is involved with the Veterinary Information Network as a VIN Representative and as a mentor in the VIN Virtual Veterinary Internship program as a mentor.

LINKS AND INFORMATION:

• Virtual Veterinary Internship
• VIN Foundation Vets4Vets®
• VIN Foundation Start Up Club
• Kirk’s Current Veterinary Therapy Book

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Intro

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I took my first job in Raleigh in part so I could be away from my family, which mostly lived in Georgia and in Alabama. Raleigh, North Carolina was far enough away at the time that I could go there and not have family looking over my shoulder and not have to answer a lot of questions. I learned how to be out as a gay man and a veterinarian and without losing my license.

Jordan BenShea: That is veterinarian and VIN Foundation Board Member, Dr. Trae Cutchin, and this is the VIN Foundation’s Veterinary Pulse Podcast. I’m Jordan Ben Shea , Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Join me as I talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics and share stories, stories that connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible by individuals like you who donate to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the episode notes for bios, links, and information mentioned. Hey all, a quick heads up that some of the content in this episode may include a trigger as it relates to substance abuse disorder. As a reminder, the VIN Foundation’s confidential support group, Vets4Vets, is here for you, and you can find information to reach out in the episode notes. Please know you are not alone. Hello Trae, welcome to the podcast. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Well, thank you. 

Jordan BenShea: I’m really excited to have you here. We talk about the importance of stories and I think your story is one that’s so fascinating and so interesting. So I’m really looking forward to this discussion and thanks for taking your time today. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I’m happy to share. 

Trae’s Early Inspiration for Veterinary Medicine

Jordan BenShea: Share with us your journey to veterinary medicine. Was there an aha moment where you knew it was the profession for you? Or did you come at it a little bit later? Did you have a fluffy bunny that you wanted to save? How did you find your way into the profession? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Well, I guess this journey started when I was 11 years old and my father was in the air force and we lived in Alaska and we got the first dog that we ever had as a child for me when I was 11. And when we went to take her to the veterinarian the first time for her well care checkup and such I went with them and everything that went on there was just fascinating to me and that was really the, time I said, “this is what I want to do, this is what I want to be”. And for me, it’s kind of like saying I want to be a fireman or I want to be a policeman. It’s one of the true hero professions and everybody has those kinds of moments when they were a child. A lot of times those get laid to the side and we move on, but for me, it stuck that. That was the moment and everything that happened after that kind of kept me on the line for that path all the way up till now. 

High School and College Journey

Jordan BenShea: When you were 11 and you knew you wanted to become a veterinarian, what’s the first step that you took for that?

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Well, I think one of the first steps, I didn’t even realize I was taking a step in that direction, was that the dog that we had, her name was Misty. She was a miniature schnauzer and we got her about two years before we left Alaska. And toward the end of that time, she developed severe atopic dermatitis. So she was back and forth to the veterinarian to try to tend to that problem for the duration. Then when my father was transferred to Florida, so a huge change in the environment. When we got to Florida her symptoms resolved for about six months and then they recurred and they were just as bad as they had ever been. So at that time we were close to my father’s retirement from the air force. So he was diverting all available monies into being able to get us moved and into a permanent home once he retired. At that time, which was back in the late 70’s and the very early 80’s, we just didn’t have the extra money for that kind of care, and so he made the very difficult decision to have her euthanized, which was very difficult for me and my brother at that age, because we were just 12 and 13 at the time. We didn’t really understand why that happened or what was the need for it, but it just reinforced for me the need to want to help these animals in a way that I wasn’t able to at that time. Then after we got moved into a place in rural Alabama there was a large animal practitioner there that worked not too far from our house. My father talked to her, and when I was 15 I went to work for her on a part time basis, weekends, after school, during the summers, and that really just kind of sank the hook even deeper for me. It really helped to forge this desire to be a veterinarian. I worked for her for about two years, and then close to the time that I was set to graduate from high school, she landed herself a pathology residency at UGA. So she moved on and I moved on into college and entered the pre vet program at Auburn.

Jordan BenShea: What was it that you found you really enjoyed working for her for those couple years during high school? Cause those are critical times, right? Socially critical times, like there’s a lot of things going on in life. So what was it about that practice and that experience that wanted to have you commit time there?

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Well, in rural Alabama, there wasn’t a lot to do. We were really a little too far from town for me to have any town friends to hang out with regularly or do anything like that. But there were some local boys that me and my brother hung with and did things with, but there was still a lot of time to kill. So a lot of it for me was spent working for her, and that was actually my first introduction to working with large animals. I had not been around cattle or horses or such my entire growing up experience, except very random single moments here and there. But that was actually a good hands on experience, and it really furthered for me that I wanted to do that. Of course, this is also about the same time that the James Herriot books were very, very popular. And, of course, I was reading those and thinking, this is just too good to be true. So it really helped again, keep me on the path. I had a few acquaintances in school that also wanted to be veterinarians, but by the time we graduated they had already moved on to other things. But for me, it was still the thing to do for me, so that’s what we did. 

Veterinary School Experiences

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I stuck with the desire to be a mixed animal practitioner almost up to the end of graduation from vet school, and then something happened there that really kind of changed my mind about that. 

Jordan BenShea: Okay. Alright, that’s a very good teaser for coming up. I like it, Trae. So you’re a pre vet in Auburn, and do you apply immediately in your fourth year there to go to veterinary school? Or how did that path look for you? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So I don’t know how they’re doing it now, but this was in the mid 80’s, and at that time, if you were in the pre vet program or had completed all the requirements thereof through your third year, you could apply at the end of your third year of undergraduate work and hopefully be on the road for acceptance by the end of your third year so that you could start vet school as your fourth year overlap. So, I was accepted on my first application and that meant I went into vet school with only three years of undergraduate. But the rule was if you completed your first year of vet school successfully, you would get your undergraduate degree in whatever your major field had been and mine was in microbiology. So, the day after the last day of freshman year in vet school, I drove down to the registrar’s office and picked up my undergraduate diploma. 

Jordan BenShea: Wow. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Well, seven years at Auburn, three years of undergrad, and four years of vet school. 

Jordan BenShea: Wonderful, and what was that veterinary school experience like for you?

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Intense. I imagine it was probably very similar to what anybody else has experienced as they go through. I mean, there are going to be individual unique experiences for each group that others don’t experience, but the overall feeling is much the same. It becomes very family like. You’re entrenched in the program day in, day out and you become very close to some of these people. I think, I didn’t tell you this before, but I think one of the most fun and interesting things that we did our first year was we were coming up on an anatomy lab exam and we had access to the lab at night up to a certain point. So, probably 15 or 20 of us gathered to review some anatomy on a couple of specimens. I think it was dogs, I don’t remember for sure, but we just got to talking while we were studying, and we’re gathered around these two specimens, identifying muscles this and bones that, and we got to talking about, we should have a Hawaiian cheese party. So, three or four people ran out and got wine and cheese and crackers, and I think our anatomy professors probably would have had an issue had they known what we were doing. We’re sitting around in the anatomy lab, poking and prodding at these poor specimens and enjoying a drink and cheese and crackers at the same time.

Jordan BenShea: So a wine and cheese and specimen party? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Exactly. So it was unique. It’s not an experience I would trade for the world. It was hard work, but it was also fun and interesting along the way. 

Jordan BenShea: And you teased just a bit ago that you went in expecting to be mixed animal. So at what point did that change and what was it for you that changed that direction?

Trae Cutchin, DVM: At the time we went to vet school on the same schedule that everybody else on the university campus did, which meant we had a defined day of the beginning of the quarter and a defined day at the end, and then we would have a break between the quarters that varied anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on which two quarters were up for discussion. And because the vet school would continue to see patients through the breaks, they would always hire a few of us who were interested in making some extra money and learning a little extra on the side to work in the clinics. Both the small animal and large animal clinics to assist the clinicians in seeing these patients. So one night, me and one of my classmates had been working in the large animal clinic, and we were on call for ambulatory that evening. So we were at home, and probably about 9:00, 9:30, something like that we got a call to come in to see a case. The ambulatory clinician wanted to go out and tend to a cow with a prolapsed uterus. This was in winter. It was not snowing, but it was raining and it was awfully cold. I do remember that. So we drove out to this farm and we drove out into this muddy, muddy pasture where this cow was standing with her uterus down around her hocks, and there were the three of us, the clinician and me and my student buddy. So I was assigned the task of holding the uterus up off the ground while he and my classmate cleaned it off and dusted it off and tried to get the shrinking process started by powdering it with urea boluses, if I remember correctly, so we could put this thing back in. So I know now why the cattle clinicians in particular worked out at lunch every day in the gym and they looked like it because while I’m standing there holding this uterus off the ground, I had no clue how much these things weighed. And it’s pulling down on my shoulders, and at one point he asked me without looking up, “you okay up there, Trae?”. And it was pulling down on me so much I couldn’t utter a sound. My chest could not physically expand beyond the shallow breaths I was taking, let alone vocalize anything, and when I didn’t answer, he looked up again and said, “are you okay?”. All I could do was shake my head and he very quickly had me and my classmate swap places, but by then the damage was done. I was so drained and stretched and weak, I could not lift my arms to do a thing at that point. All I could do was stand back and look stupid. That was the point at which I decided, that’s it. If I’m going to tend to middle of the night emergencies, I’m going to do it in a nice, warm, heated, and comfortable clinic and not out in the middle of a cold, muddy field getting wet.

Jordan BenShea: That switched from mixed animal to companion animal for you? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Yeah, that was the make or break moment. But I’m glad I got it then and not when I was already on the job somewhere. 

Jordan BenShea: That’s part of what veterinary school is for, right? You flush all those things out. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Yep. End of that dream, time to start a new one.

Jordan BenShea: Okay, so you’re at Auburn and you graduate from Auburn. What’s your next step in the profession? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So, something I was contending with and had been contending with my whole life, I just didn’t realize how much I’d been contending with it until the last couple of years of vet school, and that is being gay. I’d known from the time I was 12 that I was, and my family life was such that I never really had a problem with it. I didn’t have so much of the personal angst that so many who are discovering this about themselves go through. The only thing I knew was I couldn’t talk about it, I couldn’t act on it. So I basically squelched all those feelings and desires and just kept them in the back where I didn’t have to deal with them because fear was a big factor in many ways. One of the ways it was a factor for me at the time is many states did, and some probably still do, have laws on the books governing moral turpitude. If you are convicted of a crime of such I could have lost my license or not been granted a license because of that kind of a conviction had I been convicted, and homosexuality was a chargeable offense in many instances at that time. It was a long time coming before those kinds of things change, but that was a fear that just weighed heavily on me. By the time I was 24, which was when I graduated, I’d come to the conclusion I needed to do something about it. 

First Job and Personal Challenges

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So I took my first job in Raleigh in part so I could be away from my family, which mostly lived in Georgia and in Alabama. Raleigh, North Carolina was far enough away at the time that I could go there and not have family looking over my shoulder and not have to answer a lot of questions while I discovered this about myself and learned how to deal with this and to be out as a gay man and a veterinarian and without losing my license. The other factor, of course, that was huge at the time and still is, but HIV concerns were a lot more scary then than they are now. It was one of those, do I have to deal with a potential death sentence if I act on this as well as loss of licensure? So anyway, that’s how I ended up in Raleigh and I was there for a year. While I was there I met somebody, he was not a good somebody but a somebody that I fell in love with and he was transferred a year later to Augusta and I did what people in love do and I followed him. I spent a year in Raleigh before moving on, and that was an educational year from a veterinary standpoint too, because I was working in an emergency clinic by myself, which never, ever should have happened. Somebody should have said, “no, there’s something wrong with a first year graduate being in a vet clinic by themselves, unattended at night seeing emergencies”. It’s one of those things that I still shudder to think, but there are things that happened, I will never tell anybody because they were just that bad. But it was also enlightening because by the end of that first year, I also realized I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. A lot of us tend to graduate thinking we are God’s gift to veterinary medicine and that was a big awakening for me. When I moved to Augusta, I took steps to become a better veterinarian and one of the things that I did is I picked up a book. Nobody ever suggested this to me, it was just an idea I had and I don’t know if they’re still being published now or not, but the book I picked up was “Current Veterinary Therapy 9th edition”. I read that book cover to cover, an article at a time. I would read one to two articles a day until I got through the whole book. Then about that same time, “Current Veterinary Therapy 10” came out, and I started to do the same thing with that. This took me about a year and a half or so to two years. I did not get all the way through the 10th edition, but I got a good way through it before I stopped doing it. It really made a tremendous difference. So, right now I am one of the mentors on the virtual veterinary internship program, and when the topic comes up or if one of the interns asks, “what can I do to be better?”, that is still my advice. Pick up a book and read it cover to cover. There is nothing that replaces that, it was a profound education. It reinforced everything that we’ve been taught in school, but, when you’re in school, you’re under pressure, so you’re not going to retain all of it. You don’t retain as much as you think you do, and this was such a reminder. So much so that the practice I was at, which had four other doctors at it, even though I was the youngest one there I sort of became the go to guy when they had questions about complicated cases. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging because I couldn’t always answer their questions. What I did do though, was to say, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I know where to find the answer”, and we’d pull out the book and I could almost name the page it would be on. We would look it up together, and then that’s what we would do. 

Navigating Personal and Professional Growth

Jordan BenShea: Wow, you’ve covered so much here, and I want to unpack some of it because you talk about moving to Raleigh and the angst of probably being a new veterinary graduate and being in an ER as a new veterinary graduate on your own. That combined with beginning to feel the freedom to explore your experience as a gay man and being able to do that with some freedom now for the first time in your life, that’s a whole lot of stuff going on and a lot for anyone to handle any one of those on their own. You had both of them at the same time, which is really impressive the way that you navigated that and continued to improve yourself in the profession during that. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Yeah, it was huge. It made such a big difference, but to continue that vein of thought, you know, the person I had chosen to be with, one of the things that being gay and closeted for as long as I was is, it puts us behind the curve socially. We don’t know how to interact because a lot of people are having so called youthful boyfriends and girlfriends and learning how to date in their mid teens. This was not something I experienced because of living in the closet. In fact, part of the reason this relationship was not a healthy one was because we were both closeted. You had two desperate guys clinging to each other because it was us against the world, and that was it. Well, I began to realize toward the end of the relationship that everything wasn’t just kosher. I ended up moving to Atlanta because my job became jeopardized and his job became jeopardized, so the plan was for us to move to Atlanta. Well, I landed a job there first, and so I moved to Atlanta and I moved in with my brother and his sister-in-law to save on rent while I could find another place to live. It took a while to do that, but during that time I also had to get out of the house because my sister-in-law, who didn’t know I was gay, and my brother, who didn’t know I was gay, kept trying to set me up with people on dates.

Jordan BenShea: Oh my gosh. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So, I had to get out of the house, and at that point, I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t have anything else to do, and it was at that point, the furthering of my experience as a gay man was that I got to go meet people. Well, how do you meet people if you’re gay? Well, the easy solution, so called easy solution, is to go to a gay bar, but I was afraid to death to do that. But as luck would have it, the clinic I was at had a chain associated with it, and so I went down to visit one of the other clinics in midtown Atlanta, and the day I chose to visit happened to be Gay Pride Day in Atlanta. So I was driving through midtown Atlanta watching all of these people dressed in peculiar ways coming out of Piedmont Park, and the clinic was right across from there. So when I got to the clinic and went inside, my first words to the receptionist were, “so what is this? Is Mid Atlanta the heart of gay Atlanta?”, and she said, “yes”.

Jordan BenShea: Little did you know that’s what you were looking for. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So, I had my visit there, but as I was leaving I realized that this clinic, which was in a strip mall, was in a shopping center that had three gay bars in it. It was virtually, literally, right next door to a gay bookstore that had all kinds of stuff. It wasn’t just adult erotica kind of stuff, although they did have some of that, it also had literature and shirts and coffee cups and other things. It was kind of a souvenir store of all things. But out front they had some of the old timey newsstands where you put in a quarter and get your newspaper kind of thing, except these were free. But this was broad daylight and I wasn’t out, so I kind of took note of that. One night a few weeks later I snuck back over there and parked right in front of it, which happened to be right next to the clinic, which was a 24 hour clinic. So I very quickly ran up to one of those things, snatched something out of all the boxes and ran back to my car and bolted out of there like greased lightning. What I did was to take the magazines and news things that I got and start looking up gay bars to go to, and that was my coming out experience in Atlanta, was to start investigating the bars and going out and meeting people. The end result of all of this was that I was growing further and further apart from my then partner. He came to visit me in Atlanta one weekend and the bottom line of it was, he was not ready to be out and I could not go back into the closet. So that was pretty much the end of our relationship there. He didn’t take it well. He a few weeks later called my work and outed me on the phone. What he didn’t realize, and I didn’t realize at the time was this was Atlanta. Nobody cared. So his marked fit of anger to do something very mean turned out to be one of the best things that could have ever happened to me because once I was outed, I never looked back. It made all the difference in my world. He tried to do the same thing with my family a little bit later, but by then I had already come out to them, so they didn’t care either. So, truthfully, I had a very, very easy coming out experience, all things considered, but the load lightening was indescribable. 

Jordan BenShea: Right, I mean, a huge, huge weight off your shoulders. Now you’re living in a new place, in a new city, and you’re feeling that freedom because now you’re outed and you feel comfort, or you’re beginning to feel comfort within that. And now you’ve got a new job and that’s probably a huge shift for you along with ending that relationship that you expressed was not positive for you. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Exactly. So I enjoyed being out learning how to be out because I mean, I was just now learning how to be social and everything that comes with that. I ended up in another relationship with somebody who was also not good for me either, but at least we weren’t together because we were hiding in a closet anymore, so that made it different. What I learned over four years with him was that he heard that I was a vet and decided let’s go along for the ride, see what I can get out of this. But that was… 

Jordan BenShea: oh geez.

Trae Cutchin, DVM: The short version of it. It wasn’t a give and take relationship, it was more me giving and him taking. The thing that it did for me most though, was it kept me safe for another four years from HIV and those kinds of concerns because it was a monogamous relationship. When he realized I wasn’t going to be everything he wanted me to be, and he left me, I was ready at that time to be with the man I’m with now and have been with for 25 years, and that’s still a wonderful relationship and it is a give and take. There are no words I can use to describe it.

Jordan BenShea: Well, isn’t that the case so often in our life, that there’s things that we just have to go through until we get to the point and we learn the lessons that we are ready for something healthy, right? We all have things that we’re working through in our life from various childhoods and how we show up in an authentic, vulnerable way to learn about ourself and to be self reflective and the positive impact that that can have on our lives is really transformational. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: It is but he helped me find strengths I never knew I had. He helped me by more or less beating me and pushing me in the right direction. After we’d been together for about a year and a half he convinced me to take a job with a cats only clinic because the one I was at was becoming too draining. They were asking too much of me, and so I needed to find another job. So I took a job at a cat’s only clinic, which I dearly love because I am a cat person. I like dogs, but I love cats. Cats are psychotic, but they are special and I love everything about them. They’re small and they’re clean and they don’t jump on me. But the fellow who owned the clinic wanted me to buy it, and at the end of four years I realized I didn’t want to buy that clinic. I didn’t like the patient and it wasn’t a good place. When I told him I didn’t want to buy it, he said, “well, you realize, of course, that’s going to limit your longevity here”, which was sort of an eye opener because it never occurred to me, but yeah, I get it. He’s right, if I’m not going to buy the clinic he wants to sell, he’s going to want to hire somebody who will. 

Jordan BenShea: Right. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So when I told my partner, Joel, about that he said, “well, let’s be proactive, you need to do something else”. And he convinced me something that I would never would have done on my own, and that is to open a relief practice business. So I sat down and I wrote an introductory level letter, and this is in 2004, so it’s right before the internet really took off. And I wrote this letter and I did use the yellow pages because we still had those, I took out every veterinarian I could in the metropolitan area and I sent out over 300 letters to all of them. Within three or four days I was getting phone calls for people wanting me to do relief for them. So that’s what I did for the next two years, and I loved it. I loved being able to set my own schedule and being able to say that, if I don’t want to work this week, I don’t have to work this week. It was great. Sometimes I wish I was still doing that. 

Jordan BenShea: Based on what relief vets are getting paid now, right? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: We weren’t getting paid that well then, but still, it was a good living. It gave me a lot of time, and during that time, the apartment we were living in, we managed to get broken into four times. It was a good neighborhood when we moved in, but by the time we left, it was falling apart. Somebody broke into a storage shed and stole a bunch of stuff out of there. They broke into our apartment twice. The last straw was when they tried to get into the toolbox on the back of my truck in the parking lot, and when I told Joel about that his first words were, “when are we moving?”. That’s when we started looking for a house and we got a house within a month or two and we moved up to where we are now, which is in Cumming, Georgia, which is maybe 45 minutes to an hour north of midtown Atlanta. It’s a bedroom community and it’s a really nice place. Then once we got there he’s like, “when are you going to open your own practice?”. 

Jordan BenShea: He’s like your ongoing cheerleader. It’s amazing. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: He is. He’s amazing. Why he puts up with me, I have no idea. 

Jordan BenShea: Well, you’re a wonderful human, Trae. That’s one of the many reasons. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: So I set about doing what I needed to do to get a practice open, which is a long story in and of itself. But I opened this practice in 2006, we’re in a strip mall in flowery branch, which is about 30 minutes from where we live and it’s a great place. I like what I do now, but when we first opened stress was a huge factor. In 2006, we were just ahead of the mortgage crisis and that meant that I had about a year and a half to two years to get a clientele established, which we did. Then the crisis struck, we were a little behind the curve on other businesses, veterinarians, at least in my experience, seemed to get hit a little bit later than some of the earlier ones. So it was really about 2009 when we really started feeling it. At that time Joel had been working in the clinic as one of two managers, but as business began to drop off because of the economy, we realized that his salary was too much of a drain on the clinic. So we did some cutback, we changed hours, we did some other things and ultimately he ended up having to get another job and the job he chose was to drive a truck over the road from coast to coast for two years. It was a savings for us. We were able to actually put away some money while he was doing that, but it was also incredibly difficult because he was away more often than not. I got to see him once every six to eight weeks or so, which was just terrible. The day I drove him to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Missouri where he was going to pick up his truck, that’s about an hour and a half away, and I literally cried all the way back to work that day. 

Overcoming Addiction and Health Challenges

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Getting through the next four or five days was so hard, and what he also didn’t know is about maybe four or five months before he started driving, I started Xanax because the anxieties of the crisis, the anxieties of the new clinic, and everything else that was going on was just becoming so much. I couldn’t even sleep at night. I’d be able to get two or three hours of sleep, then my eyes would pop open, and I would be awake the rest of the night. It was awful, and I’d been hearing people at some of the clinics I’d worked at talk about, well, I take Xanax for this, I take Xanax for that. So I, never having researched Xanax, thought, well, okay, they’re all taking it, it must be safe. I started with a very low level, but it’s one of those, well, if one is good, two is better. So I really escalated using very markedly over a very short period of time, about three months. So I stupidly quit taking it cold turkey, and I did not know what the dire consequences of that could be. At one point I went to seek help because I was having auditory and visual hallucinations from it, and I thought I was losing my mind. But the guy said, “well, when did you stop?”, and I told him, and he says, “well, if you’ve made it this far you’re not going to die from it”. That was the first time I realized just how bad a mistake quitting like that could be. But I got through it and I sought out a friend of mine who is a recovering addict and has been for a very long time. She told me I was an addict, I denied it, and she said, “look at yourself”. So I did, and then she took me to an AA meeting, and then I started going to NA meetings. It was a rough 90 days to get through that first 90 days, but I did, and I’ve stayed on the wagon since. But it was a trial, and it was a very horrible experience, and I don’t wish that on anybody. But as a side note if somebody is doing that and needs help, there are options. At the very least, the VIN Foundation offers Vets4Vets, which has something for veterinarians in recovery. It was not in existence at the time I started doing this, but it came into existence shortly thereafter. It’s been a blessing for a lot of the veterinarians, I think, that take part in that group. 

Jordan BenShea: Trae, it’s so wonderful of you to be willing to share this and I’ll make sure that we put links to it in the episode notes. I keep hearing over and over again, how you have these moments of huge trials and tribulations, but you find your way and you find your path to better things. It is so impressive to hear that about you. I mean, I have had the honor of working with you for many years and most recently as a VIN Foundation board member, and I’m so honored that you are part of our team and our family. I know what a huge positive impact you have on colleagues and so in awe of you and your ongoing ability to overcome challenges time and time again. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Yeah. Well, the bottom line of it is I didn’t do it alone. Nobody does. I had help all along the way. Sometimes moments of clarity provided by somebody who didn’t even know they were giving it to me and other times by people who reached out a hand to actually help me. But that last experience with the Xanax addiction also enabled me to deal with the last, so far, big hurdle that I’ve had to deal with, and that was cancer. I had been in recovery for about four years, I guess, at the time that I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, that was 10 years ago that I had surgery. Next March, it’ll be 10 years since radiation therapy. I shudder to think how I would have handled that if I had not had the Xanax experience and the recovery experience because it was horrible enough as it was. But being in recovery gave me the tools to deal with the things that life throws at us, and cancer was a pretty big one. But I got through that. I am about as much in remission as anybody could hope for. We can never say it’s zero risk of recurrence because even very late recurrences have occurred, but the odds favor me much better now than they did even five years ago. It was a trial but here I am. 

Jordan BenShea: Wow, and here you are as a practice owner who has overcome so much consistently and irrelevant to what life is throwing at you, you’re consistently overcoming and working with colleagues to help support them and improve as well. And really a huge asset to this profession. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I appreciate the thought. 

Jordan BenShea: It’s true. It really is.

Trae Cutchin, DVM: It is amazing to me sometimes. 

Jordan BenShea: Talking about this journey with you and hearing your path, which is, I think, going to be so interesting to colleagues and so helpful. Just, as we say within Vets4Vets, you are not alone. We are here to support every stage in your career and you are an example of someone that’s reached out for help time and time again, and been willing to be vulnerable and through that willingness to be vulnerable, learning so much about yourself and improving your life consistently. How does all of this impact you as a practice owner now and how you deal with staff and colleagues and clients and all of those ongoing stresses? Or do those almost seem like, eh, they’re petty at this point. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I think if you want the best answer to that the people to ask would be my staff. One of them, Wendy, has been with me since the day we opened. She doesn’t know this whole story the way I’ve told it here. She doesn’t know about my addiction issues, I’ve never mentioned the cancer here. They probably know something was up, but I don’t know what they’ve gleaned on their own, but she has seen my behavior change over the last 18 years. She has seen me go from being an uptight jerk to somebody who’s a little bit more laid back. I still get anxious, I still have my moments, but I’m a lot better than I was. 

Jordan BenShea: Isn’t that what all of us can hope for, to each day be better than we were the day before? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Yes. Exactly. 

Advice and Reflections

Jordan BenShea: As a practice owner with all of this knowledge, what would you say to colleagues who are considering opening a practice? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: It’s a great thing to do, but go into it with open eyes and don’t do it alone. Have a good safety net system of people on which you can rely. Be it family, church, bowling teams, whatever, people that have your back. They will make all the difference in the world, and if you don’t have those, get those. There’s always something. I think one of the bravest acts we ever take is being in a new place where we don’t know anybody, and that’s reaching out to make contact with somebody else for the first time. I never realized how bold a statement it was for me one time when I was between my first two partners, I needed to get out of Atlanta. I needed to take a break. So I took a week and a half off, and I went by myself to a place in Charleston where I didn’t know anybody. A bed and breakfast that, this one catered to gay men, but it could have been anywhere. But I didn’t know anybody there, and I had the best time. None of us knew each other when we arrived, but we were all friends when we left. It was, just extending myself and opening up and saying, “let’s go to dinner, let’s go to the beach, let’s do whatever”. That takes real effort for many of us, some people it comes naturally, but for me and many others, it takes effort. But it’s an effort worth taking. So do that if you haven’t already and get people around you that will help you. 

Jordan BenShea: Yeah, one consistent thing I’m hearing and what you’re sharing is, a lot of this was before a lot of social media, a lot of online engagement with other humans, and the effort that it took and still takes to put yourself out there human to human, right? Not behind a screen, not behind some sort of app, but really out there to engage with other humans is huge, and that sounds like it’s been a big part of your story as well. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: It is. As you’re walking into that bed and breakfast alone, walking into that first NA meeting alone, walking into the first local VMA meeting alone, it all takes effort, but it’s all worthwhile. 

Jordan BenShea: Trae, I so appreciate you sharing all of this with our colleagues and our audience. I know that it’s really, really important for people to share stories and to learn from each other, and you’ve given us so much to learn from. Is there anything else that you want to leave our audience with today? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: I think one of the best things to remember, something that I see so many have problems with, both on VIN and in other places, is remembering something that gets said a lot in recovery groups, but it has so much meaning everywhere else as well. That is the past is history, the future’s a mystery. Live in the day. Don’t try to predict what hasn’t happened, because it almost never happens the way you think it will. And don’t dwell on the past. Learn from the past, remember the past, but don’t dwell on the past. 

Jordan BenShea: And to think that we started this conversation and you were an 11 year old boy who just from his dog in Alaska and the path from there to here and your story to here, which is still being written and still thriving, and I’m so grateful to you and for your willingness to take your time. The last question I like to ask people is, is there a secret talent or something you enjoy doing that others might not know about? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Oh, no, I think everybody knows what I like. I like gardening. 

Jordan BenShea: There you go. That’s your secret talent. What are your favorite things to grow? 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Anything in my backyard, fruit, vegetables, flowers, trees. Right now I’ve got blackberries, blueberries, scuppernums, for those who don’t know what those are they’re southern grapes. I have a fig tree. I’ve planted a lot of Japanese maples. I’ve planted a mulberry tree, flowers galore, mostly perennials. My idea of fun gardening is planning it once and being done with it. I don’t like things I have to dig up and store and replant the next year or things like that. 

Jordan BenShea: Well, thank you so much, Trae. 

Outro

Jordan BenShea: Again, your willingness to share your story and being vulnerable and It’s such an honor having you as a VIN Foundation board member, and I’m really excited that we got to share your story here, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you. 

Trae Cutchin, DVM: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you. 

Jordan BenShea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the episode notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org, and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.