Tenacious and Exceptional

NC State Alum’s Care Dazzles Cat’s Companion

To cat owner Stephanie McEwan, NC State College of Veterinary Medicine alumni Tracey Rossi is an exceptional veterinarian determined to go above and beyond the obvious to provide extraordinary medical care to her patients.

Rossi, on the other hand, says that she’s just tenacious and that McEwan, a board-certified medical scientist, is giving her way too much credit for saving the life of Elsa the cat.

Whether McEwan is being too effusive or Rossi too humble matters little to Elsa, a brown tabby cat who survived a prolonged bout with a potentially fatal Cryptococcus fungal infection after Rossi found discrepancies in some lab results and chose to have a different lab test the cat for Cryptococcus markers.

“If Dr. Rossi had relied on back-to-back negative test results and opted to discontinue treatment, my cat’s health would have deteriorated, with serious and disfiguring complications, eventually leading to death,” says McEwan, an adjunct clinical and research faculty member in the Department of Medicine & Surgery at the University of California School of Medicine in Irvine. “Instead, something did not seem right to Dr. Rossi, who chose to think about her patient and to not simply practice ‘autopilot’ medicine.”

In September 2019, Elsa was having severe respiratory distress and odd nasal symptoms and was immediately admitted to the emergency department at Blue Pearl Pet Hospital in Irvine.

Although Elsa was an indoor-only cat, she was found to be positive for Cryptococcus after biopsies of the nasal tissue were taken, and she was started on antifungal medication.

Over the next seven months, Elsa subsequently tested negative several times for the deadly infection, and McEwan was advised to discontinue the medication. However, out of an abundance of caution, McEwan was reluctant.

When Elsa’s veterinarian moved to another state, Rossi, an internal medicine specialist at Blue Pearl, took over her care. Rossi had never seen Elsa before, McEwan says, but she carefully reviewed the cat’s file and decided the cat should be tested again, but at a different lab.

“There’s nothing special about what I did,” says Rossi, who graduated from NC State with her DVM in 2003. “I’m detail-oriented. It’s in the details. Internal medicine is the IT department of veterinary medicine. We hear a story, look at the data, compare it to a physical exam and fix it. By being diagnosticians, that’s what we do.”

Much to everyone’s shock, the new lab tests showed that Elsa was still positive for Cryptococcal antigen. What Rossi and McEwan learned was that all labs are not created equal, and a thankful McEwan decided to research the puzzling situation. How is it possible that at least two labs could be wrong?

McEwan and her research partner, Jane Sykes of the University of California-Davis, wrote an article reporting their novel findings for the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. Sykes is the coauthor of the textbook “Infectious Diseases of the Dog and Cat.”

In the article, McEwan included a special acknowledgement to recognize the dedication and expertise of Rossi, whose path to Irvine, California, was not a straight one.

A Professor Steps In

Rossi grew up on a dairy farm in Maryland. She had decided to become a physical therapist when she arrived at UNC-Chapel Hill to finish her undergraduate biology degree. She had already completed two years of community college, staying close to home after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

While working at a local restaurant in Chapel Hill, Rossi was put in contact with Sam Galphin, a well-known local veterinarian and dairy specialist, and her career goals changed.

“I had been hoping to spend time with him over the summer helping on dairy farms,” says Rossi, who calls Galphin instrumental in inspiring her to become a veterinarian. “We went on a trip to Bolivia because there was a TB problem in the human population, and they weren’t sure if it was a human or a cattle issue. I started trying to get into vet school.”

Accepted at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, Rossi started her DVM education thinking she would be a dairy veterinarian, but provided the opportunity to explore all aspects of veterinary medicine, she chose to specialize in small animal medicine. By her fourth year, however, she had decided not to apply for an internship or residency to continue her education.

“I was at the point in my life when I was done with school,” Rossi says. “Going further was not something I was entertaining.”

But during a senior clinical rotation in small animal dermatology, she met Dr. Thierry Olivry, a professor of immunodermatology at NC State.

“Dr. Olivry pointed out that I was always asking questions,” Rossi says. “Dr. Olivry said, ‘You’re going to be bored in general practice. If you want a letter of recommendation when you realize you’re making a mistake, I’ll be happy to write it.’”

She decided he was right and scrambled, ending up completing a small animal rotating internship in internal medicine at the Veterinary Referral & Emergency Center in Norwalk, Connecticut, and then a small animal internal medicine residency at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

Following her residency, Rossi took a job at a new private practice in Maryland but was unhappy there. The lack of support from management was overwhelming, she says, and she started questioning all of the work she had done the previous 12 years.

“I tell all of my students and interns now, if your first job is a bad fit, it’s OK to leave,” says Rossi, whose position includes teaching Western University College of Veterinary Medicine students during their fourth-year clinical rotation at Blue Pearl Irvine.

She ended up in California and ultimately as Elsa’s life-saving veterinarian because a relief surgeon she met in Maryland asked her to join him at his new practice in Irvine.

“I’m just tenacious,” Rossi says, explaining Elsa’s amazing recovery. “‘You are always asking why,’ Dr. Olivry said. ‘You are always asking why.’ I think that’s just my personality.”

Dr. Tracey Rossi says, “Internal medicine is the IT department of veterinary medicine. We hear a story, look at the data, compare it to a physical exam and fix it. By being diagnosticians, that’s what we do.”

Open House 2023

Periodic rain couldn’t dampen the excitement as the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine revived its popular Open House after a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Community members by the hundreds strolled by the tents of local animal rescue groups, through the halls of the hospital, health and wellness center and research building and along the paths to food trucks, the horse corral and a cow-milking station.

They watched demonstrations of the standing equine CT machine, acupuncture on horses and the pressure mat that measures gaits so veterinarians can understand how and where animals might feel pain. Some learned about how to become a veterinary student, what a day in the life of a veterinary student is like and what kinds of social and service student groups are available to join.

“The @NCStateVetMed Open House is a great success and an incredible way to show the public about the diverse and important roles for veterinarians in society,” Dean Kate Meurs posted on her Twitter account after the event.