Noel Fitzpatrick is an Irish veterinary surgeon who gained fame for being the first person to apply an amputation prosthesis to a cat. He was recognized by the Guinness World Records for being the first veterinary to perform such an operation. A year after his groundbreaking operation, Fitzpatrick and his team started appearing on BBC’s The Bionic Vet.
The series featured Fitzpatrick as he developed innovative methods to help ailing pets. In 2014, Noel became the star of Channel 4’s show The Supervet.
This piece will look at Noel’s love life. We can confirm that he isn’t married.
Any potential Noel Fitzpatrick partner must be prepared to come second after his work
Noel is one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain, and from the outside, it’s difficult to conceive why he isn’t married yet. Fitzpatrick provides a simple answer: his work.
Noel’s dedication to work has been his undoing when it comes to relationships. He wrote in his memoir, Listening to Animals: Becoming The Supervet, that he ended his relationship with his first girlfriend, Helena, because he had to move to London to follow his dreams.
Fitzpatrick revealed that most of his partners felt neglected by him because of his work. He wrote:
“The bottom line is that from my partners’ point of view, I have been selfish – something that I have been told time and time again. So, for example, while I have been fixing a dog, a girl I loved was in bed with someone else. That’s a bitter pill to swallow… and yet I can see it from her point of view. Why should she out up with always being second best to a dog or cat in crisis?”
You might think that, after so many broken relationships, Noel might compromise his work ethic to experience more success in his love life. However, Fitzpatrick told The Irish Times that any potential partner will come second to his work. “I’d like to marry and have kids one day, but the wife would have to know she’d always come second to practice,” he said.
Fitzpatrick admits to getting lonely and being scarred by love
Noel wrote in his memoir that he had battled feelings of worthlessness and profound depression, and at one point, he contemplated taking his life. He despaired in the fact that he provided joy to other people by fixing their pets, but he remained without love due to his decision to put his career first. Fitzpatrick wrote:
“When I reunite an animal that I have saved with the person who loves that animal, the palpable joy in the room soothes the acute pain of love lost… Yet the dull ache remains, and I truly wish that I might have balanced the scales of life better. The irony of it all is that I still love love.”
Fitzpatrick believes that if he’d married Helena, he would have saved himself and a bunch of girls from heartbreak. Noel wrote of one particular heartbreak that had him breaking down on the side of the road. It was a familiar story; he loved a girl with all his heart, but the girl ended the relationship because his work always came first.
Thankfully, Noel’s dog, Keira, was there for him at his point of need. “The ghosts and demons that I’ve carried with me throughout my life came to visit. Suddenly I was like a child again and I felt desolate and worthless,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “Kiera licked the tears off my face and in that moment she seemed to say that she knew I wasn’t perfect… but that it wouldn’t feel this bad forever. Thank you, Keira, for soothing my heart and teaching me about love. Unconditional love.”