It can be, but a family friend is a vet, and according to her, you only make decent money once you've opened your own practice. And even then, it's on average a good bit less than equivalent professions with the same competitiveness and years of schooling (dentist, lawyer, etc.), I'd say. Bills are high but operating costs are also high.
We adopted a rescue in BC who sat funny and hitched her leg sometimes when she ran. A couple x-rays later, and it turned out she had a poorly healed leg break, likely from being hit by a car. Fixing it wasn't really an option, so they suggested a femoral head ostectomy, which essentially involves cutting the ball off the femur that would normally socket into the hip, and relying on tendon growth to support the leg. Took a couple months after surgery for her to heal, but after that, you'd never know she didn't have a normal leg. Granted, she was a short-legged pitbull mix (if you look up doxi-bulls or dachshund-pit bull mixes, you'll get a rough idea of how she was built), so had a surplus of muscle mass to help support the leg. But she lived to 12 when cancer eventually got her, and never once showed any signs that her leg was anything but normal, despite being very active and walking 2-4 hours per day.