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kittymomma

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12 Nov 2007
I wanted to write a little about Veterinarians here. As a Veterinary technician, I see what these kind people go through every day. I have known many of them and have never met one that does not love animals. That is the reason most people choose to become a Veterinarian.

Oftentimes the Veterinarian is seen as some sort of *GOD* or miracle worker and is expected to save an animal NO MATTER WHAT. This is sadly not the case. They are human beings with very special training that allows them to diagnose illnesses or perform surgeries that can help save our pets. Sometimes the Veterinarian cannot save an animal no matter what. Sometimes they can give us another day or 48 hours more with our beloved pets. What one MUST realize here is that the MOST IMPORTANT thing of all is the quality of life for the animal, not whether the owner has *gotten a sign from the animal that it is ready to go* or that the owner is not ready to let go of the animal. The life of the ill creature must be the first and foremost issue in the matter.

It can be easy to blame a Veterinarian for the death of a pet. They did not treat the animal with the correct drugs. They did not do the right procedure. They let the pet die. To be fair, there are instances of veterinarians missing the boat on a diagnosis. However, most of the time Veterinarians are trying their hardest to SAVE lives. Their motto is: First, Do no harm. I know that most will do anything to save an animal. If you are told that there is no hope, or that a particular procedure will not work or a particular medicine is not suitable, you have the right to take your pet to another vet and get second and even third and fourth opinions. I find that most vets do NOT do most things for *the money*. They do what they do out of love for animals. When we get a diagnosis or prognosis or even the advice that it would be better to let our beloved friend go, we sometimes want to deny that. We think that the Vet is just trying to get rid of us, does not know what they are doing, (even though we have been happy with the treatment they have given our pet for many years prior) and we blame them for the death of our pets. They are an easy target. After all, who is the one who sticks the needle in the vein. I have been present at many a euthanasia and I can tell you, no matter how many you have done or whose pet it is, or if it is a stray or a beloved champion show animal, the vets have always been touched and affected by every death.

It is the Vet Tech's job to do 99% of the work in a Veterinary Hospital. The Vet diagnoses disease or injuries, gives instructions for the proper treatment, performs surgeries and prescribes medicines. The Vet Techs are the workhorses of the office. They check vitals all the time. They actually give the treatments, watch the progress of the disease and report to the Vet, they draw the blood and do the tests. They set broken limbs and are ICU nurses. They do the anesthesia in a surgery and assist in surgeries. They are the ones who spend most of the time with your pet. They are the ones who let the Vet know if a treatment needs to be changed or is having a good effect or no effect on your pet. They are the ones who comfort your pet, who nurse your pet back to health. The Vet gets involved in emergencies and in changing treatments. They check the animals on a regular basis, but some diseases and injuries are not treatable. These cases break all of our hearts. When an owner is begging us to try something different and we know there is nothing that is going to save that animal, it is hard to tell the owner that it is not going to work. There are times when the owner thinks that the vet *should have* done something different and in the end killed their animal. What the owner does not know is that everything that could humanly possibly be tried without INJURING the animal further probably has been tried. To get 1 more hour or 48 more hours at the expense of the animal's comfort is not a good reason to keep an animal alive. If an animal is suffering and an owner cannot let go, this can be the cruelest thing to the animal. I have seen it in practice, and it has made me weep for the animal, who is lying there and literally in pain, because an owner refuses to let go or has not seen some sort of sign from their pet that they want to go. What more of a sign do they need, except that the animal can no longer eat on it's own, cannot stand up, or go to the bathroom or the opposite, has unstoppable diarhhea and is peeing endlessly. What more of a sign do these owners want? I have heard many statements about how "the animal will let me know when it is time..." That could not be furthur from the truth in some cases. They are very good at hiding symptoms and could well be futher along than you could imagine, yet not be showing you that it is time to go.

We all love our pets so much and never want to lose them. We are given such a short time with them and we wish it could be longer. It is a price we pay for loving and being loved by a creature whose lifespan is shorter than ours. To prolong pain because we cannot let go is a disservice to the pet we loved so dearly. And to try to rationalize it as somehow being the Vet's fault or even our own is not realistic.

We have Vets because we have pets. We need to keep them healthy as much as we take care of ourselves. These people who choose this calling are amazing. I have worked in offices in the richest parts of town and in offices in the ghetto and every single one of the Veterinarians were in the practice because they loved animals. It was not about money. Are there bad vets? Yes, but few. And what const*itutes a bad vet. Mistreatment, malpractice, the same that we would see in our human doctors. I have seen very few of those people in the Veterinary world.

Now we have choices about what kind of medicine we want for our pets. Do we want old fashioned medicine or holistic, chinese acupuncture or old fashined massage therapy, traditional meds or flower essences and homeopathy... There are many choices to make and you could go to a combination of Veterinary Pract*itioners to find a balance that will take care of all things.
Our very own Chinese pharmacist told us that even he has Kaiser. He said he would not be able to *fix* a broken limb with chinese herbs, it must be set in an old fashioned cast or splint. So there are balances that must be made in any medicine.
To rule out the mainstream Vets and curse them for their treatment when you believe that a holistic doctor could have saved them is implicitly wrong, just as it is wrong to blame a holistic doctor for misdiagnosing something if a mainstream doctor could have helped them. Unless the two pract*itioners are working TOGETHER on a disease or injury, there is no way one can tell if the other has failed at treatment.

In closing I just want to say that I have had the honor to work with some of the most loving and compassionate people in the world. Those who choose the calling of being a doctor to God's creatures are filled with immeasurable love. The Vet Techs that I have worked with are the same, giving tirelessly to save pets and to do all they can to ease the suffering of beautiful animals. It is a tough and sometimes heartbreaking job and it takes a special person to be able to work with sick, wounded and terminally ill pets everyday. You sometimes just want to close your eyes and make it go away, then you remember the WHY of what you are doing. You are part of a team that tries to save lives and help the injured and be rewarded with a lick on the face or a soft purr at the end of the day. It is worth it after all to be in the Veterinary field. It is worth it for the animals...
susan
30 Oct 2007
Hi all! I am new to this site. I found it last week after we lost our beautiful 11 yr Orion on October 20, at 12:20PM. He was the most loving and special kittyson anyone could ever have.
Orion was a tiny baby of 6 weeks when we got him in 1996 and very sickly. He had to take meds from the very day we brought him home. But we fell in love with him immediately and my husband started calling him his *son* from the beginning.
Orion grew up to be a BIG boy. At 25 lbs he was our biggest cat. Then he started losing weight and looking ill. We immediately took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes. We had our ups and downs with that disease for 8 yrs with him. He did pretty well for long periods of time and then the insulin dose would need to be changed. The last year he was regulated very well and we had no problems with his diabetes. In March of this year, I noticed that he looked like he had retained a LOT of fluid in his abdomen. He was really round and sloshy. I am a Vet Tech and I knew there were probably only a handful of things that would cause fluid buildup in the abdomen. An abcess from a cat bite was not out of the question in our house, but I could not find one. My heart sank. The only other likely cause was cancer.
It was one of the times in my life that I was mortified at being right. He was diagnosed with Mastocytoma of the spleen and liver and the Vet at that time gave him 2-3 months. We were devastated. I knew what the diagnosis and prognosis meant. My husband was in denial because he did not know about how cancer moves so quickly in cats.
We cancelled a vacation in May to Walt Disney World for a month, because we knew if he had only 2-3 months to be here, we were NOT going to be gone and leave him for one second! We prayed and stayed with him and kept up with his insulin and feeding him well. He started to lose a little weight slowly and by June he was still thriving. He could still jump and down from the counter and furniture and he was doing really well. After a second ultra sound, we learned the cancer had not grown or spread, this was wonderful news to us. But he started to throw up after meals, so we had to put him on an anti-nauseal med and give him pepcid twice a day. Our lives wwere consumed with caring for him. We are retired so we were here 24/7 and were able to give him his meds exactly on time twice a day and his insulin exacly on time twice a day.
As the Summer went on, he grew skinnier and skinnier, but still had alot of energy and he was doing really well. We took him in every 2 weeks to have the fluid drained from his belly and he seemed to do well with that.
Then, in mid October, he started to slow down and just did not have as much energy and spark. By that time we were up to meds 3 times a day and we literally had spent the entire Summer in the house with him. I went nowhere the whole year. I am slightly disabled anyway and can't walk very long so staying home with my babyboy was something that was easy for me to do. I was with him every minute. He hung out on the computer desk with me when I was online and slept next to me and curled right in to me on the bed when he was feeling particularly sick.
By the 17th of October, we noticed he was peeing on the floor outside his box. My heart sank, that is a very bad sign, when they start peeing outside of the box AND they have cancer. He kept peeing outside of the box that day and the next and was starting to drink voracious amounts of water like he did when he first got diabetes. He had gone in the Vet 3 weeks before this with dehydration and came back fine and did not have another problem until the 17th, Wednesday.
Friday, the 19th was an awful day. He was literally drinking water, then going to the office and peeing immediately. I knew in my heart, then he was in kidney failure. The water was bypassing his kidneys altogether and going right through him. He never seemed to be in any pain though, the whole time. We got him to the Vet and they drained a liter of fluid from his abdomen, gave him some sub-Q fluids and some pain meds to get him through the night. We had called the vet that was to come to our home to euthanize him here. We set it up for Saturday morning, the next day...
We awoke and it was just horrendous. I could not get hold of myself and we prepared a spot with his favorite blanket and he just did not feel good. He was very sick. I gave him pain meds and we lay down with him on the blanket and just cuddled for a while. Then I took him outside for a little walk and he loved to watch the bees and butterflies and the leaves being blown around by the wind.
The Vet arived and ran us through all the paperwork and it was time to say goodbye.
She administered the life ending dose of meds in his abdomen at 11:50AM and we lay with him until he was gone at 12:20PM.
We took him around in a basket so our other 3 cats could see him and say goodbye to their buddy. That was difficult. The other 3 were just freaked by the whole thing and for days acted so strange.
Orion's ashes came back to us on Thursday Oct 25th and we had a rough time with that. My husband finally let go and could not hold it in anymore. Orion had come home and it was not how we had wanted him to come home.
My arms ache to hold my litle kittyboy again. He would wrap his front legs around my neck and hug me.. I miss his soft, silky coat and his scent. He smelled so different than any of our other cats, he had his own special smell. I miss that. I want to hold him so bad and I know that I will have that chance again when I meet him on the Rainbow Bridge, but I am so lonely without him now. Even with the other cats here, it is not the same place without him. He was one of those special cats you get a few times in a lifetime. I have had cats all my life and I have loved them all. But, there a few who for some reason stand out as a cat you had a special bond with. Orion was this kind of cat. We have another in our house right now as well. My Tawny, whom I have been with for 15 yrs is the cat of my heart and she is a comfort to me right now.
Anyway, I wanted to share my story with those who understand. And it was God's guidance that brought me here, just as it was God who gave us the extra 6 months of life with Orion after he was initially given 2-3 months to live. He lived 6 more months and I had prayed with every fiber of my core for that extra time. God answered my prayers with a miracle and he showed me the way to this site.

I love you my little kittyboy! Orion, you are mommy's babyboy!

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