March 11, 2013

2 of 65

WAITING FOR THE VET

Yesterday I started talking about life and interactions with other people.  Another important consideration is one’s interactions with animals.  I have had dogs around me for almost all my life, cats for many years and, especially while my daughter Suzanne was young, we had gerbils, hamsters, fish, birds, guinea pigs, a rabbit and a chinchilla.  Like most of us, I long believed that veterinarians could be trusted with my pets’ health at least as much as physicians could be trusted with my own.  As time has passed, I have become a bit more leery of both categories of doctor and I have recently decided to find a new vet as the primary care provider for our dog, Darcy.  A few examples of past interactions with the veterinary profession – some positive and some negative – may show why I took that step.

When I was in elementary school, my family lived in a rural area.  Everyone around us had dogs, but no one had fences.  The dogs were pretty much free to wander as they wished.  Our dog at that time was named Friday (since we got him on a Good Friday).  Though he would chase chickens, I don’t think he ever caused anyone much trouble; but he came home one day badly injured.  He had been shot.  I can only guess that he had wandered onto someone else’s property and caused a disturbance with chickens or some other livestock.  My parents took him to the vet and he had to remain hospitalized for several days.  When he came home, we were told that the wound needed to be soaked daily and certain medications applied.  The vet was not sure we would be able to care for him because at his office it had taken three adults to hold Friday down and do the treatment.  At our house, my younger brother and I were able to handle it with one hand each, while reading comic books with the other hand.  I think the treatment that was given turned out to be lifesaving, but the real healing came when our dog could be with people he knew and trusted.

Years later, in 1974, I had a puppy that was ¾ Siberian Husky and ¼ coyote.  Her name was Inua – an Inuit word for the spirit or soul of an animal.  From a very early age she had difficulty swallowing her food.  I took her to the vet who had previously treated her mother and her grandmother and he diagnosed a congenital condition known as achalasia.  There is a muscle at the top of the esophagus that regulates the passage of food from the mouth into the esophagus.  Achalasia occurs when that muscle cannot relax properly and it prevents the movement of food from the mouth into the esophagus and the stomach.  Essentially, the puppy could not eat and there was a chance she could starve to death.  The only treatment is surgery to sever that muscle so that food may be swallowed.  After the surgery, the dog is able to lead a normal life.  Inua was barely six months old when I took her to the vet’s office for the procedure.  That was the last time I saw her.  She died on the operating table.  I really don’t know what happened.  I learned the hard way that vets do make mistakes.

The next dogs in my life were Tasha and Suzy.  Tasha was Inua’s half-sister.  Suzy was a stray I took home after I found her running in the street near my office.  I tried to find her owner, but was unsuccessful; so she stayed with me and later my family for the next 14 years.  After about 13 years, she began having health problems.  I took her to our usual vet and he did not know what was wrong, so he suggested we have her seen by the doctors at the Colorado State University School of Veterinary Medicine.  The doctor we saw there told us they would need to do exploratory surgery.  He contacted me while she was under anesthesia and informed me that they had found advanced stage liver cancer, which is rare in dogs.  He told me they could remove the diseased parts of the liver, but that she would probably not survive for more than three months; and suggested that perhaps we might not want to let her wake up from the surgery.  My position was that we were doing the surgery to save her life, not to end it, and told him to proceed.  Suzy came out of the hospital seeming to be in better health.  The cancer did eventually take her life, but it was nearly a year later.  I believe that she enjoyed most of that year.

More recently, we took our cat, Mimi, to a vet who came highly recommended to have her teeth cleaned – a procedure that requires anesthesia.  Later that day, the vet called and said that after Mimi was anesthetized, it was determined that four of her teeth needed to be removed.  My feeling was that if a diagnosis like that was made for a person, a second opinion would certainly be in order.  The vet, though, said that since the poor kitty was under the anesthesia, deciding whether to pull the teeth had really become a matter of life or death.  We told her to go ahead, and Mimi came through the procedure just fine.  Maybe the teeth did need to come out.  Still, I felt that we were forced into the decision while our cat’s life was essentially held for ransom (that being the increased fee for the vet).  I would never take another animal to be treated by that veterinarian’s office.

Our dog Darcy is a “rescue puppy” that we adopted when she was three months old.  A veterinary clinic associated with the pet store where we met Darcy offered a free first visit for new puppies, so we took her there.  They also offered a puppy care plan that would include the first year of puppy check-ups and any treatment she needed for that year, including spaying.  Any charge for medicines or vaccinations was extra, but overall the cost seemed reasonable, so I signed her up.  My first concern about this clinic occurred on our very first visit.  Although we were shown to the exam room promptly, it was another 45 minutes before the vet actually came in.  As a 3-month old, Darcy was not patient, so I sang a little song to calm her down:

Waiting for the vet/ He’s coming soon I bet/ But he’s not here yet/How much more boring can it get/Than waiting for the vet.

Each time we went back, we had to sing that song over and over.  And each time we went back, it was a different veterinarian that saw us – which to me is a lack of continuity in the care.  Also, the vets kept recommending different prescription medications for very minor problems that were observed during routine exams.  If I had followed those recommendations, each would have been an extra charge to me and extra income for the clinic.  I am not a fan of pharmaceuticals, so I did not follow most of them.  Darcy is in perfect health, as far as I can tell.

Just before it was time for Darcy to get her adult vaccinations, the clinic sent a postcard suggesting that we consider a heartworm treatment that would last for six months called ProHeart 6.  I don’t want to go into gory details here, but that medication was introduced back in the early 2000s, then taken off the market in 2004, at the insistence of the FDA, because of serious side effects – including the deaths of literally hundreds of dogs. (There is a lot of information available on the internet.  A good site for the human/canine side of the problems is http://www.thepetguardian.com/html/body_proheart6_victims.html.)

The manufacturer has since been acquired by Pfizer and the product was reintroduced in December of 2012, with extensive warnings and under the condition that it only be administered by vets who had received special training from Pfizer.  I thought that the recommendation that Darcy receive something so dangerous was irresponsible and unprofessional.  I took Darcy in for her appointment for the vaccination (not the ProHeart 6), but when I arrived I decided that she needed a vet whose philosophy is more in line with mine.  I thanked the office for the care they had given Darcy and left.  I now have an appointment to take her to a more holistically oriented veterinarian.  I hope that Darcy and I (mostly I) will feel more comfortable there.  We will see in a few days.