I remember being horrified when I first read about the liver damage possible when alcoholics take lots of Tylenol.
I was drinking a ton, and downing tons of Tylenol. I was very, very lucky. And so was my liver.
Hey. That was on “Dr G.: Medical Examiner” earlier this week. You aren’t her, are you?
Heck, I recently looked up the LD50 of sleeping pills, because I had a fantasy about the dog across the street who barks at the wind at 4am.
It’s apparently almost impossible to kill even a large dog with sleeping pills. Maybe those reports have been exaggerated.
You have to give the dog chocolate sleeping pills.
Which actually, as a total non-scientist, would be my guess as to why ODing a dog is so hard. Differences in body chemistry. No idea if that’s true.
Be careful when applying LD50 values between species. A lethal dose to one species may not be such to another, e.g. dogs and chocolate.
Hey, diggleblop. Yes, we get many many accidental deaths of painkillers, often mixed so that there will be four drugs at the same time. (Valium and any of its relatives in the benzodiazepine family, such as Xanax, potentiate the respiratory depressive effect of opiates; that is, they make it much harder to breathe deeply enough in your drug-induced sleep.) But those are not at all the same as deaths from tylenol. Those are go to sleep deaths, never wake up. They have nothing to do with liver necrosis and jaundice and vomiting and four days in hospital.
I am glad you worry about your tylenol dosage. Do you think you could ask your pain management specialist about separating the two drugs?
Do you have a pain management specialist?
With concern for you, gabriela
Have you ever seen the two of us together?
We could ask vetbridge.
I only know from humans, and only because I possess a slavishly beloved copy of Baselt’s Disposition of Toxic Drugs and Chemicals in Man. Which we call the red book. Which we adore. Quite amazing how different the different drugs are in their lethal effect - it’ll take grams of one drug to kill you, nanograms of another.
You can kill a dog with “sleeping pills” if by “sleeping pills” you mean phenobarbital, for instance. It helps if you first give an antiemetic, and then give an appropriate amount of phenobarb. If by “sleeeping pills” you mean diphenhydramine, it would be dfficult.
One nice way that I sometimes do euthanasia is to inject a pentobarbital mixture subcutaneously. The owner then takes the pet home. In thirty minutes or so the pet is sleepy. Thirty minutes after that the pet is dead. (Some owners prefer that their pet dies at home)
What nutrient is that?
Obligatory veterinary warning: even a single dose of acetaminophen can cause fatal methemaglobiemia in a cat.
But does that work on a Chocolate Labrador?
Yeah, he wanted to put me on Oxycontin and I was like, “No thanks Doc, been there done that withdrawl. No way do I want to run out of them early or something.” Not to mention Percocet and Oxycontin are just too strong for me. I know Percocet has less Tylenol at 325mg and Oxy’s have none. Just too potent. When I eat while taking those things, I crash right after.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with Cold Water Extraction. You probably know what it is, you can google it if not. It seemed to work this morning.
I take no other drugs except Toprol XL 50mg Daily for Palpitations, so I don’t have to worry about Xanax or anything else. It’s ashame that so many people overdue it with addictive drugs. I’ve tried quitting back in January and last two months. But the pain was unbearable. I have disc degeneration and two bulging discs on top of being about 100lbs overweight. Ugh…
Thank you so much for the response. I take it you are a medical examiner or mortician?
Yeah, I think I was looking up the diphenhydramine. I admit I was using the human LD50, though, which I kind of stupidly assumed would be similar for dogs.
If you don’t mind me asking, how much pentobarb would that be? I do sub-Q injections on my dogs all the time. We are facing “decision time” with a Newfoundland and I would prefer him to be at home. I was thinking about asking my vet to make a house call, but this would be a lot easier (and cheaper).
Disclaimer- I am not planning to do anything without the the advice and participation of my vet, etc, blah…
I’m glad they’re managing your pain, although like most things medical, it sounds like it helps but doesn’t completely help.
I’m a medical examiner, and sadly, I can only post before or after work. So I often won’t be able to reply to posts like this for a long time, as much as a day.
Sounds a lot like my college classmate who took arsenic - only in his case I think the kidneys went first, then the liver.
What a lousy way to die 
Well, the pentobarb solution available commercially is 392 mg/ml. The dose I administer is around 1 ml per pound of body weight. I round up big time, as this is one situation where underdosing is not cool. So, if your Newfy is 100 pounds, he would need around 100 milliliters.
If you need more info, feel free to email me.
>One nice way that I sometimes do euthanasia is to inject a pentobarbital mixture subcutaneously. The owner then takes the pet home. In thirty minutes or so…
I’d like to know more about this - how reliable is the information?
We euthanized our cat of about 17 years. He had diabetes for about the last 6 years and I injected insulin for him twice daily. To euthanize him the vet hunted around for a vein for a minute or so, which the cat didn’t like. He got very upset by even visiting the vet, like many. So he went out on an unhappy note. It would have been way, way better if I could have done him at home subcutaneously, and it would still have been a big improvement to use this method at the vet and then take him home (it’d be asking a lot of a vet, I think, to equip you with a lethal syringe and let you trot off home).
Whoops - I just reread your post - if this is you doing the euthanasia, I guess the information is pretty reliable. Anyplace special I can learn more?