To start with I don’t judge anyone who spends 50 grand to buy two more weeks with their beloved rat, it is their money and no one gets to say how they should blow it. Hell me and my wife got a ton of shit from her family for buying surgery at a private hospital to save her life, they saw us as silly and sentimental. So I understand this whole thing is a spectrum, I mean life.
And I have known someone online who spent 16 grand to remove rocks from their dog’s intestines multiple times.:rolleyes:(wondered why they didn’t keep the damn thing inside).
But I do wonder who is driving this, vets or owners. I know my sis felt exploited by a vet who talked her into 3 grand in tests on a kitten that she was then talked into putting down, just because it had some mild tremors that didn’t interfere with feeding or anything.
Who knows, perhaps veterinary use of these new technologies could potentially lead to discoveries that might end up being helpful in treating humans with cancer and other such conditions.
Myself, I would weigh the pet’s expected lifespan with and without treatment, how much the animal seemed to be enjoying life, how much the extra money would affect my quality of life, etc. to decide how far to go with things. I don’t think I would pursue a bone marrow transplant in an elderly dog like that one person did, but I probably would pursue things like palliative radiation/chemotherapy.
Honestly, I like the average dog more than I like the average human, so I can see why for some people it makes sense. For many people, a dog is not just a dog. It’s their best friend. I can see why it would be hard to say goodbye to your best friend when you have an option to try to save them.
I hope you mean that they thought that your wife should just have the surgery at a public hospital and not that they thought that any surgery to save your wife’s life was “silly and sentimental”. :dubious:
Its difficult to describe, essentially they believe that the public health system which is…substandard…being kind there is the end of it. Private doctors and surgery are for rich fools who need to be coddled, and will in the end provide no better result, if you use public care and die well that is that and there is no use thinking about what ifs. It is a sort of fatalism that is probably partially mental defense.
First thing my wife’s brother said to me was “you could have bought a car you know!”:smack:
They sound like my girlfriend’s family. Her mother had a bad cataract in one eye and got into a serious car accident because of it, but they couldn’t find the money for her operation for at least a year. When their dog needed an operation, though, they shelled out for it.
In general I think it’s become more commonplace for people to spend a bunch of money on their pets - operations, clothes, food, all kinds of things. I’m not sure what drives that either.
Most people don’t go into big debt for vet bills. The ones who pay a lot can afford it. Vets know that not everybody can afford expensive bills. Also there are charities that can help pay for vet bills.
I used to think people who went above and beyond to save their pets were complete morons.
Then, this January, I got a puppy … and fell in love. More importantly, he’s PandaKid’s dog and she’s in love with him too.
If he got sick or injured, I’d spend whatever I could afford to help him … which isn’t much, admittedly, but if I could spare the cash, I’d do it, especially if it was something almost guaranteed to fix the problem.
It’s all about proportion. 10k for doggy chemo would be impossible for me – for some rich bastards* 10k is chump change. So be it.
I dunno. I’m not really sure what I think of this overall. But a part of me does feel like, if you take responsibility for an animal, then you’ve got a responsibility to do everything you can to give it a long, healthy, happy life. Obviously ‘everything you can’ is different depending on how much money and how many other responsibilities you’ve got - but if you’re Bill Gates and a ten-grand operation will give your beloved Snookums an extra five years of healthy life, part of me feels like you’ve got a reponsibility to do it. It’s not even about ‘But I’d miss Snookums so much!’ - it’s about ‘I took this animal on, so I need to do right by it as far as possible.’
Owners are driving it, but because of the sort of logic you display here, there’s a tendency to put it all at the vets’ doorsteps. I mean, people bring their sick/injured/abnormal animals to the vet for a reason, and that reason is to figure out what’s going on and fix the problem. If a test or treatment that can improve the animal’s outcome is available, not telling the owner about that option is a violation of professional ethics and arguably malpractice. Even if you’re 99.9% sure the owner will decline because of cost or inconvenience or risk, you still have to tell them that it’s an option, the same way an MD has to tell you about all the options available to you and make recommendations about their preferred plan. What you as the patient or owner choose to do with that information is your own business.
But as soon as the price starts going up, people start downplaying whatever brought them into the office in the first place and acting like they were just walking down the street minding their own business and the vet swooped down on them like a vulture and started trying to foist all this expensive, unnecessary, unwanted stuff on them against their will. Like these tremors in your sister’s kitten–if your sister initially thought these were “just” tremors that weren’t interfering with anything, she wouldn’t have taken the creature to the vet. But since the vet recommended a bunch of tests to try and figure out what was causing the tremors, and then the results were apparently bad enough to recommend euthanasia, now they’re “just” tremors that don’t interfere with anything.
Obviously she took the cat to the vet, I call them tremors because that is what they were as all those expensive tests were inconclusive. She was somewhat emotionally upset and said she felt exploited, thats how she described it.
It’s why I think “doing all you can to save a life” is not a rational position. I come from Britain, home of the infamous ‘death panels’ who allocate (human medical) treatment on net benefit not vain hope. You won’t give a terminally sick dog years of healthy happy life through an expensive opperation, you’ll give them months more of pain.
That being said, the high cash cost makes it appear more wasteful than it is. What you are effectively wasting is the potential other use of a trained surgeon’s time, not something that is innately critical to society as a whole.
I sort of get it. As long as you have the money, might as well treat your pets well.
What I don’t get, and what pisses me off terribly, is that some of these people will tell you you are a horrible person if you don’t do the same. And not only that, but that if you don’t intend to do it, and you don’t have the funds saved up for it before you get a pet, you shouldn’t own one.
I second what CrazyCatLady said. Veterinarians have to give the owners first the best, up to date standard protocol and practice. After mentioning those options, if that treatment is declined by the owner (for whatever reason), then other options may become possible. They may not be the best options, may not give the best information, or be the golden standard treatment, but if a diagnostic test, may shed some information, or if a treatment, may offer some chance of cure/palliation. It is always up to the owner to accept or decline the treatment.
My cat’s lymphoma protocol was not cheap, but it got her a really good last 13-15 months of high quality life. She was very tolerant of the frequent vet visits, testing and was not obviously impaired by her chemo.
The expense was worth it despite the stress because the treatment balanced treatment against risk and cost. The hard part was in stopping the treatment when the benefit no longer balanced - a good vet will help you stop treatment when it is time. My cat’s team was just as damaged as I was at the end.
Basically as she told it to me she wishes she had thought it over, and just waited to see if the cat worsened. She felt like the vet used salesman charisma basically, she was prepared to be presented with options like a car mechanic but instead it was very urgent and emotionally charged. She wasn’t scammed or mislead but for whatever reason did not say no, and later regretted it. Like being talked into a luxury car you later regret I suppose.
Veterinarians don’t typically try to talk pet owners into euthanasia unless there is a reason. I would imagine there is some part of the story you aren’t getting.
I would not have any reservation about spending huge amounts of money on veterinary care, assuming that it would result in many more years of health and happiness.
But if the outcome is uncertain, I don’t see the point in spending tens of thousands of dollars just to make a poor animal suffer for an extra year before finally dying. I think people who do that to animals are being very selfish.
A former boss had a lab who got hurt (I don’t remember the details) and the first vet’s visit ran about $2K. He really liked his dog, so he had the dog treated. Then one followup led to another and to another and in the end, he spent close to $16K. He told me if he’d known up front it was going to be that much, he’d have put the dog down. But with the costs building up gradually, he felt like “Well, I’ve spent this much, so I may as well spend that much more…”
He was a single man who lived alone, so the dog was pretty much all he had. Still, he remarked that he really needed a new truck but now it was being put off for another year.
As for me, I will never let an animal suffer, nor will I compromise my financial situation for any critter. Some think I’m heartless - so be it. The value I put on a pet’s life is much lower than my family’s financial security.
Our vet bills have added up over the years, but the most we ever spent was on surgery to repair our young Labrador retriever’s congenital knee problem. It gave us another decade or so with her and she had an active, happy life.
I’m against judging what anyone else spends if they can afford it. The Times story did raise questions for me, notably about the 10-year-old chow that wound up getting a bone marrow transplant for lymphoma and then dying less than a year later from another cancer. My main concern is what quality of life the dog has and whether you’re doing it any favors by trying to prolong life a little towards the end.
