I think you are confusing “witholding treatment” with “not giving me the drug I wanted”. You mentioned in the OP that your dog was on phenobarbital.
It’s good that you recognize that giving valium to a drug-seeker is providing drugs outside the scope of real need.
I think your best choice of action would be to make a complaint to the state licensing board. My father was a small animal vet for more than forty years, and he even headed up the licensing board in his state for some time. It’s not just a rubber stamp - they do actually revoke or suspend licenses for geniune violations.
You had better hope the board doesn’t find out about the time you handed out valium to your friends because you thought they needed it. Better stick to the “she wouldn’t prescribe a Schedule IV controlled substance when I thought she should” and see where that gets you.
Better do six months of research in your local library and then come to the realization that you are better at veterinary medicine than people who do it for a living. That turned out so well for you with the law.
And before you were waving your sheaf of cites at her, you might have had pause to read this sentence you quoted:
[QUOTE=Stoid]
My research has revealed what I think is at least partly her reason for withholding the meds; paperwork. Last summer there were changes in the laws that made it extra obnoxious to dispense controlled substances.
[/QUOTE]
And I suppose it wouldn’t cross your mind to make any connection between the drug regulations being tightened and people doing things like, oh, I don’t know, illegally supplying animal prescription valium to their friends, would it?
I don’t really want to add to the pile-on, because all y’all do such a great job of that without me. But I do have some experience to share and I can empathize enough with the OP’s situation that I can say what I would do in her case.
I had a Boston terrier who developed a seizure disorder in her old age. She did not have cluster seizures and at first, the seizures were few and far between. My vet chalked them up to syncope and I just kept an eye on her.
In the meantime, I did much Googling and found that Valium is certainly the most accepted protocol, especially with clusters and status e. seizures. (I also dated a guy who’d had brain surgery and was instructed to give him a Valium if he had one, once he came out of it.) Valium can stop a seizure, which would, obviously, save the dog.
Eventually, my dog starting seizing more frequently and when there were two seizures in one week, THEN my vet finally wrote a script for Valium suppositories. (Which. I would never use because ew.) That is when we started the phenobarb – my vet was hesitant to start her on it because it could blow out her kidneys and she was already on some other meds that stressed her kidneys. Within a few days, she was having breakthrough seizures despite the meds and it became clear that the cocktail of meds had forced kidney failure and I said goodbye to my sweet little smooshy face.
Had I been in your situation, the minute the vet refused the Valium (“But what if there’s a status emergency?”), I would be on Angie’s List looking for another vet. I would probably just use the emergency vet or ANYONE I could get to see her. I would not have wasted time arguing with the vet about it.
As for what to do now, I would switch vets once your bill is paid off. AFTER you’ve paid the whole bill, you might want to call or write her a letter explaining that you believe she withheld treatment inappropriately and that you believe your dog would still be alive if you’d had access to Valium to interrupt the status cycle. Personally, I’d talk to her. I’ve Monday-morning-quarterbacked other dead pets’ cases with my vet in order to understand my own decisionmaking process and to make better decisions next time. In the case of my Boston, I think I waited about a week too long. With the cat who had a tumor in his bladder – I timed that euthanasia just about right, maybe a day or two too long. It’s hard to draw the line between your pet’s suffering and you’re wanting them with you but eventually you have to look at it from the pet’s quality of life perspective.
And having a seizure dog with no Valium on hand to stuff up its butt is no way to live for either of you. My $0.02. Keep the change.
It was several lines, actually, making up a good portion of the last block:
No, she did not decide on a course of treatment that was best at all. She had no medical objection to my having liquid valium available for my dog. She just wasn’t going to be the one that provided it.
And yes, we know I’m a menace to society, the insane and scary way I show up at suicides with my dead dog’s tranquilizers once in my life, but that is not “a public health concern”. Rabies is a public health concern. And she has no knowledge of that single day in my life that happened eight years ago. She has absolutely zero information of any kind (because none exists) that would have led her to the conviction that I am any kind of menace.
But even if I were a raging drug addict, the correct response is not to simply refuse to provide me with the valium and leave it at that, because my being a drug addict doesn’t preclude the fact that my dog has cluster seizures and I need it for her. And the fact of my dog’s epilepsy had been confirmed by my visit to the emergency vet who saw my dog in a postictal state and provided valium. She knew that.
My dog had cluster seizures. No fraud, no deceit, no subterfuge, no concealment of material facts. And even if there were… it would be MY crime, not HERS. She’s not my mommy.
Liquid valium is part of the usual course of professional practice, and it was very much needed for a very legitimate purpose.
So even if she had suspicions about how I might use the valium, the whole thing was legally legit on both ends.
If she couldn’t get past her discomfort, she should have referred me.
When I asked her what the hell I was supposed to do when Zusje had clusters in the middle of the night, and she replied, stumblingly, because it was patently untrue bullshit, that the phenobarbital should control her seizures. Patently untrue because a successful treatment of epilepsy in both dogs and people (my sister had it - I’ve been at this rodeo way too much… two dogs, one sister… fuck this…) is most often a reduction in frequency of seizures, not their elimination. And even if that were a legitimate expectation, that fantasy status had clearly not been reached, not by miles, so how the fuck was that any kind of answer to what am I supposed to do when Zusje’s having cluster seizures in the meantime? It wasn’t.
Well, I didn’t do that. I never got the chance, because my dog died.
No, you guys are being ridiculous. But even it did, who cares? She has a DEA license, she can prescribe, dispense and administer controlled substances on every schedule. My dog had a legitimate need. It had been confirmed by a vet. It is the correct and standard treatment. She coughed up the valium without a peep when Zusje was actively dying. If I gave her too many willies, she should have referred me and my sick dog who desperately needed those drugs to another vet. She was unprofessional, irresponsible and unethical. As a result, my dog is dead.
Let’s imagine a conversation, shall we, between a vet and a policeman?
So, what can I do for you, Sergeant?
Not really an official call, ma’am, just a bit of community policing. A word to the wise, as it were.
Go on…
Well, a couple of my guys were out last week at a suicide, and this woman shows up outside, probably a friend of the deceased, and when she got out of the car a bunch of syringes spilt out of her bag onto the footpath.
Syringes?
Yeah, and Lou recognised them as animal valium. His wife had a miniature schnauzer, used to have fits, and he said their vet prescribed the same syringes, that’s how he knew.
So what was this friend doing with them? That stuff’s pretty tightly controlled, I can lose my license for dispensing it willy-nilly, especially if I think people are taking it themselves.
Yeah, that was kind of the point of this call, ma’am. Lou figured this friend had brought the stuff because her friends were upset after the death. Which he figured was a bad idea, but what the hell, he didn’t want to give them any more grief. But when he mentioned it in his report, that this woman was probably giving away animal valium her friends, my boss got pretty upset. We have enough of a drug problem without this stuff ending up in the hands of kids.
And you’re suggesting I gave the valium to this woman? Because that’s pretty serious, I could lose my license if I did and the board found out.
No, not all, ma’am, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an accusation. The boss just asked us to give all the vets in the area a bit of a heads up that some people are giving the drugs they’re being prescribed to their friends, and who knows what those freinds are doing with it? they might take it, they might sell it. Anyway, you just might want to be extra-vigilant if you think someone is drug-seeking, or even being a bit careless with their scripts.
Yeah, we get them sometimes, insist they know better than their vet and that we’re just there to give them what they want. Thanks, Sergeant, I’ll be careful. Like you say, a word to the wise.
So, in the future, if you don’t like what a vet is doing, don’t wait for them to tell you to take a hike, just go somewhere else.
I don’t think it’s fair for you to sit here and question why she wouldn’t tell you to go to another vet when, in her mind, she was doing the right thing. I’ve never had a vet (or regular doctor) say ‘not happy with this script? Here’s a referral, I’ll have your file transferred over’.
You weren’t happy with the care, you asked for a different type of care, you were refused. At that point, it’s on you to find someone else to get care from.
Honestly, if you just called another vet, made an appointment, had the paperwork transferred over and explained the situation (with the dog, not the problems with the other vet), they probably would have written you the script.
If you go to a doctor with a cough and they tell you to take some Tylenol and every week you go back and it’s getting worse and worse and worse and they just keep telling you to take Tylenol, at some point you’re going to go to another doctor. Take it up with someone later, but don’t die of cancer or pneumonia or break a rib because this doctor is a nutcase, even if you like him most of the time.
Also, regarding this
I misread it. I read it as you saying that if she felt you were a druggie she had an ethical responsibility to refer YOU to someone. That is, put you in rehab and board the dog…or something like that. I simply parsed it incorrectly.
Jesus H. Christ. Is this the thread where you self-represented as a lawyer come back to life?
What in the world is wrong in your brain that you continue to believe that you know better than anyone else who has trained, studied, and practiced in professions that you claim to know better?
I’m waiting for the one where your OP is how you know so much more than the electrician, or the plumber.
Do you take any, even a teeny-tiny percentage, responsibility whatsoever in how this situation unfolded? You wanted so badly to be RIGHT, dammit, and to get that vet to do what YOU KNEW WAS RIGHT, dammit, that instead of packing up your constantly seizing dog and going to a different vet, you just kept on keeping on for most of a year because… why? Because you’re poor, so despite the fact that you had multiple visits to the emergency vet you couldn’t possibly afford to find a different ‘regular’ vet (or take two minutes to ask the emergency vet to recommend someone)? Because you’re significantly obese with horrible mobility problems so you can’t possibly ask a friend to drive you slightly outside your travel range? Because you live in an area with absolutely no animal shelters or low-cost clinics that you could pick up a phone and call to find out if there are low-cost traveling vets, or a free/low-cost transportation/treatment program, or something similar? Any of these? All of these?
Or just because you wanted TO BE RIGHT, at the cost of your dog’s life?
I’ve seen this objection a couple of times in this thread, and it puzzles me, because there’s no issue of competing knowledge. The vet didn’t tell the OP that she was wrong or that a different treatment was indicated.
Stoid, Stoid, Stoid. By your own recent admission you’re quite happy paying random perverts for gardening work with your own benzos:
[QUOTE=Stoid]
I try to arrange a barter with him for some work, that became weirdly awkward, he was supposed to finish fixing the gate he’d worked on, never showed. Contacted me randomly over the next few months to borrow $2 for laundry, $1.50 for the bus, a couple of Xanax cuz his scrip ran out. All fine.
I know, I know, she only did it once, no one but those two ever knew about it, it was her crime, not the doctor’s…doesn’t matter. It’s exactly that type of stuff that makes it harder for doctors to dispense drugs. Each time a person gets busted with pharmaceuticals that they don’t have a script for it gets that much harder for some that needs them to get them.
So, first you were going to give valium to a friend. Then you gave xanax to another guy and now you’re surprised that doctors can’t or don’t want to write scripts for it? Maybe if you stopped handing it out willy nilly people that need it could get it without the doctor having to deal with the paperwork.
Doesn’t matter that you, specifically, didn’t get busted for it, but what you’re doing is why the red tape is in place. OTOH, maybe you did get busted and just didn’t know it. Maybe a cop at the scene of the suicide did somehow track you back to your vet (it’s a small world). Maybe the guy you gave the xanax to got caught with it and your name is on a list somewhere. Who knows, but when you contribute to the problem you can’t really complain about it.
