Hey All,
Should have known that the moment I post about vet schools being cheaper,
someone would know of one that wasn't. Thanks Cray! LOL!!
I realized the moment I wrote that there would be exceptions. I was
speaking from personal experience in Houston. I regularly took animals to
Texas A&M, dogs, cats, and horses. Was involved in experimental medicines,
nuclear meds, and got wonderful care there. Houston vets are expensive, and
A&M was around one third the cost. I went for the facilities on difficult
cases I had. In Texas you *must* be refered by a private vet to even make
an appointment. And my vet was always happy to do this. And I will say, I
would have trusted that man to preform surgery on me, with a book of anatomy
by his side.
Veterinarians are wonderful folks. It is an extremely competitive field.
My former vet's wife was amazed when she learned her ob/gyn was a people doc
because his grades weren't good enough for veterinarian school! Gives you
lots of confidence. There are only 27 vet schools in the U.S. There are
usually 2 or 3 medical schools in each state.
And if you have a good vet, they won't mind you going for a second opinion.
If they do, then get another vet. Also, ask the vet for payment
arrangements. Many vets will carry a balance, for a small interest fee. Or
they will also take post dated checks, breaking up your payments that way.
A good vet will try and work with you, to help the animal. But at the same
time, don't take advantage of this either! They don't make the money you
may think and have lots of debts from becoming a vet. And if they have
their own practice, they have a huge investment in facilities.
A little more on hormones. Yes, I am being picky I admit. But this is very
important to understand. I was diagnosed and treated for an auto-immune
disease known as Grave's Disease. It is when your thyroid goes nuts and
produces too much thryroid hormone. At the worse, I could not even shut my
eyes for the tremors. You can treat it 3 ways, surgical removal of thyroid,
chemical destruction of thyroid (radio-active iodine) and thyroid
suppression hormones. The latter is the least effective and hardest to
control. And yes, hyper-thyroidism occurs in animals, I had a cat treated
for the exact same thing at A&M.
From everything I have read, it does seem that trying to supress hormones is
harder than removing what is producing them and then using replacement
therapies. I guess that is why I would lean towards surgical removal of
adrenal glands, IF THERE ARE NO OTHER RISK FACTORS INVOLVED. I know how I
felt with too much thyroid hormone. It isn't pleasant. And although many
would scoff at the idea that hormones, of any kind, can affect behavior, I
am sure most women understand the absolute truth of that statement. And
that goes for all mammals, or would anyone like to say it doesn't, in a
public forum?
Supression therapies can take a long time to work, if they work at all. And
they tend to require more and more meds, ultimately reaching a point of not
working at all. But in some cases, this is really the only viable choice.
Chemo and nuclear meds are expensive and hard to find. A&M was the only
place you could get nuclear when I treated my cat. It was over an hour one
way to get there and I couldn't visit the cat for 2 or 3 weeks, due to OSHA
regs. Chemo was at least that far, and would require many trips, which
isn't pratical for many people. And in my personal experience, it just flat
isn't worth it, for many reasons.
Do I have a degree? Nope. I am a very well educated layman when it comes
to medicine, some animals and people included. And I have a feeling that
the readers of this forum are like me. If they don't know, they will search
out answers and opinions. Everytime I have to deal with a disease in an
animal that I haven't dealt with before, I research. I have even managed,
on occassion, to come up with new papers on things that the vets hadn't run
across yet.
If you have a good, working relationship with your vet and think you can
handle it, ask to observe surgeries and proceedures. Some don't mind. I
have sat in through a lot of surgeries, helped out with x-rays (I can read
them pretty well too), learned to administer shots, watched fecals and even
sat through some necropsies. I wished I had enough knowledge to preform
some of these things myself, such as Bob Church does, but I also know my
limits. But there is *nothing* limiting me educating myself, and that is
the most important thing you can give your animals.
As my current vet says, I am the kind of owner she wants. Why? Because I
will tell her when I have an animal that may bite, I acknowledge when I
don't do what I should, I pay attention to the symptoms and I ask a lot of
questions. And she is the kind of vet I want, because when she doesn't know
something, she tells me. Then we both research. If your vet won't tell you
they don't know, I would be careful. There is nothing wrong with a lack of
knowledge, but not admitting that is stupidity.
Also, I would heartily recommend a good book to read for many basic yet
comprehensive explantions of biology. _Human Biology_ by Daniel D. Chiras,
West Publishing Co. It was my text for my human biology class this
semester. Yes, it only deals with humans, but a lot of the mechanisms are
applicable to all animals. And I think if you can reference something to
yourself, it is easier to reference it to your pets. It is for me anyway.
And this book gives a good overview of differents environmental factors that
upset the homeostatis in humans, such as light, diet, chemicals, etc.
What I love about this forum is the knowledge contained here. I feel it is
important for all involved to give their opinions and experiences. For what
is posted, there is very little misinformation here. But sometimes, I don't
think it gets detailed enough either. And I can understand that, it is an
effort to phrase things so that everyone can understand. But sometimes you
just have to get into the fine points, to make things a little clearer.
Margaret Marie
[Posted in FML issue 2154]
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