Death Days

Some days are just bad days. Yesterday was one of them.

When I started work at 10 o’clock I walked in to be told by one of the other vets “I’ve already euthanised two things today. You’re on death-duty for the rest of the day.”  I shrugged it off, since we don’t really have duties, and I had performed a very emotional euthanasia the night before, which involved keeping the dog alive and pain free long enough for the whole family to visit and say goodbye.

Euthanasia is a large part of the veterinary profession. In human medicine the goal is to make the patient live at all costs. We have the option of letting the patient live only as long as it doesn’t suffer, and then ending their story without pain.

First consult of the day was another dog I couldn’t fix- he needed surgery, but with his many health problems the surgery was likley to kill him. Owner, full of tears, elected to take him home to say goodbye to the family and be put to sleep tomorrow. Even when the animal isn’t put to sleep then and there, it’s still an extremely emotionally charged situation.

Shortly afterwards I was told that my hospital patient, a cat who had been hit by a car but on the road to recovery was probably going to be put to sleep as the owners didn’t have time to nurse him. And just after he had just started to eat on his own!

Sometimes people secretly tell you that they want to put their dog down, they just want to know if it’s ok. They come across as very indecisive and if you mention words like ’suffering’ or ‘quality of life’ they pounce on these words and don’t let go.  Some people have made up their minds, some want permission to not feel guilty about putting their pet to sleep.

Which was the situation with my next patient- he was old, with chronic disease that was only going to get worse. The question was really a matter of “now or later” rather than “do we put him to sleep”. As the family was going away over Easter, we elected to do it then, with a little coaxing from me, because nobody wants an old dog to crash, rush to the emergency vet and die while the family is on holiday, especially if they’re going to a place 30minutes drive from the nearest vet.That was 3 very emotional euthanasias, with another one pending, in less than 20 hours. It’s hard to do.

Which is why I started seriously discussing with my workmates what to do about the hit-by-car cat with the owners that were about to give up on him. He’s stable, but not perfect, but bright and affectionate. Most importantly he doesn’t appear to be in any pain. They just weren’t going to be able to nurse him at home, with everything else that was happening in their lives, and I just wasn’t going to be able to euthanise him after he’d come so far and was doing so well.

Meet my new cat. This one, he lives.