Here's another difference between veterinary and human medicine.
Some years back I had an old cat who had gotten sick. I took her in to the vet, who did a very gentle exam and then said, "There's a lot I can do to her but not a lot I can do for her." We agreed to try a fluid injection to see if that perked her up a bit and otherwise I'd just take her home and see how she did.
Old, sick humans tend to get Done To without anyone really asking what the purpose of the tests and treatments are.
Although, I manage my grandmother's care and when she landed in the hospital last winter with seizures, a hospitalist came to talk to me about our family's "philosophy of care." He wanted to get a sense of how aggressively to treat my grandmother's physical problems. Grammie is in her mid-90s, is in the advanced stages of Parkinson's and has dementia. I told the cat story and then said that if there were things they could do FOR my grandmother, that we wanted them, but if they'd just be doing things TO my grandmother, we would decline.
Every doctor I've talked to has seen a very clear guideline from that. It's a bright line. They may not all draw the line in the same place, but they ABSOLUTELY see that line.
But they'd never bring that up, unless the family did.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2017-07-26 05:12 pm (UTC)Some years back I had an old cat who had gotten sick. I took her in to the vet, who did a very gentle exam and then said, "There's a lot I can do to her but not a lot I can do for her." We agreed to try a fluid injection to see if that perked her up a bit and otherwise I'd just take her home and see how she did.
Old, sick humans tend to get Done To without anyone really asking what the purpose of the tests and treatments are.
Although, I manage my grandmother's care and when she landed in the hospital last winter with seizures, a hospitalist came to talk to me about our family's "philosophy of care." He wanted to get a sense of how aggressively to treat my grandmother's physical problems. Grammie is in her mid-90s, is in the advanced stages of Parkinson's and has dementia. I told the cat story and then said that if there were things they could do FOR my grandmother, that we wanted them, but if they'd just be doing things TO my grandmother, we would decline.
Every doctor I've talked to has seen a very clear guideline from that. It's a bright line. They may not all draw the line in the same place, but they ABSOLUTELY see that line.
But they'd never bring that up, unless the family did.