My Experience With Veterinary Care

Nel Liquorman, Health Editor / TheDogPress © August 2006 - While I think that there are many veterinarians who are really good people and who are probably doing as good a job as they can, I have a great big problem with veterinary medicine in general.

Here is my experience going back to 1990 when I got two little kitties after losing a 6 year old cat to a tumor in his intestines. I had lived in Tampa and after moving to Crystal Beach in 1986, continued to go back to the vet that I had started with.

The cats were tested and vaccinated for a variety of things. Tests revealed that one of the cats, Howie who is now 16, was Feline Leukemia positive. I was told that he would die in 6 months to 2 years and that he would take the other cat with him.

Well, I set about trying to booster his immune system. He had a variety of herpes viruses, which we had to work on. On my own, I decided to give him cod liver oil. I knew that many years ago it was given to babies before all those chemical vitamins came along.

Well, Howie got stronger and stronger. The vet kept wanting to retest him (after already having done it two times in the beginning). I simply asked, how will this help him, and can you cure him? When the answer was no, so was mine. There was no need to aggravate this kitten further. I had to keep returning to the vet to get treatment for viruses - eyes and nose and lungs. Well, eventually, the vet noticed how well Howie was doing and asked me what I was doing. When I told him about the cod liver oil, he said, "I cannot tell you to do that, but I am certainly not going to tell you to stop". I used this vet until 2002, and he just kept saying, "he looks good, keep on doing whatever you are doing.

However, in 2000, this same vet began to have pets showing up with tumors at the site of the vaccination spot for the routine vaccines that he was giving. He said that I should let him use the new, safer oral vaccine. Even though it was expensive, I agreed, because I trusted his judgment. That year both cats seem to feel okay after the oral vaccine. In 2001, they got the oral one again. This time my big cat Herbie became immediately lifeless. The vet and we did everything we could to help that cat. He hung on to life from Oct. 1 to Feb. 27, 2002. He went from 26 pounds to 14 and was just a skeleton when he died.

I took him to another vet a mile from home when he became critically ill and it scared me. This vet said that the oral vaccine did not contain some of the safeguards that were in the injectable one. He would not say it was the vaccine - but we both knew. Herbie died shortly after. I started using this new vet because he was close by and I thought a change was due. Also, he had done his own research on the vaccine instead of taking a drug salespersons word on the vaccine. I admired that.

The original vet (Tampa) had started my other cat Howie on methimazole for hyperthyroidism about a year before we changed vets. The new vet said that we should continue this, but he did not write a prescription to take to the drugstore, like the original vet. He sold me the drug directly. Well over the next 4 years, Howie's health began to decrease. For the first year, I thought it was because he had also gotten the oral vaccine, but he slowly declined. He had to have three dental surgeries, so I blamed some of his decline on this. Over the last year and a half, he kept getting into gastric distress, went to the vet, got a shot, recovered for a few months, then another round. I took him to the vet in January, and he was less than 7 pounds, but the vet said that he was fine, just thin. I am sorry, but thin my Aunt Fanny!

Finally, this past March, when he became sick again, I decided to fix him myself. I did as much research as I could, talked to everybody I could find who had a similar problem with a pet. I put him on a senior cat vitamin preparation (gel) that seemed to help, but he still kept getting into gastric distress (constipation and upchucking). It was not until I picked up a refill of his prescription for methimozole at the vets office at the end of April, that I began to think about this drug. Five days later and much research, I stopped giving this medication to my cat. It took several weeks before I could say for certain that he was getting better. But, he was indeed getting better. It has been 2 and 1/2 months, and he is so much better, even finally gaining weight.

I talked to a woman who had a cat that had gone through the same thing as Howie, and whose cat was saved by a holistic vet. She said that the drug (methimozole) was drying up my cat's liver. The truth is it was drying up Howie's entire body. He soon was standing taller.

I also talked to a woman whose dog was put down after having the same experience with methimozole and gastric distress and cortisone shots to remedy it.

I am a reasonably intelligent person. Since the original prescription came from the drugstore, this no doubt it is a drug used for hyperthyroidism in the human population. All drugs have side effects in the human population. If you give the drug that you would give to a person (while warning them of the side effects) to a 14 pound cat, don't you think that there could be problems?? I was never told to look for a problem.

Now do you wonder how I feel about veterinarian medicine, or have I erased all doubt?

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