Honest thoughts on withholding treatment

[Dface]

So this isn’t rabbit related..this is more of an animal lover moral question that I’d like opinions on. And by opinions I mean honest ones!

 I am part of another forum for hedgies, but like their little friends, they can be very prickly about topics like this..

Anyway
I posted about my female a little while ago who I still have, she’s four (which is old for hedgehogs- they live from 2.5 up to 5 years depending on breeding-some make it to nine but that’s very rare)
She’s had blood in her urine which we treated as a possible urinary tract infection, and it cleared, then 2 months later it came back but more severe. We tried antibiotics again and no joy.

 The folks on the hedgehog forum said to preform a sterile dip(which for those of you who dont know is where they stick a needle through the abdomen directly into the bladder to draw out urine to test it) 
Followed by MRI and xrays to check for ovarian cancer(leading cause of death in female hedgehogs)

My vet has declined to do any of these things. 

He has told me animals have to die some time. And to preform this would be torture to her, along with the fact she is overweight and would likely not survive the anesthetic required for these procedures.

There is another exotic vet I could go to but it’s 3 hours away and she gets pretty badly car sick.

SO my thing is she’s happy right now. Genuinely happy and content, loving her food, loving running round on her wheel at night, basically in flying form-seeing as the rabbits are with me and not at home where she is, she’s been given their space to romp about in so she has double her normal play area and an extended sleeping area!

I don’t want to torture her. My vet suggests leave her to her own devices until she shows symptoms of not being well, at which point we can make a decision to move her on to pain medication or to have her put to sleep.

I honestly think I agree with my vet, but i would like to hear some of your (honest) thoughts on this. Ive already been told that I am being negligent in my duty to care for her as an owner(but I cant tell whether that person was taking into account that my hedgehogs lifespan will probably not be increased by doing this)

Sorry it’s so long!!

[jerseygirl]

I’d be inclined to follow your vets advice with this also, given her age.

Is it really withholding treatment? The sample/mri/xray is all just diagnostic work. Also, what would the sterile dip be able to reveal?

Are hedgies prone to bladder stones?

Sending some {{{vibes}}} for your girl!

[jerseygirl]

Ive already been told that I am being negligent in my duty to care for her as an owner(but I cant tell whether that person was taking into account that my hedgehogs lifespan will probably not be increased by doing this)

Yet you’ve had her assessed by your hedgie vet and he doesn’t deem her a good candidate for doing suggested procedure.. I’m not really understanding how that makes you negligent..

[Dface]

Sterile dip is to ensure its not an infection in that area and they get baldder stones, which can be seen from the test.(test composition of the urine) however they are normally formed as a result of a bacterial infection so antibiotics should have helped in clearing them the first time around.

(just before you go all out doing Xrays on a little hedgie that doesnt need them)

I think I mean that once diagnosed with something the next step is to go ahead and treat it but often the treatment is very invasive, and often long term.

Thanks for the vibes Jersey

[Dface]

Yet you’ve had her assessed by your hedgie vet and he doesn’t deem her a good candidate for doing suggested procedure.. I’m not really understanding how that makes you negligent..

I think sometimes with exotics its the knee jerk reaction of second opinion needed…like if you bring a rabbit with a bad break in it’s leg some vets will say euthanize, others will say amputate and another might actually try to treat the break.

But for this situation the vet is seeing a “full picture” of her life previous to this and what possible good it could do. If she was younger for sure I’d look into treatment. But as stands his arguments just made sense to me

[Gina.Jenny]

Last year, one of our guinea pigs had to be PTS. She was 4.5 y.o. Her sister grieved badly, and she lost a quarter of her body weight. Ten days later, she showed early tell-tale signs of a mammary tumour . A trip to the vet confirmed this, and given how much she was missing her sister, and her age, the vet and I agreed the kindest thing for her was to put her to sleep there and then, rather than drag out her life for at most a few weeks more.

You know your hedge piggy best, and if you don’t see any benefit to an invasive procedure, then I think you are doing the right thing by agreeing with your vet, rather than posters on a forum.

[Ava]

Okay, I’ll be honest about this topic. I’m usually quiet about this subject because I don’t have the popular opinion when it comes to advanced treatment/diagnosis, etc.

Mainly because I try to think of the animals feelings first. Animals don’t fear death. They fear pain. Sometimes they anticipate they will be in pain, so they become stressed and fearful, or even give up on living. As a human, I could live with going through surgeries, dealing with pain, etc.. because I know life is worth living, I know pain of surgeries or treatment will be temporary or lessened later, and can make decisions based on future outcome. When it comes to our loved pets, we may realize/know/hope that whatever pain of treatment we put them through will be worth it in the end (and most of the time it is! don’t get me wrong here, I’m mainly talking of end of life/poor quality of life care/unknown if treatment will work, etc), but the animal doesn’t know this. All it knows is its in pain and the vet is increasing the pain, which causes stress and probably complications. So I make these decisions based on what an animal might consider quality of life. Not just “I love my pet and don’t want them to die!” It’s heartbreaking, but I have to put my feelings aside when I make these kinds of decisions for my pets.

There was an incident several years ago that cemented this thinking in my brain. I had a dog that I had to rush to the vet due to vomiting blood and lethargy. I was thinking he was dying all the way to the vet and we would have to euthanize him, and mentally prepared myself for that outcome. The vet ran some tests and it turned out his kidneys were failing (he also had a very weak heart due to a bout with heartworms the year before). I asked what the options were, and the vet seemed confident she could help him. So I agreed, although he had to be carried to the back… I left him there overnight and the next morning they called me to say he had passed away during the night. All I could think was that he thought I had abandoned him…he was all alone in an unknown room in a cage…he had no idea why I left him there…. who knows how long he lay there till he died. To this day I think it would have been kinder to have put him to sleep when I was told his kidneys were failing, especially knowing he had a weak heart. But dogs have survived that with treatment, and I didn’t want him to die, so I trusted the vet. However, I probably would still been thinking “maybe just maybe” if I had just made the decision to euthanize without trying treatment. But the truth is, it changed my thinking concerning animals and emergency treatment/long term surgery/life-long treatment options. Of course I will consider each animal individually and not make blanket decisions, but I doubt in the future I will put any of my animals through such a situation again.

We don’t always know what the outcome of “do I treat or not treat” will be, and I think we will always question serious decisions we make with regards to the life and well being of our pets. But the thing is, YOU have to make the final decisions regarding YOUR individual pet, don’t let people shame or goad you into making decisions that you’re not comfortable with.

[Dface]

Gina.Jenny-Im really sorry to hear about your guinea pigs That double tragedy is really harrowing.

Mortimer-thank you for choosing to add your thoughts to this! That is a really tragic account of what happened with your dog! I would imagine he was on enough medication that he was unaware of whether or not you were present, if that is any comfort to you

I have fought both sides of this “welfare” argument:
-keeping Sampras alive when others told me it was cruel(if he had a voice Im sure he’d tell me I was right not to let them put him down!)
– and putting down a previous hedgie, Pin, while he was still well enough to ‘save’..but would continue to get sicker and would spend the rest of his life being hand fed every few hours, so I chose to put him down before he was in real pain. The last days of his life were not miserable or sad and he ate treats and cuddled with me right up until the end.

I know I was right both times, but there is always the part of you that questions and doubts. My hedgie Pin was put down 2 years ago and it’s a decision I made for him, but it has affected me in every decision I make about my pets.

At the end of it, I know it is my choice, and I have vet backing on it. It’s just nice to hear other peoples inputs(whether they agree or not) to really cement in my own head that Im making the right choice, or if I need to reassess, considering that my headspace in the last few months has been a very messy place!

[jerseygirl]

Posted By Mortimer on 11/27/2016 11:43 AM
…

We don’t always know what the outcome of “do I treat or not treat” will be, and I think we will always question serious decisions we make with regards to the life and well being of our pets. But the thing is, YOU have to make the final decisions regarding YOUR individual pet, don’t let people shame or goad you into making decisions that you’re not comfortable with.

This. ^ 100% agree.

[LittlePuffyTail]

I agree 100% with you and your vet, Dface. Let her enjoy her time, feeling good, until it’s her time to go.

[Author]

Messages