Occasionally there are times when sadly your pet has acutely deteriorated and you are uncertain whether now is the time to say goodbye. This is most common with organ failure disease trajectories and certain cancer disease trajectories, where there have been long-term limitations with intermittent serious episodes. There is then the dilemma of whether to refer your pet to primary care for urgent treatment or choose euthanasia immediately. Often families are fearful of moving their pet at this time and travelling in to their practice only to be given bad news but are unable to feel certain about choosing euthanasia at home.
These cases provide me with a dilemma too. Sometimes talking on the phone is enough to be able to say euthanasia is appropriate, other times this is less than clear. I have always chosen to refer you back to primary care under these circumstances for assessment and decision making.
But, unless your primary care can visit at home, if the end result is euthanasia at the practice, this has felt like less than optimum care from me. I feel your family is placed in a position you don’t want to be in. So, if time is available to us, I now offer to attend and assess. Please be aware that this service is NOT an emergency service so if I am unable to attend promptly you should seek care from your primary care vet. Please also understand that visiting with you and your pet in this way is not a Quality of Life appointment (these are offered as a scheduled non-clinical remote appointment). Nor is it a detailed medical consult with immediate and ongoing care. It is to triage and assess the correct choice for all at this time, and hopefully bring peace of mind in the choices made.
The fee for this visit is £180, plus additional travel fees as appropriate.
I will have an honest discussion with you and we can decide together if it is reasonable to reach for palliation to seek comfort for your pet if you, as the owner, wish to try, if primary care is in immediate agreement and if your pet’s preferences mean they can tolerate the medical care.
If euthanasia is not chosen at this visit I will refer you back immediately to primary care so please consider the time delay in seeking medical care for your pet and diversion of funds that choosing to triage entails. Please also be aware that at times the correct decision is clear, but there are other times where it is almost impossible for any of us to know if a serious episode of decline is the one which your pet will be unable to recover from, where they will fail to rebound to acceptable levels of comfort no matter what treatment is tried, where sadly death cannot be prevented. Offering treatment during any one of these declines sadly carries no guarantee of success.