[Felvtalk] Felvtalk Digest, Vol 30, Issue 10

[Amani Oakley]

No Robert - my experience with my vets began well before I became a lawyer. 

And a lawsuit against a vet would go nowhere, Robert. For a lawsuit to happen, you need two things: to prove negligence, and then to prove damages. Under the law, animals are still considered property, so suing because of something that has happened to your animal will generally be seen by the court as the equivalent of damaging your lawn mower. For a lawyer to bring forward civil litigation, there are two ways to do it. If there are sufficient anticipated damages, lawyers will fund the litigation (usually to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars) and take a percentage of recovery (usually say around 30%). If the lawyer loses, he/she not only doesn’t get his/her many many hours of time paid, but the lawyer will lose the hundreds of thousands of dollars he/she has put into bankrolling the litigation. The only other way to proceed, is for the client to pay hourly for a lawyer to represent them. That would cost the client probably at least $100,000, and the law puts the worth of an injured or deceased animal at a couple of thousand dollars IF THAT. The math doesn’t obviously doesn’t work. There is no realistic likelihood that a lawyer would sue a vet for injury to a pet, quite unfortunately. In the U.S., there are punitive damages which do not feature much in Canada, so it is possible that the litigation scene is different in the U.S., but I doubt it would be too radically different.

I can also assure you that I get no careful treatment in the medical system, either. I just recently had the heartbreaking experience of being at my mother's side for three years while she unsuccessfully battled cancer. I was always very careful NOT to appear threatening, because I didn’t want any retaliation against my mom. However, I know my medicine and my science, and I understand it probably as well as most doctors and maybe better than most nurses. 

My history with my vets goes back decades. I once was sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my appointment, and I heard the wife of the former senior vet (she was his manager) take aside a new vet at the clinic and tell him about me before I went into the appointment: "This is Amani Oakley. She knows her stuff. She probably knows it better than you do. Listen carefully to her. She is almost always right and you will learn a lot about things you never knew, if you pay attention to what she is telling you."

That is almost verbatim. I never asked for special treatment, but I knew my medicine and my science and so if the vet ever said anything to me that didn’t make any sense, I would query what I was told. When I was still a teenager, and brought in my very sick little Maltese dog, and the vet wanted to treat her with Chloramphenicol, an antibiotic which was commonly used at that time, and I had just learned about links with chloramphenicol and suppressed bone marrow. I respectfully asked if I was correct that I had heard about the bone marrow suppression. The vet kind of went around and around and then said, and first said that was true in people but not so much in animals and then he said, "you know, you're right  - we'll use another antibiotic. No sense in taking a chance for no reason."

I wasn’t even finished my first degree in Microbiology at that time, Bob, but I understood science and medicine pretty well. 

Guaranteed - this has nothing to do with lawyering.   

I know I am lucky with my vets, but they have also learned, over the years, that I have done my homework.

Amani

-----Original Message-----
From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of ROBERT CHAPEL
Sent: October-04-16 9:03 PM
To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] Felvtalk Digest, Vol 30, Issue 10

Amani...
I don't know how things work in Canada but I KNOW that were I a lawyer I would get more cooperation from my vet....  As Vets begin to charge more and more and large corporations begin to buy up small practices here in the states the model is now moving toward the downside of human medicine.... discrete scheduling time periods to maximize profits... little time to " discuss" options and an aversion to moving on to topics that could cause spending extra time.....  As prices rise so do  owner resentments at not being " cared about" or listened to just as in human medicine..... and that( at least in the US) is when lawsuits are most likely to be filed.... Most of us can forgive a vet making a mistake when we feel he/she has put real thought and concern into a Tx plan but putting our pets at risk because an alteration in plan causes him to have to step outside his comfort zone( and spend some extra time
thinking) or simply doesn't appear to care.. That doesn't fly when we are paying Hundreds of dollars to save our precious pets..
Malpractice lawyer pet owners ( or patients in human medicine) are likely surreptitiously treated with great care when moving through waters fraught with potential for terminal errors..... and likely get a bit more cooperation from their vets...   I am glad for your cats that you ARE in the profession that you now are...
So... it is , in my opinion, both good fortune and a dose of deferential caution that gets you the kind of cooperation you get from your vet????   Yeah.... I'm pretty jaded at this point  : )   That is why I HAD to retire a bit early....

 
 
 On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 02:28 PM, felvtalk-request at felineleukemia.org
wrote:
 
 >
>    1. Re: FW:  Continued Improvement for Bogey on Stanzolol
>       (Amani Oakley)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2016 18:28:16 +0000
> From: Amani Oakley To: "felvtalk at felineleukemia.org" Subject: Re: 
> [Felvtalk] FW:  Continued Improvement for Bogey on
> 	Stanzolol
> Message-ID:
> 	
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Either I had a brain fart or my computer did an automatic spelling 
> correction. Sorry about that Ardy.
>
> Amani
>
> From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf 
> Of Amani Oakley
> Sent: October-04-16 2:26 PM
> To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
> Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] FW: Continued Improvement for Bogey on 
> Stanzolol
>
> Argue, I wholeheartedly agree with your observation and that is 
> exactly what I find bizarre about this. Vets will not question us if 
> we want to put our cats down, but they will treat us like criminals, 
> trafficking in some sort of forbidden commodity, if we want to try 
> different things in a desperate situation.
>
> The other night, I was watching "Awakenings" again with Robin 
> Williams, and I contemplated the thought that what the real-life 
> neurologist did (on whom the movie was based) would be frowned upon by 
> the vets many of us have encountered. He basically experimented on 
> people who were in encephalophathic comas from sleeping sickness, and 
> tried a new drug out on them, on many many times the dose that had 
> been used in Parkinson's patients (L-Dopa). Unfortunately, the body 
> builds up an immunity to the drug, so the people eventually succumbed 
> and slipped back into comas, but my training an my logic is consistent 
> with that. If you are treating a patient with much to lose, you 
> obviously need to be cognizant of things like significant side 
> effects. However, if a patient is doing very poorly or even facing 
> certain death, then trying anything which might be helpful, is not 
> unethical.
>
> This is why, when I was faced with high liver enzymes when I had put 
> Zander on the Winstrol, I refused to discontinue the Winstrol. My 
> reasoning was, to what end would I discontinue the Winstrol? If I 
> stopped, he would die. If I didn't stop, then yes, there was a chance 
> of liver damage, and I would have to deal with that when the current, 
> most urgent crisis (low red cells, lack of appetite, etc.) was brought 
> under control. If he didn't make it through the treatment with the 
> WInstrol, then I wouldn't have to deal with the liver damage. If he 
> did, I would deal with the liver damage next.
>
> I don't understand vets refusing to use Winstrol when there are little 
> or no other options. I don't understand vets who won't try something 
> like Doxycycline, when, usually at worst, they don't think it will 
> work - ie - no effect. Okay. They could be right. Try it for two 
> weeks, check the blood work and see. Thank God my vets are willing to 
> allow me to try these options and measure/measure the effects.
>
> Amani
>
> From: Felvtalk [mailto:felvtalk-bounces at felineleukemia.org] On Behalf 
> Of Ardy Robertson
> Sent: October-03-16 10:38 PM
> To: felvtalk at felineleukemia.org
> Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] FW: Continued Improvement for Bogey on 
> Stanzolol
>
> I am blown away that they are perfectly willing and eager to put the 
> cat to sleep but not willing to try the doxycycline that will block 
> the virus from replicating. We fight for our kitties' lives and have 
> to also fight the vets to get the medicine they need, and we have to 
> tread lightly when we find a vet willing to prescribe the Winstrol 
> that they need. I wish we could just buy it over the counter.
>
> Ardy