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Sad news day :(

Discussion in 'General Dog Chat' started by trini, Nov 30, 2013.

  1. trini

    trini Forums Sage

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    Tagg, I am so sorry for the loss of your friend.

    And, yes, hopefully we will all learn from these tragedies. We tend to put total faith in our vets and our Drs. and assume that because they are more knowledgeable on medical matters they will always make the right dx. To do their job they depend on us to give them as much information as possible and then they proceed to determine a dx based on a combination of that information, testing, and on their own experiences/knowledge. But, like any human, they too can make a mistake. In the end, WE have to be the advocates for our pets and for ourselves...and if our gut is telling us that something is wrong because either our pet or we are not improving as should be expected with treatment, we need to listen to that and push for more testing or seek a second opinion.

    Trini
     
  2. k9kreationz

    k9kreationz Forums Celebrity

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    Big hugs to you and your friends.

    Honestly, I know it may seem stupid and completely crazy to some people, but this is why I contacted an animal communicator about Miko. I wanted to be sure that it was, what it was. I didn't want to have that "if only" feeling. I personally believe it was worth the money. I don't regret anything and that's the feeling I want when it's time to say good-bye.

    :hugs Trust me, I understand.
     
  3. mcemily

    mcemily Forums Enthusiast

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    Indeed. And even with people being able to say "my stomach hurts when I..." sometimes it can still be very hard to pinpoint the right cause, since so many different maladies have the same (or very similar) symptoms, even without considering the issue of negligence (which I was not suggesting was a factor in either of these dogs' cases, incidentally). It's just really hard to deal with the fact that you were doing your best to fight something, and only too late did you discover that you were fighting the wrong thing all along.

    And then there are the sudden, no symptom/no warning events, like your friend suffered, Tagg. I’m so sorry to hear about that. My husband lost a friend/coworker back in February 2011 (Jason actually collapsed during a party at our house, and passed away in the ambulance en route to the hospital). Jason was on all kinds of crazy medications for his severe Rheumatoid Arthritis and had been in and out of the hospital for weeks with strange and serious abdominal pain. He had his family doctor, several doctors at several different hospitals, and his RA specialist monitoring the situation, and none of them were able to figure out what was happening in time... and the last I'd heard from his family, some 6 months after he'd died, an exact cause of death still hadn't been determined. So, sometimes even hindsight isn't very helpful.

    Not surprisingly, Michael and I had a very, very difficult time dealing with his death (Jason was so young--30, like us--it was so sudden, and it happened at our house), and we both felt that surely there was something we could have done better/differently that would have changed the outcome. Jason suddenly collapsed, we called 9-1-1, we meticulously followed the dispatcher's instructions while we waited for the ambulance to arrive... We did everything we were supposed to do, but clearly it wasn't enough, because it didn't work. He died anyway. It took many months for us to be able to say "we did the best we could," and have that bring a feeling of peace instead of guilt.

    It’s human nature, I think, to say “I could have… I should have… what if I had just… if only…” and these thoughts and feelings of guilt can be very difficult to overcome.
     
  4. trini

    trini Forums Sage

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    I think one of the hardest lessons we learn in life is that "life isn't fair" a lot of the time. It makes us feel so vulnerable to accept that truth...we want to believe that if we work hard, make loving choices, and do the best we can in everything, then all will be OK. And it is important to keep doing those things because often our actions and our choices do make a difference...but at times they don't and those times are hard to come to peace with.

    Trini
     

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