(July 13, 2012 at 5:14 pm)Moros Synackaon Wrote: once again, what tests?
Once again, how should I dictate what tests. That's the vets call isn't it? I don't think I'm actually arguing with you here...
In the end they did blood tests to check for pancreatic illnesses, but they still don't know exactly what the problem is. They just know it's serious. They are now talking about doing a biopsies.
Quote:You know too little to know what to ask for, yet you ask for something that actually is highly specific.
Bollocks, we aren't dictating to the vet what tests to do or even whether to do tests at all. This is what I've been saying. We just want them to do something to attempt to find out what the issue is. At the time we took him in it was as though they didn't want to do anything at all and said we'll wait until morning because we can't be arsed right now.
Quote:Normally, the doctor (vets are just animal doctors, just with slightly lower legal standards of care) will ask about the history. They'll check the vitals, look at the lymph nodes, feel for broken bones, etc,.
Tests come into play when the doctor has an inkling of where to look next. Sometimes it might be a blind guess initially, but then in that case, the hope is a careful read of a common blood test (for example) will reveal something, anything.
Yeah they did all this, after a whole night of nothing. That's all I was moaning about at the time. Which I think is justified considering my dog was (and still is) seriously ill.
At the end of the day all you want as an owner is to make your dog better. When you go to the vets and pay extravagant sums of money to hopefully have the issue acknowledged as quickly as possible, and they turn around and say they'll leave it until morning, what is the point of taking him there in the first place when he may as well have stayed at home where he would be more comfortable.
Quote:It's unfair and totally demoralizing for a doctor to have a patient demand $specificToolType when they've not even done a thorough vitals check or have enough of an idea of what to look at. Superfluous blood tests, for example, can waste vital time. It also can overload the lab and thus delay a later, well thought out and critical test.
So "just test it" is childish.
That's not what we're demanding. I'll say again, we didn't demand anything, but we still expect to be provided with a service when we pay for it. Especially when a life is at stake.
Quote:It's like an uneducated doofus who brings in a broken MacBook and then gets upset when you don't immediately run "Windows Update" -- he says a series of terms but doesn't know when/how/if they're applied to this context.
No, it's nothing like that. This is an absurd analogy.
