Veterinarians At Higher Risk of Suicide

[OkTotti]

For some reason this is the news story that comes up when Googling suicide news today. I wonder if one of the reason is that they have easier access to N. and don't need to buy from another source like A.

Article mentions a higher suicide rate but it doesn't mention method

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-...ians-have-higher-suicide-risk-cdc-study-finds

 

[Sanguinius]

Intresting... I bet it's because of the N...

 

[TiredHorse]

I read a variant on that article about a year ago.

It's because of the emotional toll. Through having horses I ended up being good friends with a couple vets. They live a chronically sleep-deprived life that cycles daily between the euphoria of saving lives and helping beautiful creatures come into the world and the misery of ending lives too soon, often because the owners are stupid and/or cruel. Some of the tragedies they see are truly ghastly.

Imagine being an ER doctor for children where you can't even ask your patients "where does it hurt?", the best medical technology you have access to is often nowhere near adequate to save your patient, and the only thing you can do is kill them to make the pain stop.

There's no way in hell I could survive what they do. Their access to N is only fair. When they need it, they really need it.

 

[Cody111]

It would be a hard job.
You get into veterinary job because you love animals. And you spend a really high amount of time watching them suffer and having to put many of them to sleep.
Its like watching the thing you love most be taken away from you time and time again day after day...
I kinda feel for them. The access and knowledge that comes with being a vet also prolly plays a role in it. Having thoughts is one thing. Having thoughts with the means to carry it out readily available to you is another.

 

[gingerplum]

I'm not sure they use N... I believe they put animals down with pentobarbital and Propofol. At least in clinic, that's what I've seen. Which would work just as well.

 

[Thoughtforms]

I think continuesly ending an animal's life would alter their perception of death.

But also knowledge of means to die.

Rates in dentists are known to be very high too.

 

[TiredHorse]

A promising young horse gets loose from his paddock one evening, gets tangled in a wire fence, spooks, and the wire cuts deep enough to sever the tendons of his hind leg: the damage irreparable, he is euthanized because his owner couldn't be bothered to repair the paddock gate.

A dressage contender gets out of his stall, wanders into the cement-floored hay barn, spooks, slips on the cement, falls, and tears all the ligaments in his hind legs: he's euthanized because the owner was stupid and couldn't be bothered to replace a $2 stall latch.

On a foggy night, a neighbor with a grudge opens a friend of mine's pasture gate, allowing my friend's father's four horses to wander out on the highway: in the fog, three are hit by a semi, crippled but not killed, screaming in pain along the highway, and need to be euthanized.

A woman doesn't want to be bothered with the increased demands of her older mare --senior feed three times a day instead of hay twice a day-- even though the mare is otherwise in good condition: she has the perfectly healthy mare euthanized out of laziness.

By pure shitty, rotten, fucked up chance, a mare newly recovered from laminitis, back in good health, is struck by strangulating lipoma: a strand of fat wraps around her small intestine, blocking bloodflow. The call comes through at 3:30 in the morning; the mare is writhing in agony in the pasture. The vet gets the mare up and works wonders to get her to surgery, two hours away including a ferry ride, but 80% of the mare's intestine is dead and despite a top-tier surgical team and the best of care throughout the mare's life, there's nothing to do: not even 23 years old, the mare is euthanized.

Day after day, around the clock, my vets got calls like these. Beautiful, gentle, generous creatures in agony, with no option but euthanasia. I don't know how the vets did it.

That last case was my beloved mare, my "mare-daughter," and I spent the next week ready to end my own life. How the vets survive as well as they do, I'll never know.

 

[gingerplum]

A promising young horse gets loose from his paddock one evening, gets tangled in a wire fence, spooks, and the wire cuts deep enough to sever the tendons of his hind leg: the damage irreparable, he is euthanized because his owner couldn't be bothered to repair the paddock gate.

A dressage contender gets out of his stall, wanders into the cement-floored hay barn, spooks, slips on the cement, falls, and tears all the ligaments in his hind legs: he's euthanized because the owner was stupid and couldn't be bothered to replace a $2 stall latch.

On a foggy night, a neighbor with a grudge opens a friend of mine's pasture gate, allowing my friend's father's four horses to wander out on the highway: in the fog, three are hit by a semi, crippled but not killed, screaming in pain along the highway, and need to be euthanized.

A woman doesn't want to be bothered with the increased demands of her older mare --senior feed three times a day instead of hay twice a day-- even though the mare is otherwise in good condition: she has the perfectly healthy mare euthanized out of laziness.

By pure shitty, rotten, fucked up chance, a mare newly recovered from laminitis, back in good health, is struck by strangulating lipoma: a strand of fat wraps around her small intestine, blocking bloodflow. The call comes through at 3:30 in the morning; the mare is writhing in agony in the pasture. The vet gets the mare up and works wonders to get her to surgery, two hours away including a ferry ride, but 80% of the mare's intestine is dead and despite a top-tier surgical team and the best of care throughout the mare's life, there's nothing to do: not even 23 years old, the mare is euthanized.

Day after day, around the clock, my vets got calls like these. Beautiful, gentle, generous creatures in agony, with no option but euthanasia. I don't know how the vets did it.

That last case was my beloved mare, my "mare-daughter," and I spent the next week ready to end my own life. How the vets survive as well as they do, I'll never know.

These are terrible, heartbreaking tragedies. The preventable ones are just infuriating.

 

[Kdawg2018]

Not to mention the Vets made it through school, and might have huge debts...I'm so glad there was one available to take my dog this week, R.I.P.

 

[therhydler]

I'm not sure they use N... I believe they put animals down with pentobarbital and Propofol. At least in clinic, that's what I've seen. Which would work just as well.

Isn't pentobarbital N? I thought N was the trade name

 

[gingerplum]

Isn't pentobarbital N? I thought N was the trade name

You are correct.

 

[TiredHorse]

Isn't pentobarbital N? I thought N was the trade name

As far as I know, yes: N is Nembutol, the name pentobarbitol is marketted under.

ETA: Oops; @gingerplum beat me to it.

 

[Pegasus]

Proof I should be studying to become a vet.

 

[Buddyluv19]

That last case was my beloved mare, my "mare-daughter," and I spent the next week ready to end my own life. How the vets survive as well as they do, I'll never know.

@TiredHorse, I'm so sorry for the loss of your "mare-daughter". We lost our "gelding-son" a year ago. He was with us for over 20 years, and during that time, we were so fortunate to have wonderful veterinarians and really get to see what these doctors go through.

My partner and I cried when we read your accounts. From our experience as well, we don't understand how they survive as well as they do!

Thanks again, @TiredHorse, for bringing truth and reality to this thread based on your life experience.

 

[TiredHorse]

@Buddyluv19, yes, you know the heartbreak, you know how imperative a good vet is, you can imagine what they go through. The vets I knew were some of the most amazingly kind and generous people I have ever met. That they should know and survive such pointless sorrows as I listed boggles my mind.

I lost my mare-daughter on Valentines Day of '13. On Father's Day of '17, my "grey brother" crashed hard after a winter of struggling through chronic laminitis. Two years before, we had moved two hours south from where we had spent the last eight years --but his long term vet from the north still cared enough to take the time, on Father's Day, to leave his family and drive two hours south for a "hail Mary" attempt to save him, even after the local vets had done their best. In the end, my brother was too far gone, but there's no one who could have been so compassionate as his vet, and having him there at the end made all the difference.

A two hour drive each way, for a desperate hope and an almost certain euthanasia, and I got no more bill than the same standard "farm call" as when we lived ten minutes from his clinic. Yet how much did it cost my vet, emotionally, to do that? How much to watch an old friend in agony, and to then put him down? I can't begin to guess. He does that again, and again, and again. I do not know how.

I sent that article about vets to my friend, asking him to take care of himself. I hope he takes it to heart. The world will lose a great man when he goes, and I don't want that to happen a minute sooner than it must.

 

[Buddyluv19]

I lost my mare-daughter on Valentines Day of '13. On Father's Day of '17, my "grey brother" crashed hard after a winter of struggling through chronic laminitis.

@Tiredhorse. Hearing your experience with your mare-daughter and grey brother has REALLY impacted me. I've seen chronic laminitis up close in one of our friend's horses. As you know, the care required for this illness is, well, I can't find the word. To me, it's like trying to describe the care we would give to a 'human' patient with a painful and life-threatening illness. Most of us would never say - "oh, the care for this illness is 'exhausting', time-consuming, and expensive.

I only bring this up, @Tiredhorse, because I think I hear you on a significant point. At least for me, I think my process of 'grieving' was stunted by 'a thousand human voices of practical reason'. Perhaps you will recognize them (though I hope not):
- "Oh, he was old - it was as time to put him down anyway"
- "He's no longer useful - can't be ridden anymore"
-"Too expensive to care for him - We can get a new horse"

Please understand that I don't bring this up to criticize the people who make these comments. Unless they have had a horse (or other pet) that they loved deeply, as a family member, they don't understand. For me, after our buddy passed (that's not his real name, just a nickname), it was really 'draining' trying to process my feelings of grief amidst all of the 'rational' reasons I should just shake it off and move on:
- "How old was he? 31? That sounds old, you're lucky he lasted that long"
- "How long do horses live anyway?" (I hated this one - but I always tried to "emphasize" that their care has a lot to do with it.)
And the worst question for me - "When are you going to get a new one?"

I'm sorry for the long post - but it has been important for me to articulate the feelings of isolation after my buddy's death. He really was like my son as I have no human children. Imagine, your son dying and someone saying, "When are you getting another one?"

@TiredHorse, I don't know for sure, but I think I understand your grief. In any case, I understand my own grief better. Thank you for your thoughtful post - it truly helped me understand my own grief.

Peace.

 

[TiredHorse]

@Buddyluv19, I have no doubt that your grief could have been stunted, suppressed, confined into an emotional abscess, by the callous comments by those who do not understand. There are many degrees of emotional attachment to a critter, and for those of us who have been so fortunate as to be immersed beyond the norm, the magnitude of our loss can be incomprehensible. I have heard all those empty palliatives you list, and several others even worse, and I know the desperation of flinging into place a wall to shield myself and my memories from the trammelling of emotional Philistines.

When my mare-daughter died, I called the breeders we had gotten both the horses from to let them know she was gone. During the call I had something of a meltdown, and was consoled by the breeder that she understood, and she volunteered that losing a horse-friend was no less painful than losing a child. I'll never forget how soft her voice became, and how I remembered, an instant later, that she had lost her son several years before. If that isn't a credible comparison of grief, I don't know what is.

I am so very, very sorry you lost your friend and your son. If my words help you with your grief, I am grateful that I can give you that.