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A suicide crisis among veterinarians

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451–460 of 463 posts

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that people complaining about the higher tax brackets are oblivious at best, but I'll add that there's no income test to post here. I feel like I do OK (especially given that I have a job that doesn't require the sale of my soul), but it's far from 500K lol.

You should go get that money, dude. Life's too short to waste it all working Pick a FAANG you don't feel too bad about, hit the LeetCode hard for a few months, then go work there for 5 years. You can save up $750k+, which is enough to leave Silicon Valley and eke out a barebones retirement somewhere in the real world (~$30k/year at a 4% safe withdrawal rate)

> hit the LeetCode hard for a few months, then go work there for 5 years

lmao

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#452
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my position, would you encourage your child to chase their dream? Or would you be comfortable telling them every few weeks until they gave up that you don’t think they should be a vet? Can't you do both? Let her know about the serious downsides (perhaps don't "repeat every few weeks until she gives up") and if she chooses it anyway, encourage her. This is her decision to make, not yours. She will be responsible…

She’s 8. She’s not responsible for much of anything. She’s not mentaly capable of being responsible for making future career decisions. If she said she wanted to be an authoritarian dictator, I’d crush that dream fast. But she wants to help animals. And being someone that she looks up to, it doesn’t take much for me to crush a dream. So do I start crushing that dream now (her wanting to be a vet comes up weekly, so e…

At 8 years old I'm not sure what the downside is to waiting a bit. It's not like she's accruing vet school debt right now.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My little parrot died in my hands, and while it was sad, I was (and still am) glad that she didn’t die alone. She’d been ill, and I was about to take her back to the vet to have that final shot, so it was not shocking. Be there for your friend. It won’t make the hurt go away, and it may even be a bit scary, but it will help your healing process.

I brought a sick cockatiel to the vet. They couldn't take care of him right away so I left. A few hours later I got a call that the bird was in cardiac arrest, and wanted to know if they should intervene. I quickly decided no, he should pass in peace. The household was in a panic for a few moments, then we were distraught. That was the worst phone call I've been on in my life. Its effects have not been fully processe…

I’m sorry that you and your family had to experience the loss of your cockatiel that way, and wish the vet had told you to take your little friend home instead.

Regular vets who aren’t avian specialists really can’t do much for pet birds aside from mending injuries; an avian specialist can help you diagnose diet issues before the bird is critically ill, so it might still be worth taking in a bird that seems a bit under the weather to see if it is a diet issue - an awful lot of pet bird problems are diet issues. I took mine to one to have a microchip implanted before exporting her to Germany; not a huge deal with big parrots (they can be injected into the wing), but for small conures, it involves general anesthesia, so I went out of my way to find someone who had a lot of avian experience.

But yes, once a pet bird appears seriously ill, it’s likely too late to do anything other than keep it warm and in a place it feels safe, and let nature take its course.

As far as I know, pretty much all animals, especially prey animals, hide illnesses and injuries, and that is definitely the case for parrots.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#454

pet insurance man... get it... for $80 a month I have a $250 deductible, 90% reimbursement and unlimited annual coverage. Not to mention they cover EVERYTHING including hereditary conditions. I hope I never have to use it. my buddy came home to his dog having his back legs paralyzed. No idea what happened. Did he jump off the bed or get hurt playing with the other dogs? Anyway, surgery was going to be 20K with a 90%…

Who do you use?

Pet's Best

https://www.petsbest.com/

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#455
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely out of touch with reality and the people from all walks of life who have and care for pets. Please keep your terrible opinions to yourself.

Someone is clearly out of touch with reality. Here's another terrible opinion: pet owners have skewed the economy of veterinarianism such that farmers and livestock owners have trouble getting vets because they're too busy dealing with the guy on reddit the other day whining about how he spent $2000 on a credit card to save his pet rat. Supply is limited (much like doctors, only so many seats at vet schools), and dem…

My cats are indoor cats, my home smells fine, and you’re a jackass. Allow people to have empathy for living things. Not everything needs to function to serve you and your shitty narrow worldview. There is room for nuance.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#456
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my position, would you encourage your child to chase their dream? Or would you be comfortable telling them every few weeks until they gave up that you don’t think they should be a vet? Can't you do both? Let her know about the serious downsides (perhaps don't "repeat every few weeks until she gives up") and if she chooses it anyway, encourage her. This is her decision to make, not yours. She will be responsible…

She’s 8. She’s not responsible for much of anything. She’s not mentaly capable of being responsible for making future career decisions. If she said she wanted to be an authoritarian dictator, I’d crush that dream fast. But she wants to help animals. And being someone that she looks up to, it doesn’t take much for me to crush a dream. So do I start crushing that dream now (her wanting to be a vet comes up weekly, so e…

Late reply, but:

> She’s 8. She’s not mentaly capable of being responsible for making future career decisions.

She's 8, she doesn't have to make future career decisions yet. When the time comes, it's her decision to make.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#457
post #4

I work in a veterinary school, and it's remarkable to see how worn down veterinarians are compared to my colleagues in "people medicine" (and my comparison group are infectious disease folks - they're not exactly a cheerful group). To be honest, at this point, between how hard it is to get into vet school, the debt load, and how you're signing up for crushing compassion fatigue your whole life, and a career of hoping…

> hoping someone will pay for a procedure to save their pet's life while being braced for "I guess we should put them down..." I'm sorry, but vet costs are completely out of whack with reality these days. The truth of the matter is that most people cannot justify spending thousands of dollars on a pet, no matter how much they are loved, and that DOES NOT make them bad or unfit owners. The story quoted $10k to remove…

Many of the hard costs in veterinary medicine are exactly the same as human doctors. Rent is rent, stitches are stitches. Most of the supply chain is the same. So when they open a bag of saline, put in a line, gown up, open a pack of sutures, etc. those costs are exactly the same as a human doctor. Their ultrasound machine comes from the same factory as the one one at your obgyn. Equipping a surgical suite is an expensive thing.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#458
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you proposing should carry the cost then? Society?

Well decades before people didn't graduate with hundreds of thousands in debt. If you follow that chain and look at the colleges which have been replacing highly paid professors with adjunct professors paid little more per hour than people who make french fries its not professors sucking up those costs. It looks more like trying hard to minimize money paid to professors while charging what the market will bear wherei…

Smarter countries are providing pet care for people who can't afford it? Which country do you mean exactly?

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#459
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well decades before people didn't graduate with hundreds of thousands in debt. If you follow that chain and look at the colleges which have been replacing highly paid professors with adjunct professors paid little more per hour than people who make french fries its not professors sucking up those costs. It looks more like trying hard to minimize money paid to professors while charging what the market will bear wherei…

Smarter countries are providing pet care for people who can't afford it? Which country do you mean exactly?

Smarter countries make education affordable instead of a government sponsored bonanza for the financial class leading to greater supply of vets who haven't had to front load their life with 200-400k in debt to reach the starting line of their profession. This leads to more supply per capita in theory and in fact.

Having enough supply means that when fuzzball junior has a health problem you don't have to choose between going into hock for $500-$1000 for an emergency vet, paying rent, or waiting a month for your regular vet who is also obliged to bill at a level that will pay costs, and repay their lender plus interest.

This is to say that actual cost of service is even worse than it looks due to the necessity of relying on emergency vets to plug massive hole in supply. This encourages individual practices to price discriminate by offering the same services on an emergency basis for much more which further decreases the already scarce vet hours for non-emergency situations.

All of this makes perfect sense from a market perspective but none of it was normal 20 years ago here nor in most of the world so its not fate its a scrape we have gotten ourselves into.

Re: A suicide crisis among veterinarians

#460
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smarter countries are providing pet care for people who can't afford it? Which country do you mean exactly?

Smarter countries make education affordable instead of a government sponsored bonanza for the financial class leading to greater supply of vets who haven't had to front load their life with 200-400k in debt to reach the starting line of their profession. This leads to more supply per capita in theory and in fact. Having enough supply means that when fuzzball junior has a health problem you don't have to choose betwee…

All that you are describing matches Sweden quite well. Still, my niece who lives there (and only barely counts as middle class, working at a burger joint in Stockholm) regularly rants about that she doesn't have the money to get care for her dog. Maybe she should just not have a dog.

Will say: In theory it sounds great what you are saying, and for many other areas of life it really is great (I've heard lots of storries from her indicating that it's basically paradise), but that doesn't take away from that people don't understand that having a pet is not a human right but a huge responsibility and a luxury that one needs to understand the consequences of having. Instead of crying for daddy/the government when things inevitably come around that were not in the rosy picture when that puppy looked at you.

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