Sunday, April 24, 2011

An unfortunate conversation

Client: "So there's no other steroid therapy that's less harsh."
Doctor: "I'm afraid not. We could dial down the dose even more, or even try stopping thearpy until he gets over this bout of side effects, but we'd have to start up again."
Client: "Is there an herb we could use? Something natural that wouldn't have the side effects?"
Doctor (after a pause to carefully consider his words): "Not that I'm aware of."

Me (inside my head): "We have a special name for 'natural herbs' that are effective and have fewer side effects than your current therapy. We call them 'drugs' and we would have already dispensed it to you."

2 comments:

Jess said...

I use herbs with my dogs. Also a variety of supplements, that either show decent research or that I have personally noticed results with. My most recent 'experiment' is with chicory.

However, I am NOT going to go the vet with, for example, Zora, who is in heart failure, has a hugely enlarged heart, arrhythmia, and too fast a heartbeat, and is on four different heart meds, and say, "Oh, that procainamide makes her nauseous, I'm going to try hawthorn instead."

Irony: Zora is on digoxin ;)

admin said...

Another client treats her dog's osteoarthritis with vitamin C supplements.