Daily Archives: January 29, 2022

When faced with any difficult decision, it is best to have as much information as possible to make the right choice. This is definitely true in the case of dog euthanasia. When you adopt a dog, you take on the responsibility of caring for him throughout his entire life. As he ages or if a significant medical problem is encountered, you will have to think about what is best for him and for the rest of the family. In some cases, this will be euthanasia.

Some of the conditions that may necessitate euthanasia include: intense pain that doesnt respond to treatment, cancer, incurable organ failure (e.g., kidney, liver or heart), severe arthritis, and progressive neurologic disease (e.g., dementia). Often several diseases or conditions are present that in combination lead to suffering.

How will you know when it is time to euthanize your dog? Your veterinarian is the best person to guide you and your family through this process. She will likely ask you to consider your dogs quality of life by considering the following questions:

Although we know that dogs experience pain much like humans, it is not always evident to us. Signs of pain in dogs include panting, pacing, lack of appetite, decreased interactions with the family, and grumpiness. There are now many different ways to treat pain, so talking with your veterinarian may be helpful.

Adequate nutrition and hydration is important in maintaining an acceptable quality of life. Furthermore, the ability to get up with minimal assistance, to walk, and to eliminate without a significant mess is usually desirable.

You must consider what makes him happy. If he can no longer go for walks, play with toys, or interact with the family, he may not be enjoying life. If he used to greet you when you came home, but now just lies in one place all the time, he most likely is not a happy dog. If he consistently vomits after each meal, he is likely uncomfortable.

Keep a daily log with the answers to these questions. Were basically deciding, Was today a good day? If he has more bad days than good, his quality of life is unacceptable.

Other factors may contribute to the decision-making process besides a dogs quality of life. In an ideal world, we would have unlimited finances, time, patience and energy. In reality, this is not the case.

The cost of a major surgery or continued use of expensive medications may financially burden your family. Add in a slim chance of recovery and it may not be feasible to pursue treatment. Some chronic conditions will require extensive time and effort to manage and this may not be realistic for your family.

In some cases, if your dogs quality of life is good, but your family cannot care for him, there may be other options such as finding him another home. If money is an issue, there may be funds from local rescue groups or charitable funds at your animal hospital to help with costs. If euthanasia is the best option but you cannot afford the procedure, many animal shelters offer this at a low or even no cost.

If you have made the decision to euthanize your dog, you must consider the logistics. Euthanasia typically takes place in the veterinary hospital, but the most peaceful location would often be in your own home. Many veterinarians will make a house call for euthanasia to ensure the best possible situation for everyone involved. If your veterinarian is unable to make a house call, you may be able to find a doctor who performs dog euthanasia at home through this directory.

It helps to understand what happens during the dog euthanasia procedure. Your veterinarian will likely sedate your dog first with an injection of a medication into the muscle or under the skin to reduce any anxiety and discomfort he may be experiencing. Once your dog is relaxed and possibly even asleep, the next step is the injection of euthanasia solution, usually into a vein. Your veterinarian will then listen for your dogs heart to stop beating, which usually only takes a few minutes. When performed in this manner, dog euthanasia does not hurt.

It is a sad time when we have to consider euthanasia for a beloved dog. Knowing what to expect makes answering the question Is it time? a little bit easier.

Visit link:

Dog Euthanasia: How to Know its Time | PetMD

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Our species is conditioned for survival and our societies are organized to govern how we live and to facilitate how we can all live well together.

Our medical system, our vaccines and the global response to the pandemic are built around the same instinct to protect and prolong individual lives. So it can feel jarring, and counterintuitive, to ask: What obligation does the government have in ensuring an individuals right to die?

Around the world, people facing a loss of autonomy, dignity and quality of life have the opportunity to set the date of their own deaths through voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. But this choice is only legally available in a few countries, including Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada and Colombia.

Additionally, only a handful of American states allow doctors to help patients who meet well-defined criteria and are on the threshold of dying choose when and how to end their lives. The laws are modeled after the first Death With Dignity Act, passed in Oregon in 1997.

Catholic organizations, anti-abortion advocates and some disability groups continue to oppose aid in dying. The California Catholic Conference, the churchs public policy organization, for example, argued in June that liberalizing the states law puts patients at risk of abuse and the early and unwillful termination of life.

But polls regularly show broad public support for euthanasia. In 2020, Gallup found that 74 percent of respondents agreed that doctors should be allowed to end patients lives by some painless means if they and their families request it.

This week, we told the story of Marieke Vervoort, a Paralympic medalist from Belgium who chose when and how she would die. In doing so, we hoped to reveal the personal implications of a highly personal debate. Below, we share a note from Lynsey Addario, the photographer who spent almost three years reporting on Vervoort.

I have been a conflict and humanitarian photographer for 20 years, which means I have met people at their most vulnerable moments. Somehow I have to photograph them in ways that are compelling to viewers, but sensitive to the subjects.

The moments I capture exist forever as photographs, and the publication of this trauma has an effect on the subjects and on their loved ones and their feelings about me, the photographer. I dont often spend more than a few hours, days or weeks with someone I am shooting, and I rarely get the opportunity to see the person again once the assignment is complete.

But with Marieke, an initial three-day assignment turned into a three-year friendship, one in which I continuously struggled with my role as an objective observer, especially as I grew to love and admire a friend who was choosing to die according to her own timeline.

Marieke had this unique ability to love the people in her life as passionately as she pined for her death whenever her pain seemed to take over her life. She believed that the public needed to see and feel her pain in order to understand the importance of ones right to euthanasia to choose exactly when and how she would end her life. Marieke was uniquely articulate and honest about the complexities of how and why she believed in her right to die on her own terms, and she wanted me to tell that story. In the process, she asked and allowed me to photograph moments that made her loved ones uncomfortable.

I will always be conflicted about whether I should have deferred to her wishes or her parents wishes in her final moments and in her death. I got to know her parents over the years, and as a mother of two children, I couldnt fathom how they had the strength, generosity and courage to let their daughter go.

What I will remember about Marieke are the details I couldnt capture with images alone. So much about Marieke was in her laughter and her tears, her jokes and her pain things that are difficult to convey in a still image. A lot of our time together was spent joking around, until she would disappear into fits of pain so powerful she had seizures, and she would fall into unconsciousness for hours sometimes days.

I wanted to share our audio interviews and voice messages to tell a more complete, more nuanced version of Mariekes journey in a way still photographs simply cannot.

This podcast is unusual in a number of ways it aired more than two years after her death, and unlike most Times stories, it isnt pegged to a specific news event. But I believe Mariekes unflinching honesty offers incredible insight into the process of euthanasia something she trusted me to convey. She wanted this to be published and I wanted to do right by her wishes. I also hoped it would provide insight into how photojournalists work, what we have to do in order to properly convey the intimate human stories we have the privilege to witness.

We have a new show coming out. Its about a mysterious letter, detailing a supposed Islamist plot to take over schools, that shocked Britain in 2014. The scandal resulted in new national policies, multiple investigations, banned educators and revamped schools. But despite all of the chaos the letter caused, it remained strangely unclear who wrote it.

When Brian Reed, of the hit podcast S-Town, and Hamza Syed, a doctor-turned-reporter from Birmingham, England, tried to uncover the authors identity, the investigation became bigger than they ever imagined. From Serial Productions and The New York Times comes The Trojan Horse Affair, a mystery told in eight parts. You can listen to the trailer now and the entire show will be out next Thursday, Feb. 3.

Link:

The Right to Die - The New York Times

In April 2021, WarnerMedia brought the Adult Swim development team under the HBO Max umbrella, which minted a new streaming home for catalog titles from the adult animation innovator as well as such new blood as Teenage Euthanasia, chronicling the adventures of an undead mother and her extended family in a twisted cartoon Florida of the future. Euthanasia was co-created by writer Alissa Nutting, whose 2017 novel Made for Love was recently adapted into a series at HBO Max.

Opening Shot: An establishing shot of the Tender Endings funeral home reveals a rambling victorian surrounded by overgrown foliage and mutated pink flamingos. The town of Fort Gator, Floridas water tower rises in the background.

The Gist: In the absurdist nearby future of Teenage Euthanasia, contemporary societys drift toward schlock consumerism homogeny, a gunned-up citizenry, and the acceptance of an algorithmic, artificially intelligent data layer inserted into our everyday lives are all tweaked, amplified and manifesting as feedback on how it started and where its going. Add to that a mortal grey area that allows for the casual reanimation of wayward single mother Trophy Fantasy (Maria Bamford) at the hands of her funeral home-owning mother Baba (Bebe Neuwirth), and its not surprising that in the first episode of this Adult Swim import, entitled First Date With the Second Coming, Trophys teenaged daughter Euthanasia (Jo Firestone), better known as Annie, crushes hard on new boy in school Kenton (Harvey Guillen, Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows) who swears he just transferred in after a collision with a sand truck sent his virgin ass to heaven.

Trophy is as salacious and sex-starved as she is suspicious and determined to raise her daughter right, even if that means administering the proper means of adolescent seduction. So while shes happy that Annie has a first date, she also casts doubt on Kentons glimpse of the firmament. Trophy chaperones Annie at Babas urging, and her mother drives Uncle Pete (Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave) to the mall so he can buy a new shirt. Sadly, there are no Dan Flashes there. But Pete does visit Lids..But For Shirts. America! where a hologram Uncle Sam sizes him up as a rube. Pete is also targeted as an incel by a bored, trigger-happy mall cop.

On Annies date, she and Kenton engage in a version of Seven Minutes in Heaven that rings with double, triple, and triple-X entendres before Trophy challenges her fellow member of the recently dead to an afterlife revisit. Trophy thinks little of the Great Beyond; Kenton, meanwhile, not only believes that God is a woman, he knows Her personally, and Shes played with typical breezy exuberance by Loretta Devine. Even still, in the Teenage Euthanasia universe, knowing God isnt the same thing as knowing how to get your rocks off.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In Teenage Euthanasia, establishing the nihilistic malaise its characters call reality is part of the whole bit, and thats certainly something the inhabitants of the Rick and Morty multiverse would understand. There are also vestiges of the surrealism and serrated edge sarcasm of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the departed Adult Swim series thats said to be returning in the form of a feature film to be streamed on HBO Max.

Our Take: With the unmistakable talent of the inimitable Maria Bamford out front and an all-star central cast that includes Jo Firestone of Joe Pera Talks With You, ITYSL creator and star Tim Robinson, and the legend Bebe Neuwirth, Teenage Euthanasia has its voice acting game on lock from the start. But throw in supporting turns from the likes of David Cross, H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bobs Burgers), Aidy Bryant, Taryn Manning, and Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and Kristen Schaal Schaal voices one of the sentient beetles who live in Trophys crotch and its a guarantee that Euthanasia will back up its rank, delightfully preposterous premise with some truly inspired performances. The theater of the bizarre in which Adult Swim programming so often operates is open for business once again, with the prospect of death and banged-up resurrection acting as a societal meme for the inhabitants of Fort Gator, and Teenage Euthanasia promises even more chortling inequities to be levied upon its characters. In the first ep, an interactive bedroom mirror sells Annie cosmetic snake oil via its eavesdropping algorithm, and theres a terrific side gag involving a product called Nesters Cheese Nebulizer, which is an inhaler that delivers Nester cheese straight to the dome! In other words, the bastardized version of our own world that Euthanasia builds is as fun to ingest as the interactions of its characters.

Sex and Skin: Nothing overt, beyond some loudmouth talk about teen peen, handjobs and tongue kissing.

Parting Shot: Stay tuned to episodes of Teenage Euthanasia all the way through the credit roll. This time around, we join Kenton inside the Pearly Gates, where God finishes up a game of pickup basketball with Nipsey Hustle and Luke Perry before putting him on a date with Anna Nicole Smith. Im pretty eager to finally have sex, Kenton tells God, since I died a virgin. But God says he was supposed to get sex out of his system on earth, because Up here, pants never come off, and no one has genitals. Its heaven!

Sleeper Star: Tim Robinson has mastered the unleashing of a blood-boilingly hilarious manic scream, and he has a few opportunities to do just that while Uncle Pete wanders the mall in search of a new shirt/security blanket.

Most Pilot-y Line: A boy asked me out! exclaims Annie. Trophy, ready to chaperone, asks where theyre headed. Behind the bleachers? Dog track? Dialysis center? Annie groans. No offense, but Id rather go alone. I really like him, and you can never act appropriately.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Teenage Euthanasia ticks up the yuks-a-minute ratio with loads of world-building absurdities to match the weird wrinkles in the daily lives of its characters, some living and some only kind of that.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Excerpt from:

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Teenage Euthanasia' on HBO Max, An Adult Toon With Wacky Zingers And A Morbid Streak - Decider

From open-heart surgery on a snake to putting your dog through chemotherapy, there have never been so many options to treat unwell pets. But vets are warning that too many owners are spending huge amounts of money on keeping their pets alive, even when its not always the most humane option.

Channel 4s Supervet and news stories such as Goldie the pufferfishs tooth surgery are making pet owners aware of the increasingly advanced and complex surgical and medical procedures that pets can undergo.

While veterinary science has made impressive advances in recent years, allowing many pets to be healthier for longer, vets say extending an animals life at all costs is not always the best option for them, and can result in bills of thousands of pounds for their owners.

Danny Chambers, a vet in Hampshire who runs a phone-in on BBC Radio Devon, said: There are some situations where for the welfare of the animal, euthanasia would be appropriate to end the suffering. If youre going to put them through quite complex surgery which has many months recovery time with complications, there is an ethical discussion to be had around that.

Chambers cited the example of a person undergoing chemotherapy. Although it is a long and painful process, humans are able to rationalise suffering as a means to get better, or to enable them to spend time with family or to do things theyve dreamed of. Animals dont have a desire to live a long life, they dont want to make it to Christmas or someones birthday or to be 10 years older. They just want to be happy day by day.

He said most vets were able to give a list of three to five options for treatment plans, and owners should not feel as if they have to choose the most expensive one if they cant afford it, especially since it wont always be best for the animals welfare.

I hope people dont feel guilty for not being wealthy enough to try these advanced procedures when the reality is that dogs are quite happy when given the best treatment you can afford.

Andrew Knight, a veterinary professor at the University of Winchester, said part of the reason for higher expectations from owners was that they are increasingly viewing their animals as important members of their households and families.

He added that as people were treated for free on the NHS, they often did not understand the costs of some of the most advanced medical and surgical procedures, especially without pet insurance. These can be unexpectedly expensive, even though they constitute very good value, compared to the costs of medical care for people.

Sean McCormack, a vet in Surrey who writes a newspaper advice column, said that where previously people would consider complex treatments only for pets such as dogs and cats, he was seeing an increase in demand from people who had developed a close emotional bond with more unusual pets such as turtles, rabbits and snakes.

He has removed tumours from fish, done open-heart surgery on a snake, spayed a gecko, removed a bladder stone from an iguana and pinned, plated and fixed broken wings on birds.

Readers who replied to a Guardian callout shared their stories of complex surgeries for their pets, and the thousands of pounds they had spent, with many considering it worth it to keep their beloved animals alive.

Lisa Kucyk, from Swansea, estimated veterinary bills for her dog Nambo at up to 20,000. He had four operations on problems with his legs, including damage to his cruciate ligament, patella and cartilage, before he was diagnosed with degenerative myelopathy, the canine equivalent of motor neurone disease. He now has weekly physiotherapy, acupuncture and laser therapy.

Kucyk said she had bought the highest insurance coverage available for Nambo at the time, but still had to dip into savings to cover his final two operations, at 3,000 each.

Nambo is now paralysed, and Kucyk is able to keep him alive while she works from home, but she knows her physio will tell her when his quality of life has deteriorated to the point he needs to be euthanised.

Kucyk said the bills and care were worth it: Hes a member of our family, and to be honest I prefer my dog over most people. Hes everything to me.

Justine Shotton, the president of the British Veterinary Association, said owners should be assured that vets always conduct a quality-of-life assessment and will advise on health and welfare impact and the costs involved.

She said: In some cases, they may recommend that euthanasia is in the best interests of an animal if their quality of life is low, or if a treatment option may cause them a lot of pain and suffering or carry low chances of success. These are very difficult conversations, which take an emotional toll on all involved.

Read more:

Too many pets kept alive when its not the kindest option, say vets - The Guardian

Well, well, well, that didnt take long, did it?

Spain legalised euthanasia on June 25 last year and already transplant surgeons are using organs from euthanised patients. According to a report in the Spanish magazine Redaccon Mdica, 7 patients donated their organs even though the government has still not release national guidelines for such procedures.

Why the rush?

The head of Spains National Transplant Organization (ONT), Beatriz Domnguez-Gil, said that the ONT intuited [sic] that some euthanasia patients would like to donate their organs. It quickly drafted some guidelines for transplant coordinators so that euthanasia donation could be normalised throughout the country.

Every case has to be treated very delicately, says Sra Domnguez-Gil. If a euthanasia patient wants to donate, he has to do it in a hospital setting, and not at home.

She emphasized that the decision to donate and to provide aid in dying must be independent. Totally independent professionals participate. The provision of aid in dying is channeled and then the donation is considered, she says.

No official figures have been released, but the ABC, a national newspaper estimated that about 50 people had been euthanised in 2021. To have persuaded 7 out of those 50 to donate their organs 14% is an amazing achievement.

Read the rest here:

7 Spaniards who were euthanised last year donated their organs - BioEdge