I'll do my own dentals on my pets, but I haven't done their surgeries. I had a mass (benign) removed from my old man cat who is my heart pet - I knew I would be shaky and not at all objective if anything went wrong. So I asked one of the other doctors to do it for me. I can forgive others if any of my pets were to die under anesthesia, but I don't think I could forgive myself.
Haha I’m the other way. I won’t put it on anyone else I know. I don’t ever want to question what my friends did if things go wrong. Or have them think I did.
If I’m nervous enough about it, I have a specialist do it. That’s how my heart kitty ended up with two dentals with dentists before I was confident enough to do it myself. I also do a **** ton of surgeries and probably do more FB, cystotomies, amps, and PUs than most GPs. I typically have more surgical experience than the colleagues I work with. I don’t have too many friends who feel comfortable with these surgeries, and more often than not, I’m the one walking colleagues through them so for my own pets I just do them myself. If I worked regularly with a highly skilled GP surgeon that I could lean on, it would be different I think. If I had a dog with a MCT or something similar, I would either do it myself or send to a surgeon depending on location. So far I haven’t had any come back with dirty margins when attempting surgical cure due to careful case selection. If I cut it and got dirty margins (provided I thought we had a reasonable shot), I would just regret not having sent my pet to a surgeon or consulting onco first. I’d only have myself to blame and that’s fine with me. If I had a colleague cut it and got dirty margins, I would probably regret not cutting myself, and I’m sure it would make my colleague feel horrible too.
For me, I feel like procedures are fairly straightforward and I feel comfortable doing them on my pets. I can compartmentalize pretty well. But medical cases I tend to get an IM specialist involved sooner rather than later, esp if I think a condition might be life limiting. The second I get the spidey senses that my pet might be dying, I lose it. With my heart kitty, I went to two internists who were like, “I dunno what you’re talking about, there’s nothing here to suggest your cat’s dying” during the initial consult. Well... that’s why I was there. The labwork was vague and initial cancer hunt was clear, but I had a hunch. Sure enough, she was death within two months. I would have driven myself crazy if I hadn’t stepped away from being her doctor early on. I just needed to be mom.
But then if I had insurance to cover them, and could just have a tertiary referral facility deal with surgery and hospitalize after the procedure, and it cost me no more than $1500, I think I’ll start punting them