Observing sedation as a side effect of a pet’s pain medication—or is it something else?
There are a few things that pet guardians rate as important when addressing the needs of their aging or terminally ill pet: they don’t want them to suffer, they want them to eat and they don’t want to see them zorked out and sedated on pain medication. And as a Certified Animal Hospice Practitioner, when I’m supporting families as we are discussing pain management with their pet’s veterinarian, the side effects are top of mind for them. (Some medications are sedating, at least temporarily though in many cases the sedation can be a big help, but I digress.) Those concerns about sleepiness are valid. And when a family gets on board with adequate pain management, I can tell you it’s not a moment too soon. The pet does in fact typically sleep more, but it’s easy to focus so much on how drowsy a pet seems as a side effect of meds and not take into account that maybe, for the first time in a long time, the pet has attained a level of comfort because of the medications doing their inte...