Pets good for what ails you
By Marty Becker
Knight Ridder News Service
"I love you" are words that 63 percent of pet owners say to their pets at least daily. Even more dramatically, 83 percent refer to themselves as their pet's mom or dad, according to the same American Animal Hospital Association survey.
Advertiser library photo • June 23, 2002
Dr. Edward T. Creagan, a cancer specialist and professor at the Mayo Clinic Medical School, has been known to prescribe pets for his patients to help them cope with the rigors of treatment. Creagan's new book is just out: "How Not to Be My Patient: A Physician's Secrets to Staying Healthy and Surviving Any Diagnosis" (Health Communications, Inc.). The book is full of astute observations of how to stay healthy.
Dogs and other pets can help patients cope with the rigors of treatment.
Creagan has observed patients who survive and thrive despite the scariest diagnosis of all — cancer.
"Almost every day in the clinic, I see patients who do not conform to what is described in medical textbooks. These people had dreadful prognoses based upon a pathology report, a CT scan, or what we observed in the operating room, yet they continue to do amazingly well," Creagan writes.
"We sample blood and look for patterns. But there does not seem to be a consistent theme in the laboratory studies. The answer to their success lies elsewhere," he told me.
What he found in these patients with amazing resilience was a sense of connectedness, a long-term relationship with spouses or partners or a pet. There's something about a wagging tail or purring cat that is among the most powerful medicines known to humankind. Research continues to show that pets keep their owners happy, healthy, and active, and Creagan's observations bear this out.
As he said in his book, "I consider getting a pet to be one of the easiest and most rewarding ways of living a longer, healthier life."
Pets have a positive influence on our health because we all need something to live for and something to focus on besides ourselves.
In his clinical practice, Creagan notes pets' names in patients' medical records, and asks about the pets when they return. He finds this eases some patients' anxiety about treatment. He sees pet photos at hospital bedsides, and said the need to get home to feed Boots or walk Reggie is often a motivating factor for patients to dig deep for inner strength.
Creagan's own dog, a Golden Retriever named Brinkley, also is a survivor. As a pup, his rear right leg was so badly injured it had been amputated.
"Those big brown eyes looked up at us, and things have never been quite the same," he said. "This little creature for whom life was very unfair offers unconditional love, unconditional acceptance and unconditional forgiveness."
Brinkley and his animal friends offer us all some of the best medicine money can buy — so says a skilled doctor who sees the results of the healing power of pets every day.
