The Margaret Atwood book is now pretty well-travelled. Pasadena (Richard) to Inglewood (me) to Orlando (Pittcon) to Waterloo, Ontario, returning the book more or less to its own setting.
"No family wants to subject its already sick pet to uncomfortable tests or dump thousands of dollars into dead-end diagnostics. So why do we do that to our grandparents?"
"In some ways, veterinary practice today is not that different from the practice of human medicine before insurance companies dictated policy and the threat of lawsuits guided decisions."