In a nutshell, we still don't know what's wrong with George.
The non-nutshell version: I took both dogs, and Melrose, to the vet with me on Thursday to get their annual physicals. I was dumb enough to feed George (on leftover spaghetti meat sauce, which he LOVED) before we headed over to drop off Mr. Magoo at school and then go to the vet from there. After we came out of the school and I was getting Melrose back in her seat, the carsickness hit. I heard that godawful gushing sound as George vomited up his saucy breakfast in the back of the minivan. Lovely. I whipped open the back hatch to get him out before he destroyed any more carpeting, and he stuck his head out and barfed again into the parking lot, just missing my right foot. Meanwhile Gretz, who is probably the smartest of us all, leaped out of the car and tried to escape across the parking lot. One of the teachers helped me catch him, and I then had to try and keep the two dogs contained but not walking in the mess. I grabbed a couple of old towels I luckily had in the car and cleaned up the back as best I could, but it was too late to do much, and the pavement...well, not much I could do with that.
We raced off, and in the midst of being grateful that none of the parents I know witnessed this scene, I realized that it was still peak drop-off time and other parents no doubt would be parking in our spot and having to walk through the mess. So I called the director and apologized profusely that my sick dog had ralphed all over their parking lot, and offered to come back and clean it up as soon as we got done at the vet. She just laughed and said not to worry about it, they'd just get out the hose. Miss J, I owe you big time!
At the vet, I handed over our samples. They weighed George and he had lost 15 pounds, roughly 25% of his regular weight. The poop samples came back negative for worms, but the blood tests showed that both dogs had a strong positive for Lyme disease, which is pretty much a given when you have herds of deer roaming through your woods on a daily basis. So, pricey antibiotics were added to the bill. With physicals and basic tests for both dogs, shots for Gretz, and more in-depth bloodwork for George, we ponied up nearly $500 to continue not knowing the cause of George's problem.
George did have some elevated chemical levels in his kidneys, which resulted in our being referred to the specialty vet center, the place where we've gone for his cancer treatments, the place where everybody knows our name, and you better believe they're always glad we came. Seriously, you can hear that cha-ching! sound every time the doors close. They are sending us for an ultrasound. Yes, I am taking my dog for an ultrasound.
In terms of his trouble walking, the vet thought it probably was not an injury or orthopedic problem. The problem probably is the result of his losing so much muscle mass as part of his overall weight loss. While it was deeply troubling that my dog is starving to the point where his muscle mass is being lost, in another way I was relieved that hopefully he doesn't have some irreversible paralysis or arthritis setting in. If we can get him eating again and gaining weight, hopefully his strength and tone will return.
So Tuesday, I'll be dropping off the kids, working from here during the morning, and schlepping him down to the mega-vet to have his innards probed. Having been through many an ultrasound myself, I was eager to see his insides. I asked if I could watch, but apparently non-human patients are not allowed to have company when they get wanded. So I'll hit the post office nearby, and then chill in the waiting room while he's having his thousand-dollar procedure. Which hopefully isn't going to lead to yet another thousand-dollar procedure.
We thought maybe the Lyme antibiotics were helping him feel a little better - he ate well yesterday, but then we ran out of spaghetti sauce, and he turned up his nose at pretty much every other dog-specific food we've offered since then. He's basically living on our leftovers right now. I'm going to fry him up some discount hamburger and see if he'll deign to try it.
Much as I deplore negligent dog owners, after getting hit with a bill like that, it's really not surprising that many people just don't bother with veterinary care for their animals. How many people can afford $250 for a dog's annual physical and shots? If that's a stretch for you, what happens when the dog gets sick or slices his paw open or eats something not meant to be eaten? Just in the ten years I've had responsibility for a dog, it seems like the costs have skyrocketed. You'd think that things like vaccine and antibiotics would be generic and cheap at this point. Not. The shots seem to get pricier all the time, and the antibiotics are probably fancier than anything my own doctor would give me.
And Frontline! Dang, dawg! All the vets want your dog to be on this miracle anti-tick treatment, it's almost a necessity in this area, but it is SO d*mn expensive. We started using it years ago because one of our dogs had bad reactions to other anti-tick/flea treatments, and now it seems like it's the only thing that works to combat deer ticks. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but it seems to get more expensive every time I buy it. How long does it take for someone to come up with a knockoff, or for a generic version to become available? When you hear about people trying to buy it from a vendor in Australia because it's cheaper overseas, you kind of wonder how much is enough.
While I realize that vets, like any other doctor, have been through years of extensive training and education and deserve to be paid well, you'd also think that to ensure that veterinary care is accessible to most people, the prices wouldn't be so pricey. Would more people care for their dogs proactively and properly if it was cheaper to do so? And you better believe that Frontline would sell like hotcakes (and probably be even more profitable) if it was actually affordable to most people. So many more dogs would be protected from Lyme disease if more people could afford to apply the stuff religiously once a month. At this rate, I may just have to go back to old-fashioned tick and flea collars (at $16 a pop, a real bargain compared to Frontline).
Sadly, you have to wonder many of the same things about health care for humans. The Philadelphia Inquirer has been running this amazing series about people who "fall through the cracks" of our health care system. What's scary is that so many of these stories could happen to any one of us - some combination of a job loss and a catastrophic health crisis could suck you right down into an uninsured morass. When you have a football-sized tumor in your abdomen and people who are supposed to help you keep passing you on like a hot potato because you don't have insurance, and nothing gets done until the newspaper gets involved, that is just tragic and wrong.
The non-nutshell version: I took both dogs, and Melrose, to the vet with me on Thursday to get their annual physicals. I was dumb enough to feed George (on leftover spaghetti meat sauce, which he LOVED) before we headed over to drop off Mr. Magoo at school and then go to the vet from there. After we came out of the school and I was getting Melrose back in her seat, the carsickness hit. I heard that godawful gushing sound as George vomited up his saucy breakfast in the back of the minivan. Lovely. I whipped open the back hatch to get him out before he destroyed any more carpeting, and he stuck his head out and barfed again into the parking lot, just missing my right foot. Meanwhile Gretz, who is probably the smartest of us all, leaped out of the car and tried to escape across the parking lot. One of the teachers helped me catch him, and I then had to try and keep the two dogs contained but not walking in the mess. I grabbed a couple of old towels I luckily had in the car and cleaned up the back as best I could, but it was too late to do much, and the pavement...well, not much I could do with that.
We raced off, and in the midst of being grateful that none of the parents I know witnessed this scene, I realized that it was still peak drop-off time and other parents no doubt would be parking in our spot and having to walk through the mess. So I called the director and apologized profusely that my sick dog had ralphed all over their parking lot, and offered to come back and clean it up as soon as we got done at the vet. She just laughed and said not to worry about it, they'd just get out the hose. Miss J, I owe you big time!
At the vet, I handed over our samples. They weighed George and he had lost 15 pounds, roughly 25% of his regular weight. The poop samples came back negative for worms, but the blood tests showed that both dogs had a strong positive for Lyme disease, which is pretty much a given when you have herds of deer roaming through your woods on a daily basis. So, pricey antibiotics were added to the bill. With physicals and basic tests for both dogs, shots for Gretz, and more in-depth bloodwork for George, we ponied up nearly $500 to continue not knowing the cause of George's problem.
George did have some elevated chemical levels in his kidneys, which resulted in our being referred to the specialty vet center, the place where we've gone for his cancer treatments, the place where everybody knows our name, and you better believe they're always glad we came. Seriously, you can hear that cha-ching! sound every time the doors close. They are sending us for an ultrasound. Yes, I am taking my dog for an ultrasound.
In terms of his trouble walking, the vet thought it probably was not an injury or orthopedic problem. The problem probably is the result of his losing so much muscle mass as part of his overall weight loss. While it was deeply troubling that my dog is starving to the point where his muscle mass is being lost, in another way I was relieved that hopefully he doesn't have some irreversible paralysis or arthritis setting in. If we can get him eating again and gaining weight, hopefully his strength and tone will return.
So Tuesday, I'll be dropping off the kids, working from here during the morning, and schlepping him down to the mega-vet to have his innards probed. Having been through many an ultrasound myself, I was eager to see his insides. I asked if I could watch, but apparently non-human patients are not allowed to have company when they get wanded. So I'll hit the post office nearby, and then chill in the waiting room while he's having his thousand-dollar procedure. Which hopefully isn't going to lead to yet another thousand-dollar procedure.
We thought maybe the Lyme antibiotics were helping him feel a little better - he ate well yesterday, but then we ran out of spaghetti sauce, and he turned up his nose at pretty much every other dog-specific food we've offered since then. He's basically living on our leftovers right now. I'm going to fry him up some discount hamburger and see if he'll deign to try it.
Much as I deplore negligent dog owners, after getting hit with a bill like that, it's really not surprising that many people just don't bother with veterinary care for their animals. How many people can afford $250 for a dog's annual physical and shots? If that's a stretch for you, what happens when the dog gets sick or slices his paw open or eats something not meant to be eaten? Just in the ten years I've had responsibility for a dog, it seems like the costs have skyrocketed. You'd think that things like vaccine and antibiotics would be generic and cheap at this point. Not. The shots seem to get pricier all the time, and the antibiotics are probably fancier than anything my own doctor would give me.
And Frontline! Dang, dawg! All the vets want your dog to be on this miracle anti-tick treatment, it's almost a necessity in this area, but it is SO d*mn expensive. We started using it years ago because one of our dogs had bad reactions to other anti-tick/flea treatments, and now it seems like it's the only thing that works to combat deer ticks. Don't get me wrong, it's great, but it seems to get more expensive every time I buy it. How long does it take for someone to come up with a knockoff, or for a generic version to become available? When you hear about people trying to buy it from a vendor in Australia because it's cheaper overseas, you kind of wonder how much is enough.
While I realize that vets, like any other doctor, have been through years of extensive training and education and deserve to be paid well, you'd also think that to ensure that veterinary care is accessible to most people, the prices wouldn't be so pricey. Would more people care for their dogs proactively and properly if it was cheaper to do so? And you better believe that Frontline would sell like hotcakes (and probably be even more profitable) if it was actually affordable to most people. So many more dogs would be protected from Lyme disease if more people could afford to apply the stuff religiously once a month. At this rate, I may just have to go back to old-fashioned tick and flea collars (at $16 a pop, a real bargain compared to Frontline).
Sadly, you have to wonder many of the same things about health care for humans. The Philadelphia Inquirer has been running this amazing series about people who "fall through the cracks" of our health care system. What's scary is that so many of these stories could happen to any one of us - some combination of a job loss and a catastrophic health crisis could suck you right down into an uninsured morass. When you have a football-sized tumor in your abdomen and people who are supposed to help you keep passing you on like a hot potato because you don't have insurance, and nothing gets done until the newspaper gets involved, that is just tragic and wrong.
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