A Weekend at The Emergency Vet

There’s nothing quite like spending your weekend at the Emergency Vet. Yep… a big fat U G H… It’s a combo of:

• Boring: you end up having to sit in uncomfortable chairs for what seems like an eternity
• Expensive: Emergency vets are like Emergency Hospitals. Thing just cost more when there is a rush.
• Anxiety: Inducing: you’re scared about your dog’s health and about how much it’s going to cost.

It’s indeed all these things and more wrapped into one package.

Gratefully I think Ranger is now okay, I’m still not sure what was/is wrong with him, but he’s stable. However it wasn’t always so clear, in fact I was pretty freaked out…here’s the break down of the weekend…

Ranger threw up or really spit up on Thursday, but seemed totally fine except for a bit of cough on Friday. Then at about 2am on Saturday morning, and again at 6am he awoke with more explosive hacks and some spit-ups. While he wasn’t lethargic- a telltale sign that your dog is not doing well and you have to go to the vet immediately- I decided Ranger really needed to go to the vet and he needed to go at that moment, i.e. he couldn’t wait until regular vets opened at 9am.

Ranger

I would have preferred to wait-emergency vet hospital visits are (as seen above) boring, expensive and anxiety producing-but Ranger’s regular vet wasn’t even open on weekends so basically I weighed the options, i.e. knowing I was going to get him seen right away but would be paying for that privilege, vs. getting him seen by a vet I knew but that still wasn’t his own a few hours later for about 40% less up-front.

Ugh again, I obviously chose the former and headed west down Santa Monica boulevard towards Sepulveda-the Veterinary Hospital Homeland-hoping for the best and still unsure if I made the right decision. See, I’m a bit of a Jewish mom when it comes to my dogs’ healthcare. This can be beneficial, as I know that I had my girl Bella as long and comfortable of a life as possible because I was hawkish about her health, but the flip side is that it can get insanely expensive.

Was I being overly cautious and neurotic, or was I being careful? I debated even as I was filling out the intake form at the Emergency vet. Thankfully I have insurance, which made me feel much better about going for the more expensive option.

Everyone at the emergency hospital (I went to ASEC) was very nice, and the vet I got assigned was so sweet and smart-she went to PENN after all (I happen to grab my PENN sweatshirt as I was getting dressed so we bonded immediately.)

University of Pennsylvania

But even as nice as everyone was, it’s just an overwhelming experience: between the estimates they give you and the options for treatment… do you keep them in the hospital or take them home for observation… do I go with the expensive blood panel or do a more limited one and then see…all that while you’re worrying about your dog’s health as you watch a stream of other dogs and cats facing some scary illnesses come through the door. With my rescue work and Bella, I’ve gone through the vet hospital experience more times than I care to think about, but you really never get used to it. It’s really enough to make your lose your mind.

At about 6:30am on Saturday they took Ranger back to get x-rays and do some other diagnostic tests. When they came back the very nice vet showed me what appeared to be “a fabric-patterned object” in his GI track. But it was unclear if this was what was causing him to hack and wheeze. His tummy was also full of poop so they needed to get that to pass so they could get a better view.  So they asked me to come back at noon.

I went and took a Pilates class that I had scheduled at 10:30, returning at noon upon which time they asked me to come back again because they had a dire emergency to deal with. While some people might have gotten upset at this delay, I knew that this meant that Ranger was stable enough to be back-burnered for a bit, so I went home, watched super disturbing episode of Toddlers & Tiaras (in case you don’t know about this show, it’s a disturbing look at the world of Pageants. It’s on TLC and I’m obsessed) and then came back at 2pm.

Toddlers & Tiaras

In that time the doctors witnessed one of his wheeze-fits and while they were still concerned about the GI issue, it was clear that whatever was going on with him was directly affecting his respiratory system and that is what needed to be dealt with. Gratefully Ranger still wanted to play and eat and eat some more so while they were worried that they didn’t know what was wrong, his clinical signs were pretty good.

So they sent me home with a cough suppressant and antibiotics. I could have left him at the vet for observation but who wants to leave their babies if they don’t have to-particularly for hundreds of dollars a day. This goes back to that expensive part that makes Emergency vets so challenging. They literally take a credit card deposit from every client in the amount that the vet anticipates your animal’s treatment is going to cost in advance of the treatment really even getting started. They do this because-and I know that this happens all the time because in rescue we get dogs that have been dumped at Emergency vets quite a lot, so they’re not making it up-people will simply leave a dog if the cost is too high. People literally take off and leave the vet to eat the cost, and care for the pet.

So back to the rundown… after we went home around 4ish, we ended up back at about 7:30pm-ish because Ranger’s hacking cough was just downright scary.

I was there with him until about 11pm when were discharged with new meds that would hopefully soothe him. Unfortunately they didn’t and we ended up back at 2:30ish.

Ranger stayed from 2:30am until about 5:30pm Sunday when I picked him up with different meds but still no new diagnosis. Thankfully though there was a decrease in the intensity of his coughing fits and some pending tests that might tell us if he has some sort of cooties.

The vets gave me instructions to keep him quiet and give him a combo of meds that should ease him, and the suggestion to bring him to his regular vet for follow-up. So we headed home and straight to bed to watch the Emmy’s together under the covers.

Ranger only woke up about every two hours or so with some coughs and the meds they gave me to give him, did seem to help soothe him. Too bad they didn’t give me any meds to help me through not having slept much over the weekend… but I guess that would have been somewhat illegal, appreciated but illegal.

Ranger is currently spending the day at his regular vet where I will be picking him up after work. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a new diagnosis… I’ll keep you posted…

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It’s Confirmed: I Love Dogs

Betsy Rosenfeld Class of 1995'ish

I went back to visit my alma mater, The University of Pennsylvania last week and in the few short hours I was there, I had one of those “DUH” realizations. That just makes you kind of laugh at yourself that you have missed such an obvious truth for so long. In this case, it was my truth that I love dogs, and how much their sheer presence impacts me.

I was not exactly a good student in college. I worked harder at not studying than I would have had to if I had just done the assigned work. But truly, I kind of hated the school part of school. Sitting still, reading endless pages of meaningless (or what I assumed would have been meaningless as I didn’t read them) assigned texts and writing papers in stodgy academic speak… YUCK. Instead I concentrated on boys, parties, and manipulating the PENN educational system to my benefit…who else turned 3 weeks in Greece and Turkey (including 5 days on a cruise) into 2 classes-worth of credits.

Halloween 1993

In the midst of this mire of academic waste, sorry mom and dad, a few classes do stand out… European Film… it reminded me of my high school film class at Crossroads, and my favorite teacher Jim Hosney. Women in Film because I dated my T.A. (technically after I turned in my last paper but I did get an A-) and finally a Communication class my senior year about First Amendment and Free Speech.

I always think of that class as a time when I actually did the assigned reading and participated in class. (As an aside, Elizabeth Banks was also in that class.) While I happen to now work for a first amendment scholar (Tracy Westen at the Center for Governmental Studies www.cgs.org) it doesn’t have much to with my later use of the material. To tell you truth I kind of never thought much about why I decided to pay attention in that class, that is not until last week’s visit to PENN when I felt compelled to seek out the professor of that class. Dr. Carolyn Marvin did I finally make the connection.

Over coffee, I showed her my book and we talked about what I’d been doing for the last (gasp) 14 years.

If you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering what the hell this has to do with my love of dogs. Well, Dr. Marvin aside from being an amazingly dynamic woman with a fantastic southern accent and a sassy attitude who taught an amazing class, she had a German Shepherd named Megan that came to class each week.

I of course remembered Megan fondly– she was an older shepherd girl with a fluffy coat belly made for tummy rubs—however it wasn’t until Dr. Marvin jokingly suggested that maybe it was Megan that helped me concentrate in her class that I made the connection.

Could it be that having a Megan in class pushed things over the top for me? Could being able to pet her while listening to a lecture, or give her a quick pat before taking a test have put me at ease and lessened the stress of school for me enough that I got past my otherwise ADD approach to school?

Abso-effin-lutely.

Just as dogs just have a calming presence for heart patients, for me, the presence of a dog can make you, or at least me, go above and beyond where I might have otherwise stopped. And nothing is a better testament to that than my book, The Complete Single’s Guide to Being A Dog Owner.

The Complete Single's Guide to Being A Dog Owner

For a girl who would have an anxiety attack about writing a 1000 word paper in school, I turned in the equivalent of 183 such papers when turning in my manuscript. And they were good papers too!

So I guess the moral of this little story is for the love of a good dog you can do almost anything!

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