I never expected Willie to cost more than Luke. Willie came to us for free, a skinny stray pup with questionable parentage. Luke arrived without papers, as well, and never had that look about him that screamed pure bred. He also came with a price tag, $300, that allowed us to separate him from his unscrupulous and abusive owner and prove to Davis that sometimes having a generous heart is more important than having any sense. The toll for owning Luke has only increased with each passing year. Most of the bills come because Luke has taken it upon himself to familiarize himself with the American health care system for pets. Twice he was hospitalized after dog attacks. Despite weighing 95 pounds and living life like most yellow labs, as the friendliest doofus on the block, he has managed to accumulate hundreds of dollars worth of charges for treatments for lacerations and and other battle wounds. I swear, he has NEVER started a fight, and if you compared the damage he inflicted with the damage he got, you would never even believe he fought back, even for a second. Even bigger expenses have come, however, because he refuses to die of old age. At fifteen plus, we sort of expect him to keel over at any point. He doesn't. He may be the fittest geriatric patient at the A&M Small Animal Clinic. I think the young clinicians there plot ways of keeping him going, maybe in hopes of achieving new records. He has had a range of anti-inflammatory drugs (both steroidal and non-steroidal), hydrotherapy, and of course, pain management protocols. All of which come with a price tag.
So, Willie reaching the level of our six million dollar dog seemed unlikely. Two weeks ago, Willie was his normal, irrepressible self. Despite dire predictions to the contrary, he welcomed Erin's new dog Teddy into the household, showed her the ropes, and for the first time in his life had a friend to call his own. He was happy and fulfilled.
Then he took the big fall. You know about Achilles and his heel? Samson and his hair? Baldor and mistletoe? Willie's vulnerability was his eye. He ran up to me in the yard a couple of Saturdays ago, winking. At first I thought he was practicing so he could make a move on the girl dog down the street, but nope, he just had a bit of grass stuck in his eye. I pulled it out and he seemed okay. Over the next few days he started squinting noticeably in one eye, giving us a chance to poke fun at him with new nicknames: Winky, Squint, Pop-Eye. When it started looking worse rather than better, we headed to the vet. Oops, we all felt guilty for taunting him when we learned he had an infected eye ulcer. Some antibiotic eye drops every couple of hours on Wednesday and Thursday should have done the trick, but when the vet checked on Friday (a week ago, not yesterday), he was worse not better. We re-doubled our efforts, unfortunately without progress. The next time the vet saw him, he ordered mandatory kenneling at the clinic. (I fully believe that the vet thought he was dealing with incompetent humans who would lie about treating their dog and sell the unused antibiotics on the black market for cash profit.) Three days of special care at the vets (are you seeing how we think that Willie at age two has a good start at matching Luke's lifetime expenditure record), and he was unambiguously not better. I kept wishing for a secondary market where I could sell his eye goop to offset our vet bills. Yesterday the vet told us he couldn't do anything more. He made arrangements to have Willie transferred to the A&M Small Animal Clinic. The on-call emergency room doctor triaged him quickly (do pediatric hospitals have something to learn from vet hospitals?), and Walter and I (experienced enough in the waiting game to bring journals to read and papers to grade) waited. By 2:00 we headed home, Willie in tow.
By digging around a little the ophthalmologist found a second piece of grass living under the third lid of Willie's eye. (Did I even know dogs had three eyelids: upper, lower, and third? Nope, not until recently). Here is what Willie had carried in his eye for the last two weeks (not the dime, that's just there so you can see the size of the grass and wonder how it had eluded the first vet after repeated exams).
It might not look like it from this photo, but Willie is much better now (thanks in part because Walter and I set the alarm to go off at midnight, 2:00, 4:00, and 6:00 so we could continue the every two hour administration of meds to our boy). The misery expressed so poignantly on his face is from the embarrassment of having to dress like Queen Elisabeth for a least a few more days (you can click on the photo and get a really good idea of what his eye currently looks like).
In other medical news:
In an effort to keep Erin hydrated so that she can tolerate celebrex and cyclophosphamide without ruining her kidneys, I diluted Erin's hemoglobin down pretty effectively this month. Everything else looked quite good.
WBC 4.9 K/uL (4.0-13.5)
ANC 3.3 (1.5-7.8)
HGB 10.4 g/dL (11.5-14.5)
PLT 296 K/uL (140-440)
with
BUN 21 mg/dL (5-26)
Cr 1.0 mg/dL (0.5-1.5)
AST 37 IU/L (0-40)
ALT 20 IU/L (0-40)
All the other chemistries were normal, too. That's the last (hopefully) we will see of the clinic until May 13 when we go to Houston for scans.
No comments:
Post a Comment