Spaying - Monitoring and Pain Medicine?

I took Nova in for spaying this morning. As part of the procedure, they have a sort of monitoring. I don't remember what exactly they do, but one of the things is to give her fluids through an IV. I have not heard of this before and was surprised to see that it cost twice as much as the spay procedure itself. Is anyone familiar with this?

As an option, they asked me if I would like for her to receive pain medication after the surgery and for taking home. Previously, the vet gave me some "pet tinic" (which I understand to be a vitamin supplement), but I have heard that this is good for pain. I know that I would like some pain medicine for myself if I had had surgery! Does anyone have any experience with this? I've not heard of these things before, but they seem to make sense.

My Cats never came home with any Pain Meds. I can not remember is they got a Pain Shot or not. They came Home the same day.

I just took a little semi feral in today. IV during the spay - not after, stays overnight, did get pain medicine shot.

Unless she's a high risk spay (some are too sensitive), I wouldn't think she'd need the IV after.

That's awesome they do an IV! Really all pets should be on fluids before they go under... not to mention if they're trying to die you can give them the meds they need to bring them back.

We only place IVs if the pet is over 8 or has known health problems, but I think it's really cool your vet did that anyway. We don't always do it mainly to keep the cost down, because most young pets do fine under anesthesia, but it's still good to do, especially if the vet takes a long time in surgery. [some people are slower than others].

As far as pain meds we give a shot of buprenex while they are waking up and send home Tramadol.

It seems excessive for them to charge you double the spay amount just for the IV. I would expect that when I asked for the price of a spay that the price quoted would be for the complete job, i.e., anaesthesia, procedure and meds so I would be pretty upset having to end up paying 3 times what I was quoted which is what this amounts to.

Yep my vet does the monitoring, fluids, Sevoflurane anesthesia, and the pain meds. They are really concerned with pain management at the clinic. When I had my girl spayed 6 months ago they used a laser as well. She came home the same day as her surgery and she wanted to play the minute she got home and didn't even appear as if she had been under anesthesia. They give you a whole breakdown of the cost well before the surgery so I wasn't shocked or anything.