Hi. I'm new to this board. I live in New York City. I have had a pretty awful vet (and pet) experience in the past two weeks, and thought someone would know what to do, would have words of encouragement.. etc. Thanks in advance. It's somewhat long...This is taken directly from a letter I sent to my mom, so bear with me. My cat is a 6-year-old female garden variety mutt with the sweetest temperament you could ever ask for. She'd pretty much collapsed after three or four days of really violent sneezing. Nesting, not eating, not going to box, etc. We brought her in and the vet told us after X-rays that she had a TON of bladder stones. This had nothing to do with the sneezing whatsoever, but he pointed out that there was indeed a line of stones marching down her urethra from her bladder. It was a pretty incredible x-ray photo. They looked like they'd been made in a factory or something, a line of them marching all the way down. We thought we might as well get them taken care of, since she was more than likely in INCREDIBLE pain, as anyone who's had stones can attest. From there, things just got... (letter starts here)
.. Bad bad bad. So, she (my cat) was doing GREAT when she got home from surgery. UNTIL.... She appeared to be straining to defecate. Vet told us to bring her back in.
{A little background: The place we take the two cats is a clinic run by two vets. They alternate days off and on duty. The Guy (G.) is venerated amongst the New York media as being one of the better vets in the city. The other is a Lady (L.) who did the surgery and has a little less of a reputation. I trust the hell out of L. Whenever I meet or talk with G., however, I get this heavy gut feeling of distrust. I trust my gut. It's not steered me wrong on character judgements before. I don't know why, but he just struck me as being down for the cash, and as having a little bit of a God-complex.
Nicole (my wife) told me I was being paranoid and a little prejudiced, so I took my feeling with a grain of salt.
As I said, the cat was straining at the box, so we called the vet, who turned out to be G. that day. He told us to bring her in. Remember, she was JUST CONSTIPATED at this point. We took her in, where she got 3 (THREE!!) enemas all told before she managed to let go of her package. When we got there to take her home, G. had disappeared, leaving us with no information about what had happened. The staff on duty had no idea if she was supposed to be taking a new antibiotic (which she was). They actually had to call G. and ask him what was going on with our cat. So we got what we needed, filled the prescription and went home with our animal.
We got home, and I noticed the cat was really messed up. She had a pronounced tremor, was stepping gingerly around, looking like she'd just been punked with a refrigerator.
We chalked it up to the fact that she'd basically just had the equivalent of an alien abduction, complete with anal probes, and let her rest.
Over the course of the next 5 days, the cat did not act nearly as perky as she did the night she came home from the original surgery. In fact, she showed absolutely NO proclivity towards healing. She was not acting like a cat on the mend. She was acting like a cat just holding on. No grooming, no real eating (I had to feed her baby food by spoon), no vocalizations, no real movement, no nothing that cats do when they're OK. End of the week, she'd stopped everything. Wouldn't even drink water. I had to get a turkey-baster style syringe, grab her and force a squirt down her gullet every two hours. I held a glass of water in front of her nose, but she would just turn away. We called the vet when she went to the dresser in the bedroom and hunkered down underneath it. I was under the impression that this sort of behavior usually means the animal has given up and gone to a quiet, dark place to expire. We grabbed her and took her back to the vet, where G. was on duty.
Some time during this, I started getting a baaad feeling about the outcome of things. The animal had been cut open, reamed out, and visited with a few other offenses that she'd never had to contend with before in her life, and was now on her way back for more. To me, the odds against recovery were piling up exponentially. I voiced my concerns and was promptly shouted down by those closest to me as pessimism.
So back she went. G. took her and kept her for about 6 hours, sending us home. We'd told him about the possible dehydration, the lack of eating, toilet, grooming, etc. He called back, telling us that everything showed up normally, and that he'd ordered some blood work done on her, and that (here I begin to get murderously angry) she showed NO DEHYDRATION. I asked him how she couldn't be dehydrated when she wasn't drinking farging WATER, man? He replied that somehow I had MISSED her trips to the water bowl. That she'd slipped under my nose somehow and quenched her thirst while I had diddled myself obliviously. He had us come and get her. We brought her home, where she acted very happy to be home, and then promptly slipped back into her funk. She was also sneezing violently; huge, wet contractions that looked painful as hell and didn't appear to offer relief from whatever was bothering her nose.
The sneezing had been an on-again-off-again thing between her and her sister for a week or so. We thought it was some kind of allergy, environmentally caused, so Nicole compulsively cleaned the apartment, getting every speck of dirt she could find, looking for mold, looking for rat-droppings, ANYTHING. She was meticulous. We also knocked out new soaps, shampoo, foods, etc.; trying to eliminate all new introductions into the apartment. No dice. We are going to move as soon as possible now.
The next day, L. calls us and tells us to bring her back in, that SHE'D like a look at the cat herself. We were blown away that she wasn't briefed by her partner. She was actually looking at the notes as she talked to me, so she was not up on what was going on.
That's it so far. We don't know what's going to happen. L. called us and told us that our cat was "unravelling." Also "I'm worried" and the classic "I'm going to do whatever I can to get to the bottom of this," as well as "She's such a sweet-tempered cat. SHE DOESN'T DESERVE THIS." Yeah. I'm with you there, baby. I'm now pretty convinced that things are well past iffy. When we talk with the vet next, I'm asking about chances. If they look bad, I'm requesting painkillers and bringing the cat home so that she'll be comfortable and not in alien and hostile surroundings. Also, and I hate mentioning this, there is the bill for all this. I've called the cutoff for what's enough to spend, and we're just about there. Again, if we reach that point, I'm getting kitty morphine and taking the cat home.
I'm convinced that the enemas she got somehow blew her immune system down completely, or even ruptured her bowel, opening her up to internal bleeding. We'll see. I should keep a positive attitude, I guess. When you distrust the doctor, it's pretty hard to keep a full-glass mentality.
.. Bad bad bad. So, she (my cat) was doing GREAT when she got home from surgery. UNTIL.... She appeared to be straining to defecate. Vet told us to bring her back in.
{A little background: The place we take the two cats is a clinic run by two vets. They alternate days off and on duty. The Guy (G.) is venerated amongst the New York media as being one of the better vets in the city. The other is a Lady (L.) who did the surgery and has a little less of a reputation. I trust the hell out of L. Whenever I meet or talk with G., however, I get this heavy gut feeling of distrust. I trust my gut. It's not steered me wrong on character judgements before. I don't know why, but he just struck me as being down for the cash, and as having a little bit of a God-complex.
Nicole (my wife) told me I was being paranoid and a little prejudiced, so I took my feeling with a grain of salt.
As I said, the cat was straining at the box, so we called the vet, who turned out to be G. that day. He told us to bring her in. Remember, she was JUST CONSTIPATED at this point. We took her in, where she got 3 (THREE!!) enemas all told before she managed to let go of her package. When we got there to take her home, G. had disappeared, leaving us with no information about what had happened. The staff on duty had no idea if she was supposed to be taking a new antibiotic (which she was). They actually had to call G. and ask him what was going on with our cat. So we got what we needed, filled the prescription and went home with our animal.
We got home, and I noticed the cat was really messed up. She had a pronounced tremor, was stepping gingerly around, looking like she'd just been punked with a refrigerator.
We chalked it up to the fact that she'd basically just had the equivalent of an alien abduction, complete with anal probes, and let her rest.
Over the course of the next 5 days, the cat did not act nearly as perky as she did the night she came home from the original surgery. In fact, she showed absolutely NO proclivity towards healing. She was not acting like a cat on the mend. She was acting like a cat just holding on. No grooming, no real eating (I had to feed her baby food by spoon), no vocalizations, no real movement, no nothing that cats do when they're OK. End of the week, she'd stopped everything. Wouldn't even drink water. I had to get a turkey-baster style syringe, grab her and force a squirt down her gullet every two hours. I held a glass of water in front of her nose, but she would just turn away. We called the vet when she went to the dresser in the bedroom and hunkered down underneath it. I was under the impression that this sort of behavior usually means the animal has given up and gone to a quiet, dark place to expire. We grabbed her and took her back to the vet, where G. was on duty.
Some time during this, I started getting a baaad feeling about the outcome of things. The animal had been cut open, reamed out, and visited with a few other offenses that she'd never had to contend with before in her life, and was now on her way back for more. To me, the odds against recovery were piling up exponentially. I voiced my concerns and was promptly shouted down by those closest to me as pessimism.
So back she went. G. took her and kept her for about 6 hours, sending us home. We'd told him about the possible dehydration, the lack of eating, toilet, grooming, etc. He called back, telling us that everything showed up normally, and that he'd ordered some blood work done on her, and that (here I begin to get murderously angry) she showed NO DEHYDRATION. I asked him how she couldn't be dehydrated when she wasn't drinking farging WATER, man? He replied that somehow I had MISSED her trips to the water bowl. That she'd slipped under my nose somehow and quenched her thirst while I had diddled myself obliviously. He had us come and get her. We brought her home, where she acted very happy to be home, and then promptly slipped back into her funk. She was also sneezing violently; huge, wet contractions that looked painful as hell and didn't appear to offer relief from whatever was bothering her nose.
The sneezing had been an on-again-off-again thing between her and her sister for a week or so. We thought it was some kind of allergy, environmentally caused, so Nicole compulsively cleaned the apartment, getting every speck of dirt she could find, looking for mold, looking for rat-droppings, ANYTHING. She was meticulous. We also knocked out new soaps, shampoo, foods, etc.; trying to eliminate all new introductions into the apartment. No dice. We are going to move as soon as possible now.
The next day, L. calls us and tells us to bring her back in, that SHE'D like a look at the cat herself. We were blown away that she wasn't briefed by her partner. She was actually looking at the notes as she talked to me, so she was not up on what was going on.
That's it so far. We don't know what's going to happen. L. called us and told us that our cat was "unravelling." Also "I'm worried" and the classic "I'm going to do whatever I can to get to the bottom of this," as well as "She's such a sweet-tempered cat. SHE DOESN'T DESERVE THIS." Yeah. I'm with you there, baby. I'm now pretty convinced that things are well past iffy. When we talk with the vet next, I'm asking about chances. If they look bad, I'm requesting painkillers and bringing the cat home so that she'll be comfortable and not in alien and hostile surroundings. Also, and I hate mentioning this, there is the bill for all this. I've called the cutoff for what's enough to spend, and we're just about there. Again, if we reach that point, I'm getting kitty morphine and taking the cat home.
I'm convinced that the enemas she got somehow blew her immune system down completely, or even ruptured her bowel, opening her up to internal bleeding. We'll see. I should keep a positive attitude, I guess. When you distrust the doctor, it's pretty hard to keep a full-glass mentality.
