Another vet visit, another dollar

Hapi, 8 years ago

Hapi had her annual check-up at the vet's a couple of days ago. I also picked up a big bag of special dog food for her at the same place, and between that, the vaccinations and a blood panel, the bill came to well over $400. I mentioned that to a couple of people who reacted in shock about how much vets charge, but my answer to that is that since we never see our routine medical bills we probably would be paying that and thensome for routine healthcare for ourselves. The vet bill is probably on a par with what we would be paying if we didn't have healthcare coverage. But I digress.

I really only wanted one vaccination (for lepto, because she drinks dirty water), but the vet talked me into several others. The blood panel was so I could get another prescription for an NSAID for her arthritis. Six months worth of the NSAID is cheaper than the blood panel she has to have in order to get the meds. I go to this particular vet clinic because I like the owner veterinarian, I find her a nice mix of compassion and pragmatism, but her partner is the one I saw and she is a whole other kettle of fish. Note to self, don't do that again!

Aside from any bad news it takes me a couple of days to recover from the encounter with this particular vet. It is mostly how much she talks, you can't get a word in edgewise and after fifteen minutes of listening you are exhausted. Most of what she says is pretty uninformative, so just when you are drifting off into a daze she mentions one important thing in passing and if you've fallen asleep you miss it.

The vet said she couldn't renew the NSAID prescription without positive bloodwork results, so I was kind of dreading that. And because they are so busy it took the vet a couple of days to relay the results to me. I used to get the results within hours of the office visit. The results turned out to be slightly negative, but not negative enough for the vet to cancel the prescription. Hapi has elevated liver markers and slight anemia, along with worse arthritis, muscle wasting and hair loss. Since the vet said it might be more serious if she showed loss of appetite and/or lethargy, I decided not to mention the lethargy. But definitely no loss of appetite.

Hiro and Hapi, 10 years ago

Anyway, not a clean bill of health but I wasn't expecting one either. The bloodwork results could all be explained by simple aging, or they could be signs of the same cancer that killed Hiro. The vet talked about doing further tests and all I could see was $$$. She's old! Something's going to get her! Do I need to spend $$$ just to find out what exactly that will be? I'm sure not putting her through chemo or surgery! Just her anti-tick medication knocked her sideways for a day or two. I sure wish they'd told me beforehand that old dogs do better with the skin-applied stuff than the oral stuff.

I'm just venting now. I think I had non-stop dreams last night due to that vet visit. But Hapi will probably never have another vaccination, except maybe for lepto if she is still here next summer. The bloodwork has to be done again in six months time, I will make a point of getting an appointment with her regular vet for that. Otherwise I'll have to go to another vet clinic, or else switch her to CBD oil which I don't need a prescription for.