Summer hiatus

In case you haven't noticed, none of our esteemed VBB collaboraters, have posted recently. It isn't that nothing interesting has happened, but summer things do get in the way of activities like this. Anyway, I have been dealing with some of the usual mundane medical issues while doing a brief foray into day practice. Yes, I'm usually doing ER work at night. A practice begged for my help, as they were left without a DVM, & I reluctantly obliged.

After all there years, it is amazing to find people who still don't know about vaccinating dogs & cats for infectious diseases or heartworm prevention. After seeing several cases each week of canine parvo & feline URI & canine heartworm disease, I am beginning to wonder if I am caught in a time warp taking me back 30 years. Yeah, I know the day practice people see this daily too, but I've been out of the loop, so to speak.

You do have to feel sorry for people who bought a puppy from a friend* one day & have it get very sick the next day. It had parvo & was very thin on top of that ( partly due to the hookworms found on fecal exam ). The owners couldn't afford to hospitalize, so we did out patient treatment with a very guarded prognosis. Sadly, it died overnite. Obviously, these people bought a pup incubating parvo & loaded with hookworms.

Then, there was the poor pooch diagnosed with heartworms during a routine visit for vaccines & to see about getting on flea/tick & HW preventive. When the owners found out it would cost about $800 for the whole HW treatment, they decided to go home & think about it......still waiting for their decision. I suspect this pet may linger for quite a while without treatment. My next option would be to put her on preventive with all the extreme warnings about giving it to HW Positive dogs.

Dealing with people, whose pets are not usually in crisis ( the typical ER scenario ), has mostly been more pleasant & rewarding. Healthy kitties & puppies are much more fun to be around, even though I have to stick needles in them for vaccines. hah.

Finally, I've also gotten to do some routine day surgeries, like OHEs & castrations. Usually, I'm doing emergency nite surgeries, like laceration or GDVs or c-sections & such. Sometimes, a routine* OHE can be more problematic than a GDV. lol.

That's all I've got this week. Hope it wasn't too boring for those who follow this blog. Hopefully, something more exciting will happen, when I get back to ER work this weekend or my colleagues will have a good story to share here.. :)