Yesterday was a rough day. I’m not going to lie. Alex could barely get up, let alone go outside to take care of business. I thought to myself oh my god, I put this poor dog through surgery and now I’m going to lose him just like that. It was that bad. He was miserable. He could barely walk once we got him up and he limped and could barely move. When he came in he was shivering. I’m still not sure if it was shivering as a pain response or the fact that he drank a lot of cold water right after he came back in. He was just laying there shivering and would not even make eye contact with me. The shivering stopped after my covering him up and rubbing his body to warm him up, but he did not, and would not, get up. I knew he was not crashing and in need of immediate care because his temperature was way down from what it had been and his color was good with nice pink gums.
I had a call in to Oradell Animal Hospital (the emergency vet) but we still had not heard anything by around noon. Not getting any response there, I called my local vet just so I could be assured that he was indeed stable albeit miserable and didn’t need to be seen. My vet concurred that Alex was in no immediate danger but probably needed more pain meds and most likely an NSAID like Rimydal. He didn’t understand why they would not send him home with it. He was going to try and call them since it was not really his place to either up his pain med or prescribe another drug in case they had a reason they did not want to.
So we waited. And waited. And waited. In the meantime my dog is in pain and feeling like crap. I felt awful too. I called Oradell again and complained after waiting on hold for ten minutes in a queue of calls. I didn’t hear from my local vet either but I imagined he had the same trouble getting through to them that I did. Plus, he sounded like he had a pretty full day of his normal appointments.
Alex started to come around to feeling a bit better after we had to hand feed him while he was laying down for his evening meal. How sad is that for a big dog to not be able to even lift his head to eat? Rick sat on the floor and hand fed him piece by piece of the round steak I had cooked up for him. Pretty sad. But he was eating and drinking (I had to bring the water bowl to him) which was a good sign.
Finally around 6:00 the doctor from Oradell finally called. She thought his pain might be coming from having been manipulated under anesthesia, pulling on his legs to position him, etc. It made sense since I was seeing it mostly on his front legs. She did apologize but it didn’t sit well with me. She said she hadn’t realized I was trying to get in touch with her, so what good is their system I ask you? At one point the person who answered the phone and I let loose on about it all said that after all if I was concerned my dog was not well I should bring him in. Right. Bring in my dog that is not ambulatory at this point to sit in your office for how many hours before he could be seen? Don’t think so! The vet told me his pain dosage was the absolute minimum for a dog his size, so I should increase the dosage. Duh! Also that if he was not improved to call back the next day and let her know so she could fax over a prescription for an NSAID to my local vet. I pretty snarkily asked her how I should go about doing that in a way that was better than the way I tried to contact her today?
I called my vet’s office after I had talked to her and let them know that Dr. Louer didn’t need to call me and gave them the low-down on what was going on. About a half hour later Dr. Louer called anyway, as I kind of thought he would. He talked mostly to Rick. This was around 6:30 p.m. He said he had tried to contact them but he couldn’t hold for ten minutes until they answered his call. He was pretty disgusted. Around 8:00 p.m. the phone rang again with Dr. Louer on the other end. He apparently had called and (in my mind) reamed the other vet out for not getting back with us and for not prescribing what he thought were the correct meds in the first place. She countered with saying that Alex was doing so well when they released him that they didn’t think he needed the additional meds. I told him that she wanted me to call back the following day regarding how he was doing and if he did indeed need the Rimadyl, and Dr. Louer, bless his heart, just said he was writing me a prescription for Rimadyl that I could pick up in the morning. He had obviously had enough of the other vet!
We upped his pain med overnight and Alex greeted us with wagging tail and got up much better than he had the previous day. His continued improvement over today has made my heart glad. He moves around from room to room, goes outside for business without incident (still a little ouchy) and is so much better. This afternoon when I went outside to get the mail he got up and was looking out the window barking at me! Hurray! He also was sitting and waiting to be fed and ate out of his bowl on the stand without coaxing. After that we had a walk on the leash into the backyard with me holding him back from breaking into a trot!
Go Alex!
I feel so much better today than I did with all the stress yesterday. And, so does poor Alex!
We are looking forward to Daylight Savings Time starting on Monday and drives in Mia (whose insurance we just turned back on after the winter). And, hopefully a good outcome of the biopsies. Fingers and paws crossed.
Thank you all so much for caring. Alex thanks you too!
Posted by Lynne on 03/07/2012 at 02:49 PM
Filed under:
Daily Life •
My thoughts •
Dogs
Well thank goodness for the improvement… How frustrating that your emergency care is so unresponsive. Nothing worse than not being heard or paid attention to when an animal is suffering. Kisses for Alex!