Thursday, September 1, 2016

New Veterinarian Office

A lot has happened since my last blog post, especially with the vet office. We'd been going to my last vet office since 2010.  I was there so often I know most of the staff personally. 3 of the techs have been my cats sitters and even though 2 of them have moved we still texts or talk on facebook about my cats.  I really have great relationships with them. Well... the vet finally was able to retire and sell his business.  The new vet came in and boy were things changed.  She pulled Merry off Metacam first thing which didn't surprise me.  The old vet had him on it for only about 2 months but I know there is a black box warning for cats since it can really hurt their kidneys. The new vet wanted to do laser therapy, acupuncture, a shot for me to take home that inserts gel on his joins, a supplement, and a narcotic. Ughhhh I already pay so much money for his other meds for his diabetes I just couldn't do all that.  I did get the supplement and the pain med.  Merry is really old now, and honestly if his arthritis looks so bad that he can't get around happily then I'll just have to put him down.

Anyways... the new vet ended up requesting that I bring Merry in.  She wanted to do a free consultation.  It was odd to me that she didn't want to see Pippin also since they have pretty much the same issues.  I took Merry in and she was really wanted me to switch their food to wet food.  She said each cat would need 3 cans a day.  So that's 180 cans a month.... I would guess that's going to be at least $150 a month doubling the amount I pay on food now.  Plus Merry is regulated really well on dry food and I'm afraid to switch him.  OK... fine.  So I had already made up my mind that I wasn't going to do that.  Then I did a glucose curve on the cats.  I did it every three hours for a 12 hour period.  Now that they are more regulated my original vet set this was fine to do instead of the every 2 hours for 12 hours.  I emailed the results of this test and then I got a snarky email back about how I did the curve completely wrong and that I needed to poke their ears every hour for 12 hours.  That's 12 pokes in their little ears.  After this email I googled cat glucose curves and the information I found was ever 2-3 hours.  So I was doing it correctly.  Then one of my vet tech friends (who got me my records for the new vet) told me a lot of long term clients are leaving because of the new vet's bedside manner. This tech also told me that the doctor had without insulin refill for another client who had decided to find another vet.  I was shocked at this because insulin is life saving.  Not just some vitamin.  I knew I had to go.

Changing vets is not easy if you have special needs cats.  You have already established records at the old vet.  When you switch vets you have to do a whole new wellness visit.  So there went $120 for both cats.  Then since Pippin's glucose is high and he's already on 6 units of Prozinc the new vet wanted to get some more current blood work on him just to see if something is triggering it, another $140.  The results came back just find so now we are going to try Pippin on 7 units of Prozinc. So $260 to switch vets.  Another unexpected cost of having diabetic cats. I never imagined it would be as expensive as it is.  I am happy with the new vet office.  I am already more comfortable there then I was so that's good.  I recommend if you ever feel it in your gut to switch vets just do it. In the end it'll be worth it.