Tag Archives: veterinarians

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Hurling into 2016…

If you read my main blog, you might have read about my unfortunate New Year’s Day.  I won’t get into what I wrote on that post because it involves descriptions of body functions that not everyone wants to read about.  What we did end up doing yesterday was taking our dog, Zane, to the vet.

On New Year’s Eve, Bill cooked beef strips for us.  They turned out great.  Zane likes beef, but he can’t eat much of it because sometimes it upsets his stomach.  Most of the time, he can have a little piece and be just fine.  We have to be careful, though, because if he gets more than he can handle, it can lead to him having a vomiting episode.  He usually throws up once and that’s it.  This time, it was a little more serious.

Without getting too much into specifics, Zane ended up getting a touch of gastritis yesterday.  He seemed really uncomfortable and was pacing around restlessly.  He had an appetite, but couldn’t hold down any food.  He wanted to eat grass and was even pawing at the door to go outside.

Though I was pretty sure it wasn’t an emergency, I couldn’t stand to see Zane in so much discomfort.  I looked up our vet online to see who the local vet on call was for this weekend.  It turned out the vet who was open yesterday was in Gaertringen.  Bill called them and got someone on the phone who spoke no English.  He finally asked her if he could bring Zane in and got an affirmative answer.  I stayed home with our other dog, Arran, who was not too happy about being left out of a road trip.

Bill was gone for awhile and I started to worry a bit, but it turned out the vet was rather far away and it took 30 minutes just to get there.  Then, once he got there, Bill had to wait for three others ahead of him.  Apparently, the vet looked like Richard Gere.  Now I wish I could have gone with Bill so I could have seen for myself.

While Bill was waiting, he struck up a conversation with a German woman who spoke flawless English.  It turns out she’s living in the United States, getting a master’s degree in New York state.  She has an American boyfriend and had come to Germany for the holidays.  Her mother’s cat needed an ultrasound.

Anyway, after a thorough checkup, the vet gave Zane a couple of shots.  One was to quiet his rumbling guts and make him more comfortable and the other was to stop the vomiting and nausea.  He fixed Zane right up.  Bill paid about 60 euros for the visit and that was that.  Zane seems to be pretty much back to normal this morning after he slept off the antiemetic drug.  By last night, he was begging for chicken and rice.

One thing I like about living in Germany is that vet care is relatively inexpensive here.  Emergency care is especially reasonable, especially when compared to what we pay in the States.  Zane has a special knack for getting into trouble, especially on weekends on holidays.  I feel pretty sure that had we needed the emergency vet yesterday in the USA, the bill would have been several times what Bill paid.  I appreciate that in Germany, one can often get urgent medical help without resorting to using high priced emergency facilities.

The boys were both ready for dinner last night.  Zane is the tricolored one on the left.

 

I felt a lot better once Zane was back to his usual sunny self.  From now on, we’re going to be more careful about what he eats.

I’m kind of glad the holidays are over.  I’m ready for things to get back to normal.  I’m in the midst of preparing for our trip to Scotland and trying to decide what we want to do after our Hebridean Islands Cruise in March.  I can’t wait to blog about it.

Hopefully today or tomorrow, we’ll get out and try a new restaurant.

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Results of our German veterinary surgery adventure…

I took my dogs to the vet yesterday.  Arran needed to get his stitches taken out after the surgery he had two weeks ago.  Zane was along for the ride, but also got his routine allergy shot because we were close enough to the next month.  Arran’s surgical wound from his surgery has healed nicely and he even removed three of the stitches on his own.

The vet removed the remaining three stitches, then gave me the news about the pathology report.  Unfortunately, I was right to be suspicious about the growth on Arran’s head.  It was a mast cell tumor.  The pathologist graded it at 1.5, which means he thinks there is a chance the cells could spread.  However, the tumor had clean margins, meaning there was no sign of cancer cells in the skin surrounding the tumor.  It was also a very small growth, maybe the size of a medium sized pea.

The vet explained that we could put Arran through tests to see if chemo would be useful for him.  But, she said the pathologist said if Arran were his dog, he wouldn’t do that.  It would likely involve a bone marrow tap, which would be stressful and painful.  Moreover, chemo has limited results with this type of cancer.  There is a chance that the surgery was curative, but unfortunately, mast cell tumors tend to recur.  I will have to watch him closely and have every new growth tested and/or removed.

I don’t know if I could say Arran has cancer like I could with the two dogs that preceded him.  My old dogs, Flea and MacGregor, had prostate and neural sheath cancer respectively.  Flea was diagnosed by the same German veterinarian when we lived here back in 2009.  We brought him in because he was having trouble peeing and pooping.  She initially thought he’d gotten into something that upset his stomach until she checked his prostate and realized that it was hard and irregular and looked like a map of Russia.

Both Flea and MacGregor had their diseases for awhile before we knew what was going on, so there was little we could do for them other than keep them comfortable.  Arran, on the other hand, is very strong and healthy, and as far as I know, the cancer was removed when he had his surgery.  Or, maybe it wasn’t.  Only time will tell.  But then, when it comes to life, there are never any guarantees.  Even if he’d never had a mast cell tumor, he could die in an accident at any time.  Or he could die of something totally unrelated to the growth on his head.  It does look like we caught the tumor early, though, so this news isn’t nearly as horrible as it could be.

Another bright spot in this drama is that the vet bill was very low.  Yesterday, I got the comprehensive bill for the surgery, toenail clipping, a couple of allergy shots for Zane, pathologist’s report, and prescription drugs.  The bill for all of that was the US equivalent of about $250 before VAT.  Since our vet accepts a VAT form, we didn’t have to pay that.  Even if we had, it still was a lot cheaper than similar service in the United States.

Arran this morning.

Well, I’ll just have to keep an eye on him.  Luckily he’s both cute and sweet.  Anyway, let my story be a lesson to you.  If you find any weird growths on your dog or anywhere else, it’s best to get them checked out before they turn into something sinister.  I am glad I didn’t acquiesce when the vet said maybe we didn’t need to remove that growth.

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Veterinary surgery German style…

A few months ago, I noticed a small lump on our dog Arran’s head.  It wasn’t rooted to anything, nor did it feel irregular or overly hard.  I was still concerned about it, though.  When we visited our vet in early May for our other dog, Zane’s, allergy shot, I asked her to take a look at it.  At first, she thought maybe it was a tick bite.  But I hadn’t seen any ticks on Arran in the spot where the lump was and, being from the South, I have definitely seen my share of ticks.

The next time we brought Zane in for a shot, I had the vet take another look at Arran.  She made a note of the lump because then she knew it wasn’t a result of a tick bite.  Then she said she’d look again during our next allergy shot visit to determine if we should remove the lump.  We went in last Friday and the vet said she thought the lump had gone from lentil size to pea size.  I agreed.

So we made an appointment to take the lump off on Tuesday of this week, which also happened to be Bill’s birthday.  I was supposed to fast Arran prior to the surgery.  Perhaps as a sign of his increasingly senior age, Bill accidentally fed Arran on Tuesday, so we had to postpone the surgery until today.  Fortunately, Bill didn’t feed the dogs before he went to work, so I was free to take him in at 8:45 this morning.

The vet felt Arran’s lump and said it felt smaller to her and maybe we didn’t need to do the surgery.  On Wednesday of this week, though, it seemed to me to be a little bigger.  I have been doing a lot of reading about canine mast cell tumors and was afraid that maybe that’s what we were dealing with.  Mast cell tumors can get bigger or smaller within days and they don’t have a particular look to them.  Since the lump seemed to be changing, we decided it would be best to just take it out.

I have also lost two dogs to cancer, so I know I fear it more now than I might otherwise.  The tumor on Arran’s head was very small, covered with hair, and didn’t seem to bother him; but mast cell tumors can look totally harmless and later turn out to be deadly.

One thing about our vet here in Germany that is different than in the United States is that I am usually encouraged to wait for them to do the surgery if it won’t take too long.  In the States, most of the time, you take your pet in early in the morning and pick them up later if they are ready to come home.  Our vet doesn’t have boarding accommodations, so it’s best if I am around to look after my dogs.  I was also in the room when Arran was anesthetized.  I guess that’s for his comfort as he goes to sleep.  When I had my dogs’ teeth cleaned, it was the same procedure.  I stayed in the waiting room while the work was being done.

The surgery took less than an hour.  I asked the vet to trim Arran’s nails because he hates having that done and there have been a couple of times when he’s gotten one hooked in his collar.  I could hear the assistant trimming Arran’s nails as the vet came out and showed me the growth she’d removed.  It was covered in blood, looked kind of smooth, and was maybe the size of a large capsule.  It will be sent to a pathologist who will determine what it is and if any further treatment is needed.

Waiting for Arran to come to…  my very first paying job was working for a veterinary hospital.  I was having flashbacks of that experience today.

As Arran was waking up, I was encouraged to sit with him, again, likely for his comfort.  It took about a half an hour for him to wake up enough to leave the vet’s office.  He was wearing a cone of shame that was a little too big for him.  The vet gave me a smaller one I could try when we got home.  I did put that one on him and it does seem a bit better.

We have antibiotics to start on Sunday, but we don’t have any pain pills.  Hopefully, it won’t hurt too much as he’s recovering.  We go back on Monday for a recheck.  Perhaps then, we will be presented with a bill.  Can’t wait for that!  ðŸ˜‰

At home, wearing the “cone of shame”…

I hate to put my dogs through surgery, but the last one we lost had cancer that went undetected until it was much too late.  I would much rather be safe than sorry when it comes to mysterious growths on my dogs.

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