Friday, July 08, 2005

The end of the story...for those who care!

The vet called yesterday with weird news. Ruby had gotten out of surgery and they hadn't found anything. That's really disconcerting when you know you are forking over a buttload of money for just the surgery. Anyway, the mystery object had passed into her colon by the time they got into her.

Herein lies our dilemma. We really didn't feel okay about paying so much for an exploratory surgery that didn't solve any problems! Dan called his "vet friend" yesterday afternoon just to see if our frustration was valid. His friend was surprised that they didn't do a pre-op x-ray just to make sure they the object was still there. So we knew that we had to chat with them before we wrote any checks.

The vet's office closed at 8:00 last night, so we got there around 7:45 to pick up Ruby. We brought up (very nicely!) our concern and were satisfied with the answer. They had injected the barium on Tuesday night to take pictures of her insides on Wednesday. At surgery time yesterday, the barium was still in her system. They knew the object was soft, so the barium could go into it and run through it. Apparently barium affects the way things are seen in x-rays (which is why they have special barium pictures), so they wouldn't have been able to see it clearly anyway. Plus, if they had seen in the x-ray that it had moved out of the stomach, they still would have gone in to make sure it wasn't blocking anything else. Which is what they did. They felt along the entire intestine and discovered that it was in the colon and would eventually pass. After their explanation, we felt okay about the money we were giving them. Besides, the surgery was almost half the amount they had quoted us anyway. So that all worked out.

Now she is bare-bellied and can't eat until 8:00 this morning, poor thing. But Maddie is MUCH relieved to have her home. Not so much following me around meowing. :)

The end of the pet drama. Thanks to those of you who care. It's like having kids sometimes. Well, probably not at all, actually...

7 comments:

jeffmacsimus said...

Like kids -- I know what you mean -- not at all, I'm sure, but I'm getting the analogy HARDCORE right now, and the question of whether I have the capacity to survive fatherhood has been raised....

gloria said...

Until last spring we also had two cats. They were not nice to each other. Asha was 3 and Herman was 1 when Pete and I got married - the two cats fought terribly! They got used to each other eventually - but they never groomed each other or did other loving cat things. So I was surprised that after 11 years of living like the odd couple that Herman would show such severe signs of missing Asha. He lost weight and began pulling out his hair - poor baby. He seems to be doing better now. I'm glad to hear that things turned out well for your nice kitty. I was actually thinking about your cats today. I'm glad you gave the update! :)

Erin Bennett said...

Jeff, I'm pretty sure that taking care of Hudson and Percy is WAY harder than taking care of kids. Those dogs are crazy. Good crazy.
Gloria, thanks for thinking of my cats. :) Funny about your cats fighting. We actually got Ruby because she wasn't getting along with my mom's cat!

jeffmacsimus said...

Yeah, I'd say taking care of Hudson and Percy is probably rather like being the parent of quintuplets with ADHD who have unlimited access to Laffy Taffy. As much as I'm allergic to cats, I'm glad your family is complete again.

david said...

I like cats, but I sure am glad I don't have any after reading this. I would have let the poor thing sit there in pain until the object either passed through or the cat fell over. Heartless people like me don't deserve cats.

I also heard they need to be fed EVERY day and don't like being ignored for weeks on end.

Anyway, congrats on Ruby's success with life, liberty, and baldness!

Grandma and Grandpa Benson said...

That's love . . . actually!

Jaime G said...

If you leave out the spiritual guidance anxiety, pets are about on par with having kids, actually. At least I think so. I had a cat dying and a newborn child once at the same time and the cat was a TON more work than the newborn. My mom got puppies when we had our first baby and she had WAY more work than our baby... but; pets do not grow up and rebel on you... or do they?

I am happy for your united family again!