A few weeks ago, one of my mini goldendoodles was acting a little strange. It was in the middle of the afternoon, nothing out of the ordinary happened, but Lola just wasn’t right. She was sitting up straight with her proper lady-like posture, but she was leaning over to the side.
It wasn’t a big lean at first, but within minutes the tilt turned into a full fall to the side. I picked her up and she was shaking like she was shivering. She couldn’t stand up; I could tell something was wrong. I was searching online for what it might be, while my mom was cradling Lola and talking to her gently. Search results showed it was likely that she had a seizure and since it lasted 20 minutes, we rushed her to the vet. Hours later, we took a very heavily sedated Lola to Med Vet.
Med Vet is an emergency room for animals off Red Bank Road in Fairfax. The place was huge and filled with people in the waiting room holding or petting their dogs, all of which looked like they had a bad lunch. Since Lola was knocked out and our vet called ahead of time, she was quickly called back, put on heart monitoring, given IV fluids and, just like the people in the ER, the nurse met with us to find out her history. We were told that she needed to meet with a neurologist and a respiratory doctor. My mom and I looked at each other and were confused. She needed to see a dog neurologist, that’s a thing? Turns out, yes—pet neurologists are real.
Med Vet has been around for 39 years with nearly 60 doctors and several specialties, including ophthalmology dentistry, radiology internal medicine, oncology, radiation, oncology, surgery, rehabilitation, cardiology neurology, anesthesia, critical care, emergency, and dermatology. They do all kinds of surgeries, procedures, therapies, and X-rays just like a regular hospital 24/7; casting broken legs, hip replacements, treating skin problems, mending chipped teeth, diagnosing and treating epilepsy.
There was one dog there that was blind and just had cataract surgery and can see again. “Theo had no sight, only light perception. On the day of surgery, he regained vision”, stated Jenny Wells with Med Vet.
I watched a dog walk by me who had no use of his back legs but was puttering away in a man-made doggie stroller with big wheels taking the place of back legs. She hurried through the lobby with her tail held high as if she were taking her new car on a test drive. “Yes, we do that too,” the receptionist commented.
Med Vet sees over 500,000 dogs a year and it isn’t cheap. Vet bills rack up in the thousands for specialists. An overnight stay for fluids and monitoring for Lola was $2,000 and to see the neurologist in the morning was another $1,700. Surgeries on your dog, such as a hip replacement, can cost between $3,000-10,000. And don’t forget the therapy post-operation. Just like a sports therapy clinic, Med Vet offers aqua therapy so those freshly mended hips can work again. Water therapy can run into the thousands in no time.
Wells said, “There are several insurance companies that can help cover the cost of medical care.”
Unlike humans, pet insurance is optional.
When we left Lola at Med Vet for the night she was in bad shape. She was disoriented from the drugs, and she couldn’t walk on her own. We wondered if she was going to make it through the night. I was scared. My mom called the nurses every hour overnight to check on our little ginge and first thing in the morning, we went there. Lola was diagnosed with epilepsy. She will have to spend the rest of her life on (Keppra) medication. That’s a lot of years since she just turned one.
A week after Lola was diagnosed, our other rescue, Coco, was diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes disease. She needed something similar to a hip replacement. Coco went through the surgery, which was rather barbaric. The vet broke off the diseased end of her femur with a hammer. Our little girl was left with an incision on her backside long enough to require 22 staples. Two weeks post-surgery, she refuses to put that leg on the ground, instead, she hobbles around like a tripod dog. Doctors said it could take up to a year for it to heal, I’m looking forward to that.