Sick pet…surgery…biopsy…what’s next? How long does it take for the faraway pathologist to render a diagnosis?

Some clients call every day—twice, even—hoping to catch the fax as it hits my email inbox.

They’re justifiably on edge, wondering if that scary oral sore is a squamous cell carcinoma, the toe mass a melanoma, the skin mass a grade III mast cell tumor…or something they can finally big a...

Help! I need to find some way to get my Sophie to and from her radiation appointment every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next six weeks!

The one-time gamma knife procedure is out of the question due to the shape of her brainstem tumor (funky dimensions confirmed on last Friday’s CT scan). This [relatively] fast slice-n-dice procedure was my preferred approach due to the alternative’s...

It’s the Fourth of July and all you U.S. readers know exactly what that means…NOISE! To suitably celebrate the anniversary of our country’s violent birth our neighbors will be out on their lawns sending up illegal flares likely to ignite nearby tinder and frighten our pets into sub-couch submission.

It’s an annual feast for the pyromaniacal among us. Too bad our noise phobic creatures can’t...

Hot on the heels of last Saturday’s comedown (see the previous post) came an angry phone call from a client displeased with his pet’s health certificate.

This was Saturday morning and the health certificate had been issued the previous day. Unfortunately, the flight (a Delta Airlines jaunt from Miami to Salt Lake City) was a couple hours off—and it didn’t look like the dog was boarding it.

The...

OK so I did a bad thing last Saturday…a very bad thing.

A client I know well from years of stray cat care brought in a stray six month-old kitten so I could treat its ostensibly broken leg. Instead, I determined that a small abscess (probably from a bite wound) was the cause of his lameness.

Because the kitten was a tad on the wild side, I sedated him and proceeded to clean the area and debride...

OK, so I’ve finally decided it’s time to give you an update on Sophie Sue’s story (reference my ten year-old French bulldog’s confounding condition of the past few weeks’ duration).

After playing an unrewarding game of surgical hide and seek, we found no insulinoma (or other abdominal tumor) to explain Sophie’s low blood sugar and drunken gait. Nonetheless, Sophie continued to...

I truly enjoy getting the opportunity to see how other veterinary hospitals do their thing—mostly.

Last Tuesday’s visit to my area neurology/oncology/radiology team (again, reference my Sophie’s illness) was impressive for a whole bunch of reasons. Among them, one thing really stood out for me: the DNR form at the very bottom of the release I signed before she could get her MRI.

In case you’ve...

After playing a unrewarding version of hide and seek in Sophie’s abdomen last week (reference my ten year-old French Bulldog and her recent health concerns), I decided to take Sophie to my area’s closest neurologist, oncologist and radiologist team (with no traffic, about an hour away in Cooper City, Florida ).

While waiting in the lobby area with all the creatures and their caretakers, I felt...

Last I spoke of Metacam in any detail it was to describe how helpful the manufacturer (Boehringer-Ingelheim) was after one of my canine patients (allegedly) experienced an adverse reaction to it. The B-I folks rolled up their sleeves and helped out on this one.

Turns out it was a gall bladder problem my patient was suffering. Though it had absolutely zero to do with the Metacam (contrary to...

I’m used to all sorts of evening and weekend telephonics. And guess what? I don’t like ‘em. Truth is, I seriously dislike being called on my personal phone—at all—unless it’s an emergency and I’ve expressly given YOU permission to call me in such an event.

Yet even in the case of an emergency my friends and family think I’m crazy to allow such an intrusion on my non-working hours: “I mean,...