RESPONSE to Billy L --- Sadly, Billy L's wife filed this same review previously. When I responded with facts from my medical records, Citysearch reviewed my response and removed her review immediately. While all DVMs are sad that not everyone understands when we are doing things to help their pets, I must point out some facts that Billy L neglected to present.\r
Their cat came to our regional pet emergency room (ER) after flying from Maryland to Wisconsin and was having symptoms consistent with elimination retention. Many of these cases are due to urinary crystals / stones / constipation and are not just simple Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs). DVMs are charged with discerning the difference. If we as health care professionals fail to find the cause of the symptoms, we can prolong the suffering rather than help it. I needed to feel deeply into the bowels to make sure there was no bowel blockage. Next we needed to obtain a urine sample directly from the bladder. Both of these are painful procedures for just a short period of time, so sometimes pets cry out as Cisco did. Although we locally anesthetized the cat's abdomen to take the sample, they do not like being held still so we can insert the needle in many cases. No DVM allows clients to be present for this procedure, because there is temporary pain, just like when the dentist freezes your gums. And neither we nor our insurers want a pet to lash out during that pain and bite or scratch their owners, which they will do. I am not sure Billy L's cat had ever had an elimination problem that would have required this procedure before, or Billy L and his wife would have known they could not be present while their DVM obtained a urinary sample or deeply palpated the intestines.\r
There was not any urine present in the bladder upon entry, so I needed to give the cat fluids to fill the bladder, and wait for that to work its way through the system to produce urine for testing. That is the reason for leaving the cat, rather than wasting their time waiting for their cat to produce urine.\r
When Billy L called back, there was still not enough urine to get a sample. We just needed longer to allow the fluids to pass through the system. When Billy L returned to the hospital, we tried to get a urine sample again, and at this point the subcutaneous fluids had worked through the system and made it possible to get enough urine to run the tests. My conduct to determine the cause of Cisco's pain was standard operating procedure for these symptoms, so the procedures would have been the same had she been treated at any DVM, especially the Milwaukee or Madison pet ERs. What Billy L does not understand is that cases like this often result in us finding resistant bacteria, excess urine crystals, or even stones that only the tests can determine. And those results change the therapy we must undertake with each different patient to be successful. So contrary to what Billy L states, we cannot just give a patient anti-inflammatory and antibiotic injections without knowing if the diet needs to be changed to reduce any bladder crystals or stones, and whether the antibiotics will need to be changed once the culture results are available in case the pet has resistant bacteria or an infection. Your physician would not just give YOU injections with no diagnosis, and neither can we as DVMs. Sadly, cats will not just go into the bathroom and urinate into a cup to make it easy.\r
While Billy L might not perceive my insistence on the best care possible for his cat as compassion, and as being an advocate for his cat even though it may not have been convenient for the owners, the standard of care which all DVMs are held to, does.
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