Miss Merit

Don’t know if you caught my little comment from last week in which I mentioned I needed to take Merit to the vet. Well it wasn’t for a check up. I had noticed she doesn’t seem to have control of her back legs going down the stairs last Saturday. DS usually takes the dogs up & down with him based on our schedules (and the potential that if they decide not to heel they could send my large pregnant ass flying down the stairs). I mentioned to DS that she’s had this trouble & he was like “yeah, she’s been having a problem going up & down.”

Grrr….that’s why we have pet insurance.

So the visit from last Tuesday was along the lines of; “she’s going to be six this year & she’s overweight, so let’s assume she’s having some joint issues like an older dog.” I have to admit it didn’t sit all that well with me. But I figured ok, we’ll give it a couple weeks and see what happens. They gave the dog version of gluclosamine (sp?) to see if things improved w/in that time.

Friday night she stopped using her right back leg.
I called the vet Saturday morning & they tried to schedule me for a “re-check” with the same doctor on Tuesday.

“Hellllllo, my dog isn’t walking on one her legs, I think she needs to be seen.”

“Well, we can mark you down as a “walk-in” and you can come in and we’ll fit you in when we can, but that will be at least an hour wait, probably closer to two or three.”

So I drove TS across town to hang w/the G’parents, luckily they were available. DS had plans that AM so it was up to me to deal with it. It was about a three hour visit in total; two hours of waiting. But hey, I got my thank you cards from my shower written, so not a total loss. They kept Merit for the rest of the day to sedate, x-ray & better exam her.

They feel she’s effectively torn the ligament in her leg. Great. (Equivalent to a human ACL.) The only fix is surgery. Surgery is going to be $2,500-3K. (Guess I should’ve told you to sit down first, but if you have a pet that number probably didn’t surprise you.) It’s that cheap because we have insurance.

It cost us $350 to find out we need to spend $3K. (They show you on the bill what it would’ve cost w/out the insurance and it would’ve been $500, aren’t we lucky?) We’re debating a second opinion because it’ll put us down another $500, to probably find out the same thing. But they can’t positively say this is exactly the problem because they don’t do MRI’s on dogs. I'm sure we can find someone who does, but like I said we're debating because of the cost to probably find out the same thing.

Merit’s my baby, so there’s no question we’ll resolve this in the best manner for her. (Truth be told if you know Merit, she's probably you're baby too. She's one of those dogs that people radomly offer to take off your hands any time you want. She's that special, not just to me.)
But I have to say, the timing really sucks. I’m about to have a baby any. second. now. We just had to pay out a HUGE amount to taxes. And when I start maternity leave (end of month) I will be w/out pay for those three months. Jeez. I guess I will be able to convince DS to let me sell my car now to pay for this. (More on the car later.)