Unnecessary procedures, WWYD?
For the record, I don't plan to do anything at this point, not enough information, but I am wondering what you all would do.
So. Last year just before Xmas, my dog had a perforation of the small intestine that required a resection and anastamosis. Because he perforated, he also ended up being septic. It was a very very very expensive hospitalization.
Fast forward to this year. In the last few weeks, he's been losing weight, kind of anorexic, and in the last 2 weeks, had loose stools.
So I took him in to the university. They figured he had lymphoma and were going to ultrasound. But they also wanted to rule out parasites. He'd had a fecal done about 2 weeks prior at my reg vet but wanted to do another to rule out giardia and were also going to send a test in that was antigen based.
Long and short, no cancer. They ended up doing another resection and anastamosis "preventitively" and a gastronomy as well. He had crap in his stomach (toilet paper). But they elected to remove the previous anastamosis side by side site and put in an end to end to avoid any kinks. Everything looked good once they were in there as far as healthy tissue, no blockage but they did these procedures preventatively.
We're now 7 days post op with the exact same symptoms. And guess what? Doesn't look like the fecal was ever done as discussed. And now they want to do it because they think it might be giardia.
If it IS giardia and it wasn't checked as was discussed AND written out and signed, and none of the other surgical stuff was necessary...would you ask them to credit you for the surgical procedures? I've heard from 3 different vets plus 2 students who were in the surgery that there was nothing remarkable about the previous site. They assumed that internal medicine did the tests they said they were going to.
I'm not going to come unglued. I'm not. My dog is really special to me and I have a LOT of respect for the doctors at the university. But if it turns out that this is "just" giardia and we put my dog through MAJOR abdominal surgery and ended up with a 4k bill....I'm just not sure what to DO.
Mistakes are made all the time. I get that. But the basic battery of tests should have been done IMHO. It's what I authorized. It's what I expected to happen. And it didn't.
So IF I go back in today for a fecal and it IS giardia....what would you do? Would you ask them to credit you for the surgery?
At this point, I don't know for sure what is going on, but I (and the surgeons) thought we had ruled out parasites before proceeding with surgery.
Either way, I am happy to have my dog. BUt he's still sick. And I'm afraid I've put him through a majorly invasive procedure for naught.