Alabama Babies
bamanichole
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*Soon2beMrs.Wiley*
bamanichole
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Don't you work in the vet field? If so do you mind telling me where? I have a puppy issue and need advice. TIA!
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Re: *Soon2beMrs.Wiley*
Ok thanks! I will try to be as short as possible.
We have a Yorkie (Whiskey) and we don't know exactly how old he is as we rescued him in Feb 09. Our vet guessed around 5-6 yrs old. Anyways ever since we got him he has occasional breathing problems, I would compare his symptoms to a human having an asthma attack. I say occasional b/c its not consistent and we have not found anything that sets him off it just happens sometimes. During an episode his ribs expand to about twice his body size from his lungs trying to get air in and he gasps, not really wheezing or coughing though.
I took him to our vet here when we got him in Feb 09 and they told us that his tonsils were swollen and gave us some medicine. That didn't fix it but he wasn't that bad its like he had learned to handle it. They told us if he wasn't any better they would do an xray. Well he was ok until this weekend on Sat he got really bad and it didn't get better, when he was still having issues on Mon I took him back to the vet. They said they would do the xrays.
I went to pick him up Mon and they said he has a collapsed trachea and tried to show me on the xray. They think he needs to have surgery here that will cut the trachea to resemble a triangle instead of a circle to help keep it from collapsing. They cannot gaurantee that he will even survive the surgery much less it be successful. He said there is another surgery where they put a tube like thing in the trachea to keep it expanded but in order to do this I would need to go to a specialist and it would cost in the thousands.
I talked to another vet here in town to see if they were more familar with this b/c my vet said they don't see it a lot and aren't very familar with it. He said that he normally refers his patients with this to Auburn b/c they are more experienced and have more diagnostic equipment. He also told me that most of the time you cannot diagnosis collapsed trachea based only on xrays. He also doesn't know why he is doing this and it is fixing itself without any medication or treatment. So he thinks it could be something else or could be treated some other way instead of jumping straight to surgery.
I would love to find another way to treat this instead of surgery not only because of the cost. I don't want to put him through the surgery not knowing if he is going to survive it and as far as we know he could be fine without the surgery. He has made it a year and a half like this but I would like to do the surgery if it is the only solution to get him some relief. Also since this surgery may not even be successful I don't know if it is worth the risk. I don't want him to suffer but I don't want to put him under and risk him dying if its not necessary.
Thank you so much if you read all this and if you need any more info just ask. If you can't help with the diagnostic point of view maybe you could give me some idea of what this may cost there and do ya'll accept Care Credit?
Thank you so much and sorry again for rambling I was just trying to cover all the info!
OK. From the first paragraph, I thought collapsed trachea. It happens a LOT in small dogs. Here is a good explanation: https://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2096&aid=410
We see dogs for this quite often. You could ask for a referral to our Internal Medicine department. They would work it up (which could include exam, bloodwork, xrays, u/s, etc...)and determine if the condition could be treated medically (hopefully) or if the problem is so bad that he would need surgery. If surgery is needed, then he would be transferred to the Soft Tissue Surgery department. The IM workup usually runs between 700-900. Of course, if surgery is necessary, it would increase a good amount. We do accept Care Credit and have promotions with them where depending on the balance, we can get you a period of no interest.
It seems as if your vet has a fatalistic attitude about this surgery. Death IS an risk with any procedure that requires sedation (as with humans), but unless your dog is very sick, the risk is minimal. And if he hasn't done the surgery very often, I would want someone else doing the procedure. The good thing about the vet school is that we have all the specialists under one roof, so you should feel absolutely comfortable knowing that your dog would be receiving excellent care. We also have anesthesiologists who can monitor patients during surgeries.
And personally, I have never liked doctors (human or animal) who want to jump straight into surgery.
Its a lot to process, and its a lot of money to consider. But we are here if you decided to come.
Ok thanks again so much! I think we are going to research some more and probably see another vet and if we decide that surgery is unavoidable than we will probably be in touch.
Thanks so much again!!
Ok thanks again so much! I think we are going to research some more and probably see another vet and if we decide that surgery is unavoidable than we will probably be in touch.
Thanks so much again!!