Perils of Animal Medicine

My little 3.4 pound Pom turned 12 in August and imagine that, she started shedding like a banshee. I took her to the vet and also showed him a small bump on her abdomen which turned out to be a hernia. He did a blood test and they operated a couple of days later. I reconciled this $600 monetary behemoth by telling myself that my Pom has been relatively healthy for most of her life and her hernia is fixed and she also has clean teeth. Then the vet told me that her thyroid numbers were low and recommended giving her a supplement, which must be given for the remainder of her life. I hesitated but she continued to shed like there would be no tomorrow. She shed to a point where she only had about a quarter of her coat left. In all of her years she had never done this before. So, with some reluctance, I agreed to thyroid supplement, since shedding seems to be one of the symptoms of a low thyroid. She stops shedding and I was happy we caught her low thyroid so early.


About 3 months go by and the last week of November she starts throwing up. Not just once or twice but every meal for about 4 days. I call and take her back to the vet, he takes a look at her chart and says, 'Oh my, she's on the wrong medication. You need to stop it immediately and bring in the bottle.' I told him there were only a couple of days left so he said to toss the rest. They did another blood test, he gives me "special" aka "expensive" dog food and some syrup to settle her stomach. This all came at a cost of $180. He calls me the next morning to tell me her liver enzymes are high and offers a couple more expensive testing procedures. I hesitated, she is 12 after all, and he then quickly told me to follow the eating program first and bring her back the following week for a follow-up and he would check her enzymes again. She seemed to bounce back pretty well for about 6 days, then she started crashing again and refused to eat. The night before I took her back to the vet, she was so weak it felt like she would die in my arms and I didn't know what to do. Well, the vet did another blood test, only charging me half the cost. This time her liver enzymes were OK but her blood sugar was very low. He gave me some expensive vitamins, new thyroid meds, told me to give her sugar water and sent me home. That was another $80. She still wouldn't eat unless I hand fed her but even then it was only a few bites and she refused to eat that expensive dog food.

Now I take pride in being a computer geek, but for some reason, I really don't know why, I did not use my computer that week. If I had, I would have found out during the first crisis visit when he told me she was on the wrong meds, that he had given her Tapazole a feline thyroid reducer med. It seems that cats suffer from high thyroid in old age and dog tend to get low thyroid. This medication lowers thyroid, so instead of increasing her thyroid it was cut down by half of what it had been. How this mistake happened, I can't imagine. The instant I realized that I had been giving her this medication for three months and most likely it poisoned her, I called another vet (my daughter had been trying to get me to go out to her vet) for a second opinion. After a thorough exam and reviewing her faxed records, the doc brought out a jar of chicken baby food and my pom scarfed it down. She sent us home with a plan that included the new thyroid med given in smaller dose twice a day, vitamins, the syrup and chicken. The most important thing was to get her to eat, unfortunately, the vitamins and syrup were causing severe diarrhea so after about 4 days I stopped it and her bowels seemed to get a little better.

It's been almost 3 weeks since I went in for the second opinion and needless to say, I am never going back to her original vet. The progress is slow but she is getting better. She barks at the occasional pedestrian and follows me around the house. She seems to have aged so much over the past month. I had a very vivacious 12 year old pom. I kick myself every now and again for not being a little more suspicious. If only I had checked out the meds the first day. But I'm not too hard on myself, had her coat continued to shed I may have realized something was wrong, but she stopped shedding and I attributed it to the meds. I trusted or was intimidated by the "Doctor" title of the vet.

The most common thing everyone is saying, I need to "do" something to the original vet. I thought long and hard and decided not to pursue. One reason I decided not to pursue, he didn't have to tell me the truth about the meds. If he had said, 'oh, I want to try her on another med, this one does not seem to be working', I never would have suspected anything. My advice to all, check out your pet's medications just as you would your own. Thankfully I still have my pom, even if it's only for a few weeks, months or years.