Ellie

I remember the day I knew something was seriously wrong.

I had come home from Cumberland one day in the summer to find an alarm going off and a very stressed Ellie. She was very sound sensitive and the alarm upset her so much she had paced all day trying to get away from it. She had paced so much she was limping.

It took a couple of weeks, but the limp went away. Then in September Collin came over to throw her toy for her. He threw if up in the air one time, Ellie leaped up to get it and when she came down she froze and looked at me with a look that screamed that something was terribly wrong. Not a sound out of her, just the look in her eyes. I took her in the house immediately.

This time the limp didn’t get better. Repeated trips to the vet, repeated x-rays, and the limp just kept getting worse. I knew in my gut something serious was wrong, but couldn’t get an answer as to what.

Another trip to the vet on December 4 and he tells me he thinks it’s bone cancer in her upper right shoulder and wants me to take her to an orthopedic vet in Jacksonville to find out for sure. He’s been wrong, not often, but he wanted to be sure.

That night I read up on bone cancer and decided I was unwilling to do what a lot of vets recommended — full amputation and chemotherapy. I dearly love Ellie and want her with me, but I would not put her through that trauma when she’d barely survived losing Nikki. She’d already had too much trauma in her life.

The trip to the orthopedic vet on December 7th was a nightmare. The appointment was at 11:00 AM and the regular vet hadn’t sent the x-rays. That vet it so busy it took call after call to get through and then they still didn’t send them. Or the specialist wasn’t receiving them — whatever. They stuck me and Ellie in a room and I was so frustrated and felt so powerless watching Ellie be absolutely miserable lying on the tile floor that I spent a solid hour bawling my eyes out. The x-rays finally came through.

The specialist vet had one thing to say — full amputation and chemo. He wouldn’t talk about anything else. I told him no — I wanted a diagnosis and medication to keep her comfortable. He became openly hostile and treated me like I was a waste of his valuable time. The only way he could confirm the diagnosis was to anesthetize Ellie and get a bone marrow sample for $500. He wanted x-rays and blood work before anesthesia so he wanted another $250 for that. I refused the tests. He got madder.

It was 3:00 PM before they took Ellie back for the bone marrow procedure. The look she gave me was “please don’t let them take me away.” It broke my heart.

I didn’t get he back until 6:00 that evening. While I sat waiting I heard person after person check out and it was $1400 for this, $2100 for that, $1700 for something else. It sunk in that this was a money-making machine. It was very clear from the attitude of the vet I saw that this place was a money-making machine. The longer I listened the madder I became. They prey on people who are vulnerable because they love their animals and go for the throat financially. I don’t think this place talks about palliative care — it’s big dollar surgical procedure, chemotherapy, and physical therapy all the way.

By the time Ellie staggered out both of us were exhausted and in bad shape. A tech helped me load Ellie into the Xterra and Ellie cried all the way home — a 45 minute trip in the dark so I couldn’t even look back and see her.

The specialist vet called the next day and confirmed it was bone cancer. I asked what stage it was and was told I would find that out when I came in for the amputation surgery. I told her I wanted that information now and she refused, said I would have to come in. I wasn’t considering the surgery but asked for a price out of curiosity — the ballpark estimate was $6000-7500. So I had spent $500 on a test and wasn’t entitled to the results unless I was going to spend several thousand more. That confirmed my impression that the practice is a heartless money-making machine.

I toyed with the idea of blowing up at the woman but was too emotionally wrung out to deal with it. I would have my regular vet call and get the complete diagnosis.

I can’t begin to describe how badly I felt about taking Ellie to that vet. I basically exhausted her, allowed her to be tortured by a painful procedure when she was already in terrible pain, and throw a bunch of money into a voracious cash making machine.