Clio is home again. For those that don’t know, she went to Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine to get spayed, and to have an ectopic ureter fixed. The ureter problem caused her to dribble pee more or less constantly, and as she got older and bigger, she dribbled more. So she had to get that stuff fixed.
Her left kidney’s ureter left the kidney, grazed the bladder, and curved back to attach to the right side of the urethra. So they had to re-attach it to the correct side of the bladder, and get rid of all that excess tubing. Kinda horrifyingly organic, to think that there’s “extra tubing” in the body that can come out so easily, but necessary.
So, she’s home again. She’s as wonderfully bouncy and crazy as before, maybe a little more mellow — but that may be the recovery from surgery acting, rather than her. She doesn’t dribble any more. There are these occasional spurts from her, though. Basically, her bladder got lazy in the first four months, and now she doesn’t know quite how to hold it in. The doc says this will improve with time. Sometimes it improves in the first week, and sometimes in the first three months. Here’s hoping.
The surgery was initially estimated at around six weeks’ salary for me, but it wound up coming in at a price of about three weeks, so if you ever need to go to Tufts, try not to have too much stickershock on the estimates; it appears that they highball things as a hedge against really dismaying news. And it appears that they do good work; another dog was leaving with Clio who came in at the same time as Clio, and you almost wouldn’t have believed they were the same dog, the difference between happy outgoing dog and unhappy, world-weary ingoing dog. So, medical miracles do occur in the world of veterinary medicine.
So glad she’s doing well.
My little one had a problem with bladder stones – as she got older, they made it a lot harder for her to hold things in. A few months after the surgery, her bladder function was better than it had ever been.
Dogs seem to be good at rebounding, and I know Clio’s a smart girl, so I’m predicting she’ll be better than ever soon.
*doggie pat on the head for Clio*
a 2nd for Tufts
Our recent cat experience at Tufts vet was similar. Great treatment and the estimate turned out to be about 20% higher than the final bill. I’d rather have the inevitable pricing surprise go in that direction!
And, more importantly, Glad she’s doing well!