Letters to the Editor
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Fortune Smiled on Us
My wife, three kids and I have a 9 month-old dapple Dachshund named Fizzgig. One morning he was very lethargic and wouldn't eat. Then he was vomiting throughout the day. He also wasn't pooping.
We took him to an animal hospital and paid $300 for an X-ray, which revealed some kind of blockage in his stomach that none of us could identify. The attending vet wanted to do exploratory surgery that very day and remove whatever was in him for $3,300. This was a financially devastating expense for us because our finances are where about 90% of America's are right now.
We told the vet that we wanted to take Fizzgig home and do some serious financial planning to figure out how we'd do this. We also wanted to see if we could get (for lack of a better term) a better deal from our regular vet. Needless to say, we both got a little bit of judgmentalism from the attending. She said, "Well if you want to do that that's fine but he is suffering and the longer you wait, the more danger he'll be in." I could tell from the way she was looking at us that she didn’t approve.
The receptionist was a little more direct. "You're taking him home?!" she asked with a thinly-veiled mix of disbelief and disgust. We said yes. She replied, "Okay," in that tone of voice that is almost universally interpreted as, "You make me sick!"
We got home and started crunching numbers and pinching pennies. We hated to put money over our dog's life but money also puts a roof over our heads -and it's a modest roof, believe me.
Long story short, the next day we got approved for a credit card to pay for the operation and got everyone ready to go. About a half an hour before we were going to leave for the vet, Fizzgig pooped out a plastic marker cap and was back to his old self within minutes.
See the Subject line.