Henry Lubong's Journal

Today, when I picked up my dogs from my parent’s house, I couldn’t find one of them. I thought he got out of the house again. After a few minutes of searching, I found him hiding under the shed. He looked very ill and weak. I thought he’s just dehydrated so I gave him water with sugar. After a while he was getting worse so I decided to take him to a vet clinic. The doctor told me that he might have caught a Parvovirus.

Canine parvovirus or commonly known as just ‘Parvo,’ is a highly contagious disease that causes diarrhea, vomiting and fever. Puppies under 6 months old are more susceptible to this kind of disease and most of the time kills them. The doctor said that there is no cure for this disease but the dog’s own immune system.

So I brought him to the clinic and because it is Sunday, his admittance is considered as emergency. That means, I have to pay $75 instead of the regular $49 fee just to see him by the doctor. I was told that Neo needed to be put in IV to supply him with fluids. They also want to do the Parvovirus test on him but they’ve already used the last one this morning on another dog. So they had to get another one from another clinic nearby. The doctor explained to me what was happenning and the treatments they were giving him. After that, they gave me the bill and it’s whooping $384 . This is just the initial bill and does not include the parvovirus test and other medication that may be needed.

The clinic closes at 4PM and it was only around 2PM. So I went home first to take care of my other dogs while they are treating him with fluids. At about 3PM, I got a call from the clinic and they said that they can’t do the parvo test because the person who picked up the test kit forgot one of the important parts of the test kit. They can’t go back anymore because the place where they got the test kit from was already closed. The doctor was now telling me to bring him to an emergency clinic so that they can do the test there and hospitalize him overnight. But wait a minute, not that I am being cheap, but if what they’ve done to my dog has already costed me that much money, how much more would it cost me to get him for an emergency treatment and get admitted overnight while on medication. I know this is my dog we’re talking here but it should not cost us this much to get him treated.

I told them, I’ll just pick my dog up and monitor him at home. If the medications they gave him doesn’t work and if he gets worse, then I’ll bring him to emerg. I went back to the clinic and talked to the doctor again. I asked if I can give my dog anything that will help him survive through the night. She said that I can give him Pedialyte for children, which is an electrolyte solution to replace lost fluid. Then the nurse went to get Neo and she also gave me the rest of the IV fluid since they only used it to him for 2 hours. She said that I can bring this to the emerg when I go there so that they dont have to charge me for the IV fluid again.

So I got my final bill and it came up to a total of $407 because of some extra medications that they had to put on him. This is without the parvo test and I’m pretty sure that’s gonna cost another $100 at least. The doctor gave me another option besides bringing him to the emergency clinic because I was really reluctant to do it. I can bring him back tomorrow so they can put back his catheter and monitor him for a day. The charges won’t be as bad as today. Well… it will only be $273 this time!!! The doctor also said that they might treat him for at least a week. So that’s almost  $2000 of hospitalization right there.

I feel really bad for my dog because I know he needed the treatment. But on the other hand, we are also being raped for expensive charges on service fees and medications. I brought him back home and I’m constantly checking up on him every hour and giving him 30 ml of Pedialyte which is equivalent to 1/8 cup. I read online that this is the recommended dosage. I am using a syringe to feed him the fluid orally.

It’s now past midnight and so far he’s doing fine. Once in a while he would try to stand up but he would lie back down again. I’ll probably just stay up to make sure that he’ll make it ’til tomorrow.