Another rock and hard place story

I was confronted with a very difficult situation recently. It was difficult on many levels and forced me to make some hard decisions. One of the major ones was finances, as it always tends to be.

I was presented with a less than 1 year old, female Labrador retriever. This Labrador was DEPRESSED. She could barely lift her head, and she noticeably winced when I palpated her abdomen. She'd been vomiting for 24 hours, unable to hold anything down. On a rectal exam, there were absolutely no feces in her colon. She was extremely dehydrated. Everything told me that she had a foreign body. Xrays confirmed it. Not only was it a foreign body, it was the nastiest of the nasty: a linear foreign body. Her intestines were bunched tightly on each other - like a tightened drawstring.

Sighing, I went to deliver my recommendation for surgery to the distraught owners. They'd come through the doors with zero finances and had applied for CareCredit right away. They were really nice people, and they owned a really nice dog. That automatically equals a bad scenario...it's one of those stereotypes of ER medicine. Nice owner, nice pet = bad disease.

At any rate, given how sick the dog was, I suspected that the linear foreign body might have already poked a hole in his intestines. Surgery was indicated right away. I made up an estimate - being as conservative as I could (no pre-operative bloodwork, etc). The low end was $1600. The high end was $1700. This was being CONSERVATIVE, mind you. Really and truthfully, the estimate should have been at least $2100-2500.

They were approved for $1500 only with CareCredit.

My options? 1) Doing the surgery knowing that it would cost more, charging them full price, and billing them 2) Doing the surgery and discounting the bill steeply 3) recommending that they wait until the next day to see their regular veterinarian so that they could have the surgery done cheaper (but risking the dog dying and/or the internal scenario worsening significantly overnight) or 4) euthanasia.

These people were nice. They applied for credit, as we'd requested. They got a stout $1500 approval. It still wasn't enough. If they waited on surgery, the dog would either die or be in a much, much worse situation by the time surgery was conducted. If they did surgery with me, it would be much more expensive than $1500. Further, it would leave them NO funds for transfer to the day veterinarian. The dog would not be able to go home in the morning; it would have to go to a day veterinarian, which would also cost money (all of which I would've spent).

What to do?

What I did was gave them the $1600-1700 estimate, deciding to roll with whatever happened. Of course, it was the worst it could possibly be. There was a small hole in the intestines. There was string/fabric throughout the small intestine. It was a long, frustrating surgery. I had to make 5 enterotomies (openings in the intestines), cut out about 3 inches of intestine, and open the stomach. Instead of taking me the projected 1 hour it generally takes me, it took me a full 2 hours. I knew this dog would have a long and rough recovery with a high chance of dehiscence at one of the sites, at least.

The final bill was $2300. I deducted that down to the high end of the estimate - meaning I knocked off $600+. Further, I stayed after my shift by about 3.5 hours to do this difficult surgery. Time I could've spent with my daughter, who I'd barely seen over the last few days due to my work schedule. Lastly, I made no money on that surgery. Deducting the $600 meant that I deducted off my production. Thus, I spent 3.5 hours of my own time on that dog.

And yet, people call vets money-grubbing.

The patient had a rough recovery and spent 9 additional days in the hospital with his veterinarian. I called to apologize for sending a new patient (the owners had just moved into town) to this clinic with no money. I'd spent it all. I had to. I had to cover the expense of surgery (i.e. doing it at cost), since I was not free to give away clinic supplies.

It was a very difficult and frustrating scenario, but the dog is alive and home with the owners' young daughter for the holidays. That's what matters to me.