Dudley, our Cardigan Welsh Corgi, had surgery last month on his right front leg for elbow dysplasia. It was quite the experience. Ever since we got him I thought he ran kinda funny but he was a puppy. I just thought "he'll grow out of it" and didn't give it another thought. However as he grew, he started to limp after particularly hard play sessions. I took him to our local vet and she said that first we were going to take the conservative approach. We'd treat him for a sprain but if it persisted, then we'd start looking at it closer. Then we started herding lessons. It was his herding instructor, watching him run, who said "I think he's got problems with his hips. You'd better have him checked out." So off to the specialist we went. I'd heard that the place to go in Kansas City was VSEC, the Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Clinic in Overland Park, Kansas. What a HORRIBLE experience that was! My appointment was with Dr. Steve Riley. I couldn't be more dissatisfied. Upon examination in the room, he had Dudley yelping and crying! Then they took Dudley back for x-rays while I knitted out in the lobby. Once they were ready to show me the x-rays they called me back in to an exam room and brought Dudley in. He was obviously uncomfortable and unhappy. He sat on my lap and hid his head. Poor baby! So Dr. Riley starts to explain the x-rays to me. First thing he tells me is that Dudley's hips are fine. Dudly has no problems with his hips at all. The problem is with his elbows. Dr. Riley shows me the x-ray right elbow and it obviously has a problem and I understand why Dudley is limping. But then he also shows me an x-ray of the left elbow and it's just as bad as the right. Now I really think that's strange. Dudley has never limped on his left at all. He's never displayed any problem with the left at all. I find this very strange but I'm still listening to the explaination of the problem and the proposed solution. I sit back down with Dudley and the doctor starts explaining the procedure he wants to do on Dudley. He explains that he wants to take a sliver of bone out of the ulna and let it float and hopefully the elbow will line up. But he goes on to say that basically it's a crap shoot because Dudley is a puppy and still growing so it's hard to know how much bone to take out. And it's also a very painful procedure. Apparently, according to Dr. Riley, the surgery and recovery are extremely painful. Now, while Dr. Riley is explaining all this to me, Dudley is sitting on my lap. But, all of a sudden, Dudley leaps off my lap and makes a beeline to the first door he sees and starts doing the pee-pee wiggle. However the doctor takes no notice of this whatsoever. Except to do the physical exam, Dr. Riley has taken no notice of Dudley at all. He doesn't talk to him, pet him, nothing. And he's also not taking notice now so I interrupt and say "Dudley needs to go out". The doctor doesn't skip a beat. He's still talking about the procedure he wants to do. I stand up and say "Dudley needs to go out." Once again, the doctor doesn't take notice. He's still talking about his stupid procedure. So I just interrupt him and say "I have to take Dudley out, I will be right back." And off we go. Dudley has to take care of number 1 AND number 2. I clean it all up, put him in his crate in the car and go back in. I expect to be taken back to a room and ask the receptionist and she says that Mary (or whatever name she said) will be right with me. Sure enough here comes Mary with a sheet of paper. She starts to explain to me the cost of the procedure. The sheet of paper is an estimate of the cost of surgery! I say "Wait a minute. I have questions. Don't I get to ask the doctor any questions?" Mary says "Oh, well if you tell me I can ask the doctor for you." WHAT??? I tell her that I wasn't finished with my appointment to which she replies "the doctor has already gone to see other patients. If you just tell me your questions I'll be happy to relay them." Screw it. I just pay my $300 (do you believe that???) and leave. One of the other things they do tell me before I leave is that they will fax a report to my vet and they will also fax a pain med order for Dudley as he's a bit uncomfortable. A bit uncomfortable? He cried all the way home! What did they do to my baby??? So I don't drive home, I drive straight to my vet to get the pain meds. I want them on board ASAP as Dudley is obviously hurting. I get to my vet and ask for the pain meds that VSEC was supposed to order. They look at the desk, no fax. They look in our chart, no fax. They look at the fax machine, no fax. So the receptionist says, "the doctors are probably filling it right now, I'll go check." She comes back and they have not received a thing from VSEC. This is outrageous!!! It was a 45 minute drive and they can't be bothered to fax a pain med order in 45 minutes for a dog that's in pain? What kind of vets are these? But that cinches it for me. They're not touching my dog. They're not good enough to be in the same room with my dog in my opinion. Anyway my vet says that if I'll just wait a few minutes they'll get it straightened out but I'm mad and impatient so I said that I didn't live far away, I'd just come back later. I wanted to get Dudley home and make him as comfortable as I possibly could. When I get home, there's voice mail from VSEC and voice mail from my vet. I listen to the voice mail from VSEC and they just say they want me to call either Georgia or some other name I can't remember, Julia I think. My vet's voice mail says that she called VSEC, got the verbal order for the pain meds and has them for me and wants me to come in ASAP so we can get them on board. Plus she's also got an order for some shots and she wants to start those. Okay, I'll do that so we schedule me to bring Dudley in at 1:00 pm. Then I call VSEC. I don't remember what Julia or Georgia wanted to talk to me about but I take the opportunity to tell them that I was NOT happy with my appointment that morning. I tell them about the doctor going on to other patients and not allowing me to ask questions about anything. She was apologetic and said she'd have the doctor call me. At 12:30 he calls. It would have been better if I'd never talked to him again. He painted a picture of such doom and gloom for Dudley that he had me in tears! Basically what he said boiled down to Dudley leading a life of disability whether the surgery was performed or not! If we didn't do the surgery Dudley would develop degenerative arthritis and eventually wouldn't be able to walk. If we did do the surgery it was be extremely painful, the rehabilitation would be long and painful and Dudley would never be able to do anything athletic. No agility, no herding, no running of any kind. Therefore, by the time I get to my vet, I'm a basket case. I can't stand the thought of Dudley leading a life of pain and disability. He's just a baby! He was only about 7 1/2 months old at the time. My vet, bless her heart, calms me down and talks to me logically and simply. I'd already decided on the drive home that we were going for a second opinion and she agrees that we need to do that. She suggests we go to the MU School of Veternary Medicine and I agree to that. So our plan is, as soon as we get the report from VSEC she'll call MU and set up an appointment for Dudley and we'll get our second opinion. We wait for the report from VSEC. And we wait for the report from VSEC. And we wait. Apparently they aren't any better at faxing reports than they are at faxing pain med orders. My vet even calls me twice to tell me she's not blowing me off but she's not yet received the report from VSEC. And she's already called them twice. So I decide to call them. I call and say I'm checking on a report on my dog Dudley. The receptionist say that Georgia faxed that to my vet yesterday. Interesting I say, since I just got off the phone with my vet and she doesn't have it. Then the story changes to "well I know Georgia is working on that report." Fine, I want to talk to Georgia. They tell me that Georgia is in a meeting but can call me back. I agree. That's at around 9 in the morning. I am VERY generous. I give them until 4 that afternoon to call me before I call them back. When I ask for Georgia, they tell me she's not in that day!!! I went ballistic. I tell them that I called at 9 and they told me she was in a meeting. Why am I being told shes in a meeting when she's not in? "Well," they say, "she was in a meeting but technically this is her day off so she's not going to call you back until tomorrow." Oh I'm PO'd! I tell them the situation and I want someone to talk to me RIGHT NOW. I get Julia. She gets on the phone and says that the doctor is going to fax the report tonight. I ask her if she can guarantee that. "Well, no, I can't guarantee that." So I tell her that's not good enough because I've been told several times over the last two weeks that the report has been faxed, is going to be faxed and frankly I hold no stock in anything they say anymore. "So," I tell her, "here's the deal. I have an appointment tomorrow morning at my vet at 8:00 am. If I get to my vet in the morning and that report is not there, I will be leaving my vets office and driving straight to VSEC where you will put that report in my hand. And if you think this tone of voice is unpleasant, wait until I'm there in person." Needless to say, the report was faxed that night. So we finally make the appointment at MU and then we wait. Since it's a non-emergency, it takes about 6 weeks to get the appointment but it was well worth the wait. What a different experience! First we're assigned to a student. What a nice and knowlegeable young lady. Then we see the resident. She's great and they both love Dudley. They obviously care about their patients. They talk to Dudley while they're examining him and pet him while they're talking to me. I have much more confidence in their treatment of Dudley. One of the things about Dr. Riley that really bugged me was his inattention to his patient. If he can't even recognize that Dudley has to go to the bathroom, will he notice any post surgery problems? Or any problems during surgery? I just had no confidence in him whatsoever because of his treatment of my dog, who is the patient here after all. At MU, they came up with the same diagnosis as VSEC did. However, what I found interesting was that while they diagnosed dysplasia on both elbows, the right elbow had significant dysplasia while the left was very slight. In fact to the untrained eye, it was not even noticable. They had to point it out to me and then I could see it. How radically different than the films from VSEC. If you look at the films from VSEC the right and the left look exactly the same. How interesting. Very odd that the dysplasia on the left would change that significantly in 6 weeks while the right didn't change at all. I found that VERY interesting. Made me wonder if the radiology department at VSEC didn't film the right elbow twice. I wouldn't be surprised since they seem pretty darn disorganized there. While MU had the same diagnosis, they didn't propose the same procedure. In fact I went there with pretty much a closed mind. The surgeon at VSEC has said that with the procedure he proposed the dog was in about the same level of pain after the surgery as before so I saw no point in doing the surgery. Why would I put my baby through something that painful to be no better off afterwards than he was before? So when they said they wanted to cut Dudley's ulna, I immediately said "I'm not doing that." But as the resident talked to me more, I said we'd discuss it after the x-rays were done. Since I had such a closed mind (and I shouldn't have but I did) the resident had the attending physician also come and talk to me about the procedure they wanted to do on Dudley. What they described made so much more sense than what Dr. Riley wanted to do. All they wanted to do at MU was to cut the ulna at an acute angle and let the two pieces slide against each other an naturally align the elbow. Then, once the elbow is properly aligned, they put a pin in the bone to hold it in place while they heal. The pain level is very low and the prognosis is extremely good. I was elated! That sounded much more logical to me. And they'd even done it on the Bassett Hound of one of the vet techs there at the school so they got to monitor him very closely. They said that he did great. So we had the surgery done the next day. That was a month ago. Wednesday, October 3, Dudley goes back to MU for his one month checkup. They'll do more x-rays and we'll talk about what to do for re-hab. A long story to say, we're going for our checkup on Wednesday!