This is a long one. We moved to the south side of Indianapolis so we needed to switch our boys vet. We ended up here. Things were fine, so we thought. Because we trusted them. I understand mistakes can happen, but I contemplated how to respond about this for a while now. We took our boy because we noticed swelling on his face. They thought it was a dental issue, so they gave him a script of prednisone, and amoxicillin, & we ended up scheduling a dental extraction for the following month. He finished the scripts, and the swelling came back. They specifically felt his lymph nodes all over his body and ruled out issues like… cancer. I had figured, since it was a tooth issues, maybe another antibiotic would help. I called multiple times, asking for something that would help, because he was declining again. They sent multiple different antibiotics, (even kefflex?) again, over the course of a couple months. They never once, said, “maybe it was actually the prednisone (the steroid that helps with swelling of the lymph nodes) that helped the swelling of his lymph nodes.” In hindsight, I see now, that’s what it was, not the antibiotics. Things got worse late one evening, he had an extremely upset stomach, so we had to take him to a 24 hour ER vet in beech grove, as this clinic was not open that late. The ER vet was more concerned with his lymph nodes, than his upset stomach. She told us, it’s likely cancer, lymphoma to be exact. We told the ER vet, he has a day vet, he’s been seen for that, and he has a dental scheduled to help with the lymph nodes. She wasn’t convinced that was the issue, so she urged for a fine needle aspiration, blood work, xray, and so on. We did, and wouldn’t you know it. My nightmare became real. He had lymphoma, the aggressive type. Type T, that progresses very quickly and leaves a life expectancy of a couple months. I couldn’t believe it. I was devastated, horrified, and most importantly, so upset that this vet had totally overlooked it, but again, mistakes happen, but this part is where my heartache really becomes real.. when a dog gets lymphoma, in order to respond well to chemo (which a lot of dogs do) the likely hood that they will respond is much lesser if they’ve already been on prednisone. The steroid I mentioned that Shelby St clinic gave him without really ruling it out. The fact that he had already been given the steroid, meant he likely wouldn’t respond well to oncology. We switched his vet, immediately, and every support group, every vet, every tech, every person that I’ve talked to or had an appointment with has said, you shouldn’t give prednisone for lymph nodes unless you’ve actually ruled everything out. The truth is, he was living with cancer, and I didn’t know, I thought it was his teeth, because of what I was told, and to make it better, because he had been given prednisone before the proper procedures to help identify what was going on with him, that was all I had left to do for him. Lymphoma is aggressive and it’s brutal and I understand things happen, but there were many instances where things could’ve went differently. We relied on the professionals. I came to the realization where thing went wrong, and was devastated that I blindly trusted. Without seeing another vet that might, if I just went off of what I was told from this vet, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to make it to that dental surgery. That was a couple months ago. My boy passed away a couple days ago from cancer. My heart is broken, and this isn’t me looking for someone to blame, I just find it wild that with him in the clinic, them ruling out what could obviously be the problem, a life threatening problem, and me calling with his symptoms looking for relief for him, being given a steroid too soon that would essentially lessen the likely hood of him ever having remission, and being scheduled a dental surgery that wasn’t even the issue, a surgery.. a surgery his new vet said he likely wouldn’t be healthy enough for.. I’m just taken back. I wasn’t going to say anything but I think it needs to be said.
