This past week hasn’t been the greatest. All sorts of chaos at work, Joy’s schedule (if you can call not knowing from week to week when you are working until the last minute a ‘schedule’) has changed again, for the worse of course, and Lilly, Mojo, and Wednesday have all been having health issues.

Wednesday went in for a routine urinalysis recheck, and had to be left overnight to get the sample. We picked her up yesterday evening, they finally had to do a cystocentesis to get the sample, which she’s had done before (this involves drawing the sample directly from the bladder with a sterile syringe and needle inserted through the belly) and she was sent home with another round of antibiotics. On the way home she began puking violently, threw up repeatedly again at home, acted very painful and freaked out, and had diarrhea. We were ready to rush her to the emergency clinic when she finally seemed to feel a bit better, so we decided to watch her instead. This morning she seems back to her old self, we have no idea what was wrong. The only time she has ever acted like that before was the time she had a vaccine reaction but she did not receive any medication or vaccines yesterday. We’re just relieved she’s better.

Lilly is having what seems to be a colitis flareup but we are worried it is something worse. Lots of blood in her stool. Usually with her colitis she vomits and there is more mucus than blood in the stool, this is streaks of frank blood and we’re worried. There was a slight diet change recently, though, so we’ve got her back on what she was eating previously and she’s on a course of metronidazole and we will see what happens. If it isn’t better in a few days we’ll need to have her checked out. Mojo has had two episodes where he had to vomit recently because of an upset stomach, and during the retching he became unsteady and collapsed. He is going to the vet’s today.

When we tried this new vet I knew I was going to have a problem with the ‘walk-ins only policy’ (no scheduled appointments, it is first come first served) but I am getting more than a little frustrated. Feels like we are going to a ‘McVet’ and it sucks because I really have liked the actual Dr. we have seen, but not the way the clinic is run. Experience has taught us that weekday mornings are a bad time to go because there is a big rush of drop-offs and the vets scurrying around trying to see appointments in between setting up for the day’s surgeries. So I figured, since I am off today, I’d go early in the afternoon. Called yesterday to make sure we’d see our vet. When I asked if he was seeing appointments Friday, the recep. says “Oh yeah, i think so” and I said “when in the afternoon would be a good time to come?” and she said “anytime, we don’t close for lunch.” So today, just to make absolutely sure everything is a go (we’ve been turned away two different times when we’ve gone, because they had too many people already waiting) I call, ask if Dr — is seeing appointments today, and she says “yes, but he is at lunch right now.” and told me to come after 2pm. I resisted the urge to eat my phone. She couldn’t tell me that yesterday why??? I really would like for Mojo to see that Dr. so I’m trying to be patient, but that is just a crazy way to run a clinic.