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| - GF and I were woken up around 3am by Raven vomiting. She was severely retching and was experiencing dyspnea.
We brought her to AEC where we were warmly greeted by the front desk lady, Angela. She got us set up in one of the room and told us someone would be with us shortly. After a few minutes the nurse came in and took Raven's history for Dr. O'Dea. She was so sweet! She kept reassuring us that everything would be okay. In addition, she seemed more distraught about our puppy being sick than we were. She truly displayed a high level of compassion and empathy.
We were helped by Dr. O'Dea DVM who was the medical director of AEC. He was very clear on his plan of action and walked us through what his thoughts were. He said we would start with parvo ELISA test first to rule that out immediately, then run multiple view of X-ray to rule out GI obstructions, and then finally blood tests if nothing else is found. Everything was done in a timely manner, but we didn't leave until 5:30am because we were waiting on a board certified radiologist to read the radiographs.
Dr. O'Dea asked me if I was in the medical field and I told him I would be starting medical school soon. He seemed to ease up a bit and he began going more into the specifics. He walked us to the back room and showed me the high definition radiographs. He scrolled through the different views and showed me a suspicious object in the jejunum. He said that it could be something as benign as fecal matter/gas or it could be a foreign body... but the reason he was worried was because he noticed faint striations. After showing us the radiographs, he started to explain the medicine in more depth. He mentioned that he was going to administer Unasyn which would target a broader range of bacterium (certain gram +, gram -, and anaerobes) than Flagyl (anaerobes). I loved that he was explaining everything in great detail so that I could have a better understanding of what's going on.
All in all, I was very happy with the care I received at AEC. Every staff member that I spoke to was nothing short of amazing. In addition, Dr. O'Dea was straight forward and honest with me. The cost set me back $1,144 which is pretty steep, but I'd rather pay one thousand now than several thousand dollars for more invasive treatment later.
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