an owner and her much needed closure...
Cross posted to Vet tech...
Hey guys.. So I'm in kind of a dilemma. you know those clients who you form a bond with and would do just about anything for them and their animals? Those people who are the epitamy of pet owners and secretly you hope that when you die you come back as one of THEIR pets?
Out here in Germany on a military post we meet lots and lots of people who are like that. One lady in particular my doctor and I met early on with her cats. One has chronic sneezing. We've scoped, swabbed, done a dental, anibiotic trials, etc etc. He gets better then slowly goes back to sneezing up globs of snot. Her other cat, has stomatitis. oooh.. so bad. We put him on clindamyacin and did a dental burring down the painful resorptive lesions on his lower molars. This lady is absolutely wonderful and like I said, I'd do anything for her.. so anyway..
Last December she flew to New Orleans to adopt a cat displaced by the floods. She brought back 2 year old "Murphy" and proudly showed him around for his first health exam. Murphy looked in good health. Neutered, heart and lungs WNL, happy, perky, etc etc. Two months after that though.. she came home to find Murphy dead on the floor.
Her friend called me on my cell in hysterics. Murphy was dead and there was nothing anywhere in the house that indicated what had happened. Our doctor was already on the start of a week long vacation so all we could do was store Murphy in our 'morgue' until she decided what she wanted to do.
One day later she called and said she wanted a necropsy done. Murphy had of course by now been frozen, and the doctor was 6 days from coming back to work. Anyways, to sum it up, we thawed him out and the doctor took still semi frozen samples from the cat.
I was there for the necropsy. The cat looked like he had died instantly. Like, his body wasn't twisted in any way that indicated seizure or pain. He had no broken bones, no obstructions, his bladder was in tact, contents in his stomach proved to be normal. The only thing **I** noted was purple bruising on the roof of his mouth and underneath his tongue. I don't know if this formed after he had died or was the result of... electrocution?
We sent all the samples to our lab here in Germany to be analyzed by a military pathologist. Nothing out of the ordinary came back except that the body had been frozen for a length of time. But the cause of death still came back as 'unknown'
The lady had mentioned that she had a Rhododendron plant in her house, and that is a toxic plant, but she said the cat only merely nibbled on it as well as the other two cats in the house. However the pathologist didn't see anything significant that indicated poisoning and said the cat would have to eat a LOT in order to expire from it.
So here we are with no cause of death. I'm leaning towards electrocution because that is the only thing I can think of. Oh, and the cat tested negative for FELV/FIV and FIP as well.
Have any of you ever had this dilemma? Trying to give a poor pet owner closure and having no idea how to do that? I wish I could give her an answer, but I just don't have one :(
Hey guys.. So I'm in kind of a dilemma. you know those clients who you form a bond with and would do just about anything for them and their animals? Those people who are the epitamy of pet owners and secretly you hope that when you die you come back as one of THEIR pets?
Out here in Germany on a military post we meet lots and lots of people who are like that. One lady in particular my doctor and I met early on with her cats. One has chronic sneezing. We've scoped, swabbed, done a dental, anibiotic trials, etc etc. He gets better then slowly goes back to sneezing up globs of snot. Her other cat, has stomatitis. oooh.. so bad. We put him on clindamyacin and did a dental burring down the painful resorptive lesions on his lower molars. This lady is absolutely wonderful and like I said, I'd do anything for her.. so anyway..
Last December she flew to New Orleans to adopt a cat displaced by the floods. She brought back 2 year old "Murphy" and proudly showed him around for his first health exam. Murphy looked in good health. Neutered, heart and lungs WNL, happy, perky, etc etc. Two months after that though.. she came home to find Murphy dead on the floor.
Her friend called me on my cell in hysterics. Murphy was dead and there was nothing anywhere in the house that indicated what had happened. Our doctor was already on the start of a week long vacation so all we could do was store Murphy in our 'morgue' until she decided what she wanted to do.
One day later she called and said she wanted a necropsy done. Murphy had of course by now been frozen, and the doctor was 6 days from coming back to work. Anyways, to sum it up, we thawed him out and the doctor took still semi frozen samples from the cat.
I was there for the necropsy. The cat looked like he had died instantly. Like, his body wasn't twisted in any way that indicated seizure or pain. He had no broken bones, no obstructions, his bladder was in tact, contents in his stomach proved to be normal. The only thing **I** noted was purple bruising on the roof of his mouth and underneath his tongue. I don't know if this formed after he had died or was the result of... electrocution?
We sent all the samples to our lab here in Germany to be analyzed by a military pathologist. Nothing out of the ordinary came back except that the body had been frozen for a length of time. But the cause of death still came back as 'unknown'
The lady had mentioned that she had a Rhododendron plant in her house, and that is a toxic plant, but she said the cat only merely nibbled on it as well as the other two cats in the house. However the pathologist didn't see anything significant that indicated poisoning and said the cat would have to eat a LOT in order to expire from it.
So here we are with no cause of death. I'm leaning towards electrocution because that is the only thing I can think of. Oh, and the cat tested negative for FELV/FIV and FIP as well.
Have any of you ever had this dilemma? Trying to give a poor pet owner closure and having no idea how to do that? I wish I could give her an answer, but I just don't have one :(