Buddy’s Ear Infection

We left for the vet mid afternoon. Buddy had an ear infection for a few days, he’d been doing the ear rubbing thing. We were lucky to get an appointment as our vert is usually booked up, but we got put on the cancellation list and somebody cancelled.

Bruno came too.

The traffic was atrocious. WTF? I don’t know why? (Was it the over protective mother’s school run? Surely not?) We got to the vet at 3.50pm, 10 minutes late.

But, then we were ushered into a consultation room where we waited half an hour for them. I think in the end we waited longer than half any hour in that small, airless room.

A young girl vet attended to us in due course. The girl vet spoke with what seemed like a broad Queensland accent, like a whining chainsaw, she was really hard to understand with her accent and the mask she was wearing. 

She examined him around his neck, and then in his groin. Buddy got a finger up his arse, which sure stopped his panting for a moment. 

She took a little blood to look at under a slide. She disappeared with that for a time.

In due course, she came back. The news was bad, potentially bad. She started talking about lymphoma. How did we get to lymphoma from an ear infection? 

She said it was her preliminary findings and that it would need to be confirmed by a blood test, which she could do, tomorrow, I wasn’t sure why it had to be done tomorrow?

If we had to come back tomorrow, I thought we might as well go to a specialist and have it done, as a specialist would have all the treatment options.

We were referred to a cancer specialist closest to home. The same place that wanted to operate on Buddy’s knee immediately at a cost of $2500, five years ago, which was the reason we started coming to this vet to see Dev, who said it didn’t need to be done straight away. And if it did he’d charge about $1000. 

So, we left, a little shell shocked. Lovely Bud, he just seemed like his normal self. 

Sam would ask me later, “Do you think that vet (her name was Karen, {that’s not her name, but I couldn’t resist. You don’t think I am going to tell you her real name, now do you?} I would find out later) was on meth?”

“You think everyone is on meth.”

Sam laughed.

“But, you know,” I said. “I know what you mean.” 

She was thin and fidgety, and a bit kind of nervy. Maybe that was just because we couldn’t understand her clearly. I don’t know. 

I didn’t know what we were going to do.