When writing up a medical history list of Bette for the cardio visit, I came across her 2013 dental surgery record. It was written for her and Cooper's dental surgery record which they both had had the same day. I realized in reviewing it that I had not taken either Cooper or Bette to the cardio for a scan prior to surgery. I believe it was because at the time Myrna was so sick, and we were spending so much on her care, and now were faced with $1000 for two dental surgeries, that spending another $600 for cardio echos was going to be out of reach. And yet I wished that I had spent that money.
Cooper had had an echo summer of 2012 and was fine. He had dental surgery a year later in 2013 and afterwards, began to slowly exhibit symptoms of being ill but symptoms I attributed to his reoccurring hypercalcemia (high calcium rate) which we had battled the year before and which had not returned. Blood tests didn't show anything other than a minor increase in calcium. Months later, March of 2014, after another dental surgery, he did not bounce back and we took him to the vet two days later, only to discover he had CHF. We rushed him off to the cardio. He would be on heart meds March-July and die of CHF in July.
If I had taken him to the cardio in June 2013, we may have caught early signs of heart disease. And certainly, he had heart disease by March 2014 which an echo would have caught and we could have avoided dental surgery and the onset of that first CHF-even if the outcome would have been the same in the end.
From now on, every cat gets an echo before surgery.
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