So, in looking at the x-rays, the radiologist recommended getting a CT scan done to get a better look at his head, since there looked to be some "thick tissue" near his left eye. Our vet doesn't think that we needed to do that yet, but instead recommended we go the bicillin route. (A month's worth of bicillin is only about $40, including needles! This is awesome when compared to the previous month's medication costing $120 for the Chloramphenicol and the Baytril.) When I asked how much a CT scan is, she said that she heard of a vet in the area that recently bought a CT scanner and was offering scans at a really great reasonable deal of about $200, so that they could get some animals in to be scanned and create a baseline. That didn't sound like a bad price to me since that's about how much the x-rays cost, but when I asked how much they normally run, since that was a really great deal, she said, "around $800 - $2000." Whooh.
So, we decided to definitely go the bicillin route before a CT scan. She said that we should see results in 2-3 weeks, but if we don't, then she's going to want to recommend a CT scan.
So far giving the bicillin has gone well, but we had some trouble with the last injection (Saturday night). To give the injection, you just pull up the loose fur anywhere from the back of his neck to his hips and push in the needle parallel to his back. This had gone well so far the two times we practiced at the vet’s office and the three times following, but on Saturday Jason put in the needle and pushed down the syringe, and the medication ran out the otherside, down the back of my hand. The needle had apparently gone through both sides. (Obviously I'm going to need to move my hands next time, because he could have stuck me.) Our vet had warned that we might do that, it happens at least once to everybody, but we couldn’t remember what she said to do about the medication if the scenario did come to pass. Not all of the amount that ran out was the amount in the syringe, so we didn’t know how much he actually got and how much we should give him a second time, or if we should just wait until Monday when we give the next dose. We called the vet’s office to ask, but they were closed, so we called ACCES, the emergency vet in our area. We explained our situation and asked if they could give us some advice as to what to do and they put us on hold while they looked up the medication. A tech came on a bit later and said that the dose generally runs from 20,000 parts to 80,000 and that you don’t generally see the really high doses until the last couple months of a medication run when you’re trying to aggressively combat a problem. So she said that guessing at what dose he was on, we would probably be fine giving him two whole doses in a row without problem. So, he would probably be fine if we just gave him a second full dose, or if we wanted to play it safe we could just go down the middle of the road and give him a .25 ml dose. So that’s what we decided to do, and I gave him the injection. But when I pushed in the needle, Snoopy flinched and that was the first time he ever reacted to us giving him the injection. Poor guy. But his back didn’t feel wet, so at least he got all of that one.
So far he seems to be just as snotty as he was, but it’s only been a week. Hopefully we’ll see some good news soon.
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