Hooray for emergency vet bills

Hooray for me, I got my raise and with it, a giant step into the next tax bracket. After my first paycheck with the raise on Friday, I set aside a fairly good chunk into my “Hooray, new apartment and furniture!” fund. Alas, most of what I saved into that fund went into Cooper’s “haha, I’m fucking up your plans!” fund.

As noted, I joined the Bansfield Wellness Program for Cooper keeping a teeth cleaning in mind. I scheduled a teeth cleaning appointment for Saturday and had to wake up at 6:30 to drop him off by 7. As if that wasn’t bad enough, my previous vet hadn’t sent over his complete records and I had to spend an hour on the phone explaining that yes, I know about Cooper’s heart murmur; it’s actually a ventricular septal defect. Finally, they get him on the table and start scraping away only to call me after 20 minutes informing my that Cooper cracked a top molar all the way down to the root and his nerves were exposed. WTF? When did that happen? How long has that been there? Cooper never showed any pain and I had no idea how long his tooth was cracked.

Second question: How much is that going to cost?! $400. Well, that included his antibiotics and pain meds but seriously, 400 bucks to pull a tooth. Granted, it was a huge molar and because of his heart problem they had to hook him up to another machine since they needed more anesthesia but still, there went half of my savings from the paycheck. Without the wellness plan, it would have cost a whopping $650 bucks.

I felt bad, I have no idea how that happened and neither does the vet so it’s not like I can do anything preventative such as no more tug of war, bully sticks, bones, who knows what else. Luckily, Cooper had tartar build up in the crack that was cushioning his nerves so he probably didn’t even notice it which also made me wonder if I could have left it as is but figured if it got worse, it’ll probably cost me more. Ugh, poor little buddy. I feel like an awful pet parent both because I had no idea and also because I was seriously considering leaving the tooth as is.

He’s pretty swollen and looked rather miserable yesterday. He was enthusiastically running around and tried to jump on my bed, miscalculated the leap and face planted into the side of my bed and screamed in pain. He’s been sulking in his house ever since only coming out to whimper in my ear and give me those big sad eyes. But he gets to eat wet food for a week and he’s pretty stoked about that.