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In my far less experience than
S
silent meowlook
, general vets don’t often have their own ultrasound equipment. There is a traveling specialist who goes from vet office to vet office performing and interpreting the ultrasounds. These are often drop your cat off in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon visits even though there’s no sedation involved. The specialist just wants all his patients lined up so he can get through the batch of them at once. I dropped Betty off for one of these ultrasounds. Based on the results, I booked her an appointment with an internal medicine specialist. I highly highly recommend this for Danno. It turns out when I brought Betty into the specialist consultation appointment, he remembered her because he was the traveling specialist that performed her ultrasound at my vet. The thing with specialists is they are expensive and they can be hard to get that first consultation appointment (long wait times that often aren’t negotiable by need). But they are so worth it. Because once you are a patient of theirs, you realize that initial consultation was tough to get because they only allocate so many hours a week to those. The rest they may be performing surgeries or procedures or doing traveling ultrasounds. But when Betty needed to see the specialist, it was often easier to get that appointment than the one from her regular vet. Specialists are more involved in your cat’s case because they aren’t also doing spay-neuter, new pet physicals, dental procedures, and all those other things that distract a general vet from getting too involved in any one patient.
If Danno were my cat, I would operate on parallel tracks. Get a general vet involved so that you can have someone for anything the specialist doesn’t specialize in. And book that initial consultation with the specialist. It’s rare that they let you jump the line. But you may explain the situation and see if you can send records over ahead of time for consideration for either a sooner appointment or getting on the cancellation waitlist. If you are looking at a typical two month wait, that’s where the general vet can hopefully help stabilize things until the specialist can take the case. And if you need to, go ahead and take him back to the ER. Although an overnight stay can be expensive, sometimes it’s the way to jump the line and see a specialist in the morning. This is how my last cat Krista (in my avatar) jumped at least a month wait to see a neurologist and get a needed MRI within 24 hours of me taking her into the ER.
To sum up, get a regular vet and a specialist and don’t be afraid to return to the ER if neither can fit you in when you really need them.
If Danno were my cat, I would operate on parallel tracks. Get a general vet involved so that you can have someone for anything the specialist doesn’t specialize in. And book that initial consultation with the specialist. It’s rare that they let you jump the line. But you may explain the situation and see if you can send records over ahead of time for consideration for either a sooner appointment or getting on the cancellation waitlist. If you are looking at a typical two month wait, that’s where the general vet can hopefully help stabilize things until the specialist can take the case. And if you need to, go ahead and take him back to the ER. Although an overnight stay can be expensive, sometimes it’s the way to jump the line and see a specialist in the morning. This is how my last cat Krista (in my avatar) jumped at least a month wait to see a neurologist and get a needed MRI within 24 hours of me taking her into the ER.
To sum up, get a regular vet and a specialist and don’t be afraid to return to the ER if neither can fit you in when you really need them.