Perform a Google search for “other people’s medication” and you’ll get833,000 results in less than a quarter of a second.
Not once but twice this week we’ve had situations where poor judgement came into play with other pets’ medications.
One was when Dude came in for a routine vaccination visit. Dude was mostly healthy except for an ear problem that had been bothering him for about a week.
Unfortunately, we were unable to identify the exact cause of Dude’s ear problem because he had a week’s worth of PP’s five-year-old ear medication in his ears. Had we performed a cytology test we would have discovered that Dude has medicine in his ears.We already knew that. His Uncle Mike told us so.
We advised Uncle Mike to continue the medicine Mom had already started (but with a new bottle of medicine we dispensed), and to continue for a full term of treatment, three weeks. If the problem relapses we suggested that the ears go untreated and uncleaned for 7-10 days, then we could perform an examination and possibly cytology to know exactly what was causing the problem and exactly what medication would best clear it up.
Which would have been the ideal approach in the first place, even if it meant waiting a few days to get Dude some relief. Then Dude could have had specific and accurate treatment.
See you Monday, Dr. Randolph
