Category Archives: Emergency

In A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas past reminds Ebenezer Scrooge of his childhood innocence and leads him to understand how he could change the future by being generous and kind. For today’s blogpost, I am calling up some of the “ghosts of AMC Christmas past” – tales of AMC patients who nearly succumbed to a tragic fate and now serve as a warning to current pet owners. These stories will help you change your holiday preparations to avoid pet mishaps and enjoy this year’s holiday season to its fullest. Hopefully, it will be a holiday season without a trip to the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center’s 24/7 Emergency Room.

Recently, veterinarians at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center worked with a pet family and their insurance company following a hospital stay. Before covering charges related to a hospitalization, the insurance company wanted to know if, at the time the pet was hospitalized, it was considered to be in critical condition. As an oncology specialist, I wasn’t sure the exact definition of “critical condition” by pet insurance standards so, in this blogpost, I will share what critical condition means and explain other relevant categories of patient conditions.

Any medical or surgical procedure carries a risk of a complication such as an infection. Infections in human patients occur in about 4% of hospitalized patients. The number of infections in hospitalized dogs and cats is not well studied. However, studies of hospital-related infections help physicians and veterinarians improve the quality of care they provide to their patients. Today’s blogpost will talk about infections associated with intravenous (IV) catheters and how AMC is working to make them less common.

Regular readers of my blog will know that my family and I have raised numerous foster kittens over the years. We have had queens and kittens, kittens without moms and infant kittens with their umbilical cords still attached. Raising kittens by hand is a lot of work but rewarding and heartwarming to see them learn to “spiderman” up the side of the sofa and crawl into your lap. Despite fostering over 100 kittens, Saturday night was a new experience for me. Acorn and Cashew, two little boy orange kittens about four weeks old, had been doing brilliantly. They were eating, starting to use the litterbox and developing individual personalities. However, when the 8pm feeding rolled around, Cashew had a bit of white glop on his face, and I wasn’t sure what it was. He refused the bottle and proceeded to have a giant amount of diarrhea. I got him cleaned up and, when I put him in the kitten pen, noticed more white glop, which I then realized was kitten vomit. Next, Cashew draped himself over the edge of the litterbox like a towel over the bar in the bathroom. He was weak and wobbly. I panicked and called the foster kitten emergency number, and off we went to the animal ER at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center.

Every morning at about 5 am, the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center’s Emergency Service sends out a list of all pets admitted to the hospital overnight. Recently, one admission caught my attention: a small dog admitted with a fractured neck bone because of an altercation with a revolving door. Fortunately, the fracture was not near his spinal cord. The little guy was in lots of pain and his treatment protocol called for activity restriction, rest and pain medications. He is on the mend, but this shocking story made me wonder about other uniquely urban hazards that might impact the health of your dog.